....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 think some things were easier and some harder. The lack of toddler groups/activities must have been hard but then from what I have heard you weren't expected to entertain your kids for every second of the day in those days. The baby could go in their playpen while you got on with the housework and not an eyelid would be batted.
Slightly older kids would play out all day in the street too (younger than would be classed as sensible today). Excursions were saved for school holidays whereas now kids want to be doing some kind of activity every weekend. Kids were much better at entertaining themselves in the past. And they didn't expect expensive gadgets worth £100's+ for their birthdays/Christmas.

i know why in my case squeaky - 30 years ago there were 3 cars parked in our street most days (neighbours and photographs concur). Now it is lined on both sides with cars and has regular traffic through it.

It only takes one car to kill a child though and there were cars around 30+ years ago!

At least our kids have mobile phones now, it's far safer to let them out imo

When my DD was born, I lived in a tenement flat, most of the other residents were elderly, they told me that they had used slings like me to manage the stairs, but that they'd had it a lot easier than me, because there were so many other young families in the building and when you needed to get something done you could leave your babies with a neighbour. I suppose they meant emotional support as well as practical.

I watched a rerun of the sitcom 'butterflies' recently - the idea of a SAHM with grown up children and all mod cons having hired help seems so strange now, but I guess it was normal enough for the professional classes in that time.

there are fewer children killed by cars now and we don't know how much is to do with improvements in things like brakes and driver education, and how much is because there are no longer many kids playing out.

The car thing is much more dangerous now. We have lots of kids playing out but a 5 year old got ran down and broke his leg very severely a couple of years ago. I know a few people personally that have been killed by cars in the small area surrounding my place. It does mean its more dangerous to let your kids roam around nowadays

Also we have lots of chavved up racers going round and round here thats not something you had years back

no molly - anecdote is not evidence, it is easy to check the figures for child mortality

we are much more risk averse these days and there is judgement heaped on those who have not moved with the times (e.g. threads on here about car seats).

I don't know if the vicious blaming of bereaved parents, as discussed in the news lately is a new thing, but I don't remember it happening when I was a child.

as for chavved up boy racers, they've been around before cars existed. James Dean famously portrayed one and died as one.

I dint know about 30 years ago thats pretty much when i was born and i never spoke to my mum about what life was like when i was a baby.

My grandmother had her children in the 40s and 50s i spoke to her alot about it as she outlived my mother and was the only one around when i started having my own children. From what she has told me my life now is actually pretty similar in some ways (mostly through choice though!) in other ways it is different.

For example we dont have a car, my grandmother was a breastfeeding, co sleeping sling user so am i. We were both sahms, married at 20 with large families. We both cooked alot things like bread homemade etc is quite important to me and was to her. Neither of us drink alcohol and i have always been i would say fairly old fashioned so im told lol. I dont go to playgroups etc although i do take the children out to parks and events if the appeal.

The major diference which my grandmother was always pointing out was my access to informtion, if i want a recipe or if i want to know how to do somehting i have it instantly from the internet she didnt. Also i have options open to me which she probably didnt - i dont have to live liek this whereas of she decided she didnt i dont think she woukd have had a huge number of options open to her.

40 years ago my mum would have had 3 under 5s, but she did have all those mod cons like a proper washing machine, car, central heating, tv, and we spent our time going to toddler groups, library club, tufty club. Not so different from many SAHMs today. And there were lots of other mothers of young children around where we lived. And Dr Spock too.

But she still got bored/frustrated/fed up and she went back to work as soon as her youngest started school. So I guess she didn't find it that easy, just as lots of women today don't.

whoolyghost - it doesnt stop anyone from playing out though our street is rammed with kids out from age 3 + on their own cause we have a park where the mums leave the kids and then a road and across it is a pub with decking so everyone hangs out there and the kids play on their own opposite.

No one is risk averse on my estate everyone just does it anyone regardless of it being dangerous. I wasnt talking about in general just taking about my estate/area

Yes my grandma continued to smoke until she was diagnosed with angina in her 70s!

central heating has had a massive impact on family life

we did not have it when I was a child, and on winter evenings we were all confined to the kitchen, which had a stove

ah now my grandmother (81) regularly informs me she fed a family (2 children and a husband) on a pound a week. And that they survived! And asks how can I not managed that now?

And her mother (single mother as my great grandfather died when she was 8 months old) worked doing the accounts for a local firm. Dear Great granny was frowned upon for working by her neighbours despite having no other means to provide for a family.

I think when we look back through the eyes of our families, we face different struggles these days than then, although ultimately the main aim is the same. To provide the best we can for the people we love

There were loads of chavved up boy racers in the 80's...blimey they all used to race their Capris around the estates here!

ah, central heating!
We never had it upstairs in the 70s.
MIL used to share a bed with her sister as a child - which I imagine is something that doesn't happen now.
(I wish it did - fewer sheets to wash, for a start.)

so is wanting more....making us worse off

See I all think it depends on area we didnt get central heating until 2007. Hardly anyone in my area has central heating I am in a block of flats and w are the only ones that have it.

I would leave my kids with the neighbours and go and do stuff now and that isnt seen as weird. Also we have people that carry on smoking/drinking regardless of all kinds of ailments/age but its the culture.

Squeaky, the OP says in her post that she spent the day with her grandmother, who was parenting 50/60 years ago, which is what got her thinking. 6o years ago or even 40 years ago, people did not have washing machines as standard, or ready meals. People didn't nip to the docs for antibiotics if their child had earache and they didn't take AD in their millions either. I know as I have spent a lot of time with my own granny talking about her experiences.

You are right that her own mother probably had a different experience again.

We had a storage radiator downstairs and a paraffin stove!!!! on the landing. No wonder I get too hot when dh cranks up the heating. On Sunday bathnight we got dried and nightied up in front of the fire in the living room.

Agree worral Capris,ford escorts,volkswagon mk1 golfs were all souped up here.

And then the Sierra cosworth boys...and let's not forget the 125cc motorbikes whizzing about

My grandmother coped by only having one child. I gave her a copy of a book that was part of the Mass Observation archive and was much praised on MN and I can't remember the title! It was stories and writing by women in the thirties and forties and was incredibly moving. She loved it. Some of the stories were deeply unhappy and the one about the woman who was suffering dementia but was able to write in her lucid moments still haunts me.

I know families who coped with 'help' - they'd never have referred to these women as 'hired help' or 'nannies' but that's what they were. Older women who stayed with them for many years through all the children, who were sort of part of that family. I wonder about their stories. I knew a family where the mother of half the children had killed herself due to puerperal psychosis, they had a 'bonne' and when I had one child, the stepmother/mother of the other half kept mildly ridiculing me for making a meal of it, until I reminded her that she had a fucking nanny plus several older children to help her. Not nice. I think a lot of 'help' might be glossed over by our parents, collectively.

I was talking to my stepmum about this. She had my stepbro and sis in the early 60s, and had no washing machine, so did all the nappies by hand.

The whole concept of feeding and changing babies while out and about is just an alien concept to her - she said you just did that kind of thing at home. None of the convenient things we take for granted - babychange rooms, portable bottle warmers, disposable nappies etc. even existed.

Sorry I'm going to jump back a bit to a post about a 3y catching a bus, as it brought back memories of my mum. Her dad died in 1948 when she was 3 y and her Mum went back to work. So on a Monday morning my mum would be put on a bus in Edinburgh by herself to the village where her Gran lived. She would come back on Friday.