....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????

80s racers wasnt what I was talking about i was talking about 50s/60s there were no way near as many boy racers then.

Well, they kicked kids out of the house. And recognised the risks.

When my brother was born in 1987 my mum had a Silvercross pram with a screw-on seat on top. I loved it!

I read a book a while back which was a correspondant club of women. Like MN but much slower. They got close and even sent their children to to other members in the war. It was wonderful.

Yep I have to say I do love having central heating I suppose we are lucky that I was in modern times when I didnt have it though as I just walked around in a sleeping bag for the whole time at home in the winter.

Our old flat had no central heating and the storage heaters broke so we had a 20 quid heater from argos attached to the wall and we sold the place like that and they advertised in the estate agent heating as one of the plus points! In our new place we are the only ones with central heating, and hardly any houses round here have it.

What i find more scary is that you had no much power.

If you married a good man (like my mum did) you were ok even with no money and comforts and you had lots of support from extended family.

If you married a bad man (like my aunt) and you had a bad Mil, you were fucked up.

Has anyone read "my naughty little sister"? There are some tales in that book which make my hair stand on end. Dad is IN charge and lil sis sneaks out and is found asleep in local green grocers/lil sis goes with the 7 yos to the river and falls in / lsis goes to the fair with 7 yos again, gets lost and is brought home by the police!!!!

There were playgroups 30-40 years ago (I can't speak for longer than that, personally!)

From memory, I recall loads more staying out when we wanted, big gardens, staying at friends houses and vice versa. I don't remember my Mum ever losing it at all (well.. not til we were teenagers)

I also think that it never occured to my Mum to think about how she coped. She just did it. Her upbringing was fucking terrible - her Dad was abusive, he died early from alcohol-related illness. Her Mum died when my Mum was just 10yo, so she was raised by her older sister. 2 of her Brothers also died very young.

Common phrase round our house when I was little was 'You don't know yer born' in a very broad Yorkshire accent :)

I went to a creche in about 1970, mu dsis definitely went to the local nursery at the church hall. Traffic is a big thing though. Even today - my dd plays outside and I am more worried about cars than errant paedophiles - we live in a quiet cul de sac. I am careful driving in our street but I have seen others take the corner too fast.....

When I was small, no one HAD a car. There were very few. Even as a teenager I played tennis in the street....

My grandma always worked. In fact so did my nan, and all my older female relatives, so I don't think we have ever had a SAHM in our family!

I know even in the 80's when I was growing up we were out playing all the time-there was nothing on the telly then!
I did get left on a bus by my 7 yr old brother when I was 4.
He was supposed to be looking after me. But then my parents were slack as a bag of knackers, and just thinking about it gives me the fear!
There is way worse traffic now-more cars on the road, and drivers are not looking out for kids.. If we were playing cricket in the street, a car would come down maybe every half an hour. Now in a similar street it would be every 2 minutes.
It's really sad.

Yeah as portofino and northernwreck said its the amount of cars. We have kids playing footie across the road from one side to the other and then just dodging it when the cars come ad thats how that 5 year old broke his leg. We have bumps now so its slows them down a bit so I think that helps. However I still think cars is the biggest change

My gran had nine kids in a two bed house with a feckless useless husband and no money. I asked her once how she coped and she said "I stuck the baby in the pram and threw them all out on the street with a bottle for the baby and told them not to come home till it got dark!" When I asked my mum about it she said "She just let us get on with it." That's all she could do I suppose!

I definately went to playgroup erhem 40 years ago. I watched childrens tv whilst mum cooked tea. all 5 minutes of magic roundabout, if it wasn't interupted by a powercut. then as far as I can remember, i played. we played out with friends in the road til bedtime, even in the dark.

blackeyedsusan - that is pretty much how I remember it. When it was raining on a weekend, I remember family favourites, the smell of ironing and batman was on about 2pm.

We played out in the 90s. I don't ever see children playing out here. We do have a park at the end of the road though, perhaps they go there.

Oh come on, 30 years ago is when I was a toddler and there were definitey toddler groups, washing machines and double buggies (the wide ones, not the double decker type thing you see now). People were also a lot friendlier then and e.g. neighbours used to babysit us- no neighbours I've had would do that for my kids now! Also people used to hit their kids pretty often (not everyone, obvs, but a lot) and do things that you'd get in trouble for now e.g. putting kids in the boot for car journeys if the car was full, sending kids as young as 3 out to play alone, etc. I know if I parented like my mum did I'd have social services round within seconds. Standards were a lot lower. Also it's bollocks that people cooked from scratch then- it was all fish fingers and baked beans ffs. Oh and really horrible squash concentrate that hadn't seen a fruit in its life.

Listening to my granny it does sound like she had pnd with her 1st, who she describes as a difficult baby. The doctor was called out to her in the night as my grandad thought she was having a breakdown. His advice was up "pull yourself together or you'll end up in the nut house". So she did or rather learnt to hide her distress.

She was always such a clever woman, and still looks back at the opportunities she didn't even consider taking due to having a family.

It's sad really. When dd is outside I am checking frequnently - what for I am not sure. Just that she is THERE. When I was her age we used to go build camps somewhere.

When I'm working my mum takes my DS to the same playgroup she used to take me and my sisters to (between 30 and 40 years ago) so they were definitely around then!

Course most of my neighbours now are of the generation my mum was in. They got babysitting from each other, fuck loads of help from grandparents (my gran used to cook dinners and leave them in the fridge for my mum when she was a working single parent), and still had toddler groups and creches e.g. at leisure centres. Now they're the grandparents, they don't offer any of that to people who have kids. I think it's harder, but we (mums I know who have young kids now) do a far better job.

I think in someways my own mother had it easier 30+ years ago than I do now. She did manage really well bringing up two kids with a DH who worked away for weeks at a time and barely any family support.

But they were comfortably off, had an extensive network of cheap babysitters on their doorstep, went out with friends every weekend, could afford all mod-cons and overseas holidays, two cars. My mum went to coffee mornings, and I went to playgroup everymorning from 2, played out in the road from 4 etc.

We were expected to behave and if not we got a smack (when little) or when older threatened with father's belt etc (this was never carried out), and we had a very happy childhood.

It is my choice I know but we live were there is no family support, hard to find sitters, massive mortgage which takes all our money, feels like more of a grind.

northern "slack as a bag of knackers"
You were allowed to hit and bellow at your kids in the 'olden' days. And they could play on the street. And a policeman would from time to time bring them home, and parties were just teas at home instead of big numbers at soft play areas and nobody had any farkin money and...and...and.... I really do think we are lucky now to have so much support..because, over the last few enlightened decades women have won an education and rights, they know that DV is wrong and a million other things. We still have a very long way to go though.

northing much has changed really, but what has changed is that governments have realised you can't leave women and children to die once their wanker knobfest twat impregnators have pissed off to pastures new. Maybe the balance will swing towards men running off to shag other women and taking their children with them?

Nah. thought not.

My grandmother married at 19 due to being pregnant and then spent the next 22 years in a abusive marriage.She left him in the 1970's when separation/divorce wasn't frowned upon.

She has always said that if she could she would of left him in within 3 years of marriage but there was no help and she would of basically of been on the streets,if she had.Trapped for all those years.

I count myself lucky I live in this day and age.