....to wonder how the hell SAhM's coped 30/40/50 years ago.....?

[mustbeanonymous]

...Just wondering really....have spent the day with my dear grandmother who was telling me how things were for her 50/60 years ago bringing up two children. Dear grandfather at work 60/70 hours a week, semi caring role for her own mother who was ill, no playgroups/other structured acticities and a second child who cried and screamed continuously for 3 years, then has severe separation anxiety for 3 years after this. She said she would read in the papers about mothers who had killed their children and think 'I understand why' and that some days she was theoreticalyy not too far away from that herself..........

Biut really, I 'escape' to my part time job and stilll really struggle with the unrelenting demands of my two age 1 and 5, I love them so so much but its the most difficult job I have ever had........

How the hell did people cope back then, pre all of this structure and acticitiy and monitoring and antidepressants????

i also think there wasn't so much bloody pressure.

Kids want sooo much these day, Xbox, Ps3, WII,internet, BBM, iPhone, hoildays, latest fashion trend, the list goes on and on and on.......i we buy it because we all fear our children will be bullied or left behind without these.

Squeaky - but you were making it sound that 40 years EVERYONE had all mod cons. They didn,t - I can assure you.

I only heard of it a few months ago when I was watching a tv programme - South Riding I think. I didn't make the connection then but it does make sense.

Very :( for my great grandmother, and her dh and dcs.

Most people did though Portofino

The 1970's were really not that long ago even if it was 40 years. We had plenty of mod cons by then!

I don't know but it happens to around 1/1000 mothers. I don't think it matters which baby it is, but the articles I've found say it's more common with the first.

I was born in the 70' s and would agree that a lot of things were much 'better ' then ie more mods cons, a bit more structured support etc playgroups etc.

My Mum says being with me were the happiest days of her life and that just goes to show as my dd was a useless git and she had to go back to work when i was 5 and was a single parent from me aged 7 onwards.

haing said that though zhe admits i was the 'easiest' child ever and she never went on to have a second.

I suppose my question was more aimed at pre 60's 70's when people/society were still recovering from ther war, etc, yes immunaisation but still very hit and miss how well people were etc....

In my mum's case, 60 a day, gin and tonic, Dr Spock and a totally unsociable temperament so that her happiest years were spent on her own with a baby

In my grandmother's case, vitamins, a live-in housekeeper and a daily, plus the above-mentioned totally unsociable temperament.

In my MIL's case, nursery and a childhood spent looking after her 3 younger siblings which gave her a lifelong debilitating sense that she is responsible for everything terrific moral fibre.

In my GMIL's case, my MIL who was looking after the younger ones in the street. But she still had to make a home from 2 rooms in a condemned house in Soho and work as a cleaner, plus for several years she had to care for my GPIL who contracted polio in the late 40s epidemic and couldn't earn at all for some time. When I think about her life my brain freezes.

Agree that anyone would think we all lived in caves in 1955 from this thread.

Auntie-I think some of that pressure is down to bloody tv advertising.Even when my daughter was small (16 years ago) there wasn't the dedicated children's channels with all day toy advertising.

My Nan (mums mum) had PP. She was in a mental hospital for the rest of her life after that .

It explains why my mum helps me so much, she never had that help from her mum.

yes, 30 years ago was 1981....

How did we cope with no mobile phones or tv remote controls?

Depended on your income level Portofino, like you I was used to a copper and a mangle, an outside toilet and fast food was fish and chips in newspaper once a week. No fitted carpets, central heating, or extra gadgets.
had a coal cellar and an open fire.
No TV until I was 6. I had measles and was very ill.
No car, no camera....but my friend's dad worked for the coal board as management and had a lot of these items. She lived like a princess, I was astounded when I went over to play.
That was the mid sixties in Yorkshire.

I know my Mum didn't have a washing machine when she had my brother 75. I don't know if she had it by the time I was born or not 81. Nappies by hand, I don't envy her

That's so awful, Meglet and Magneto. I understand that today it's recognised as a temporary condition and the focus is on medicating to correct the imbalance of hormones and keeping mother & baby together even if that is in a unit.

I wish I had asked my Grandma more about her life before she died. Just unimaginable things alongside the SAHM bit - my mum told me she had TB and they operated using a local anaesthetic

They didn't have a tv or car either, but then they still don't

We did have a lot of fun, a huge amount of freedom and a very active lifestyle with lovely home-cooked food, and I still love an open fire.
So it wasn't dreadful, just different.

My great grandmother contracted TB in the 40's and was told she could still smoke.

Mitzi- Ploease dont read too much into my anecodtal exmple!!!!!

My uncle is a nice an kind man, has had a good life and a family of his own, always worked etc, but I reallt don;t see that as a 'function' of his early years. I say that as i have frienmds who have had very anzious/demanding/clingy childeren who they worried hugely about but who have rounded out into very happy 'non clingy' childeren and there is no trace really of their difficulties early on.

My Granny is a lovely kind and wonderful lady but she has if I am honet enable/subconsciously encouraged my uncle to continue being dependent upon her, in quiteba marked and unusujal way so as Isaid lease dont generalise!!!

My grandma bought up her first child alone for years as grandad was in the navy (during the war) and didn't see him until he was 3.

Grandad made it back from the war, but then had to spend a year in the TB hospital.

My grandma then took in her sister's children (my mum's cousins) when her sister died from polio aged 30 (this was in the 1950s).

Grandma had a strict routine with her babies, four hourly feeds etc. and lots of crying in the garden in prams.

we all take things for granted these days.

as a child i was happy playing tag, british bull dogs, climbing trees and going on bike rides...this was on 10-15 years ago.

now i really don't want my children to go out the play, i doubt 30+ years ago this was a problem

Oh dear, wasn't weantign anyone to think that i feel the 60's 70's wer the 'dark ages'!!!!!

I was raised in the 70's and my Mums life was a lot easier materially and practically than my granny's.

Maybe as always its a
'class' thing.....

But my original post was more about the emotional and practicla aspects of SAHM (which most were then) rather than the actual practical or materialistic aspects (although ,many had it very hard in this way too I believe)

My mum says it was easier being a SAHM 40 yrs ago than it is today because you had more company - most women in her neighbourhood were at home with children so you were far less isolated. I definitely find lack of adult company the hardest aspect of being a SAHM

DownbytheRiverside, my GPs council house was much flashier than my prents house. Even in the late 70's, mu aunts first "married home had no washing machine and a shower in the corner of the kitchen. We weren't even particularly poverty stricken.

now i really don't want my children to go out the play, i doubt 30+ years ago this was a problem

But why do you not want them to go out and play? What do you think is different now to 30 years ago to stop children playing out?

I think that maybe the lower classes may have coped better as they often would have had a better support network (on the assumption that the poor often had bigger families).

For example, my nan had 6 sisters, one of them never married but stayed at home and looked after their parents, and the youngest sister who was disabled until they died.

The other 4 sisters and my nan all had hundreds of children (maybe a slight exaggeration there)! However my mum says one of her earliest memories (1950s) is of visiting one of her aunts, who had 6 children under the age of 8 and the youngest had been born with a cleft lip and palate. My nan and her sisters would take it in turns to spoonfeed the baby or help out with the other children and housework, as well as having their own houses and families.

That same level of family support just wouldn't be available to me (however obviously life would be easier in many other ways) because through the generations, we have got richer (in theory - not that I have any of it to spend ha!) and the family has got smaller.

really do not know why