....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????

Bigger families meant older children helped out with the younger ones. Extended families lived closeby.

I think it was easier in the 70s and 80s certainly from an isolation point of view. The streets were full of kids running in and out of houses. Easier and cheaper than endless activities.

My mother does wonder at disposable nappies though!

hey imogen I will ring you! what mothers didn t have back then - apart from rights and money - is the internet.Social networking and sites like MN mean that we can all be more in touch (ironically) than our grandmothers ever were - because they had to PUT UP WITH shit families and the dysfunctions were handed down. that's another way of looking at it.

Onwards sideways and digital I say.

My mum had 2 young kids all living in 1 room with only cold running water and a shared outside toilet.

She had no support from family at all - another story! I have 4 kids and when she saw that I had a sink in the nursery I still remember how dreamily she said, that that would have made her life much easier.

tbh I think, which is a good thing, people's expectations of life have been generally increasing throughout the last 100 years. We think we should be largely happy in good relationships with our partner and with kids that we at least sometimes enjoy being with. My gran who is now dead, but was born about a 100 years ago, did not expect any of this. She thought she was lucky if she had enough to eat, if her kids survived to adulthood and were relatively healthy and if her DH was a "good man" i.e. didn't hit her, sleep around or drink away all the money.

Well, I was born 51 years ago. My mother had a two hour labour and was kept in hospital for eight days - that was the norm. Father drove her home and grandmother stayed for three weeks to look after her. I was put in the garden in my pram for my sleep and fresh air for two hours every day. She "potty trained" me at 9 months because the terry nappies made my dresses look ugly. Actually she changed knickers and plastic pants a lot! When I was 18 months she went back to work and nanny came. I had all my vaccinations and remember a washing machine, nursery school, central heating, a telephone and my first trip on an aeroplane. I'm not that bloody old and the 1960's were actually quite modern. We even had tongue and groove and hexagonally patterned wallpaper!

What I had and my children don't was the freedom to run wild, school days where we taught to be ourselves and were generally well educated but qualifications weren't that important, and my parents and grandparents confidence that I was safe. My mother used to put me on a train (1hr 45 minute journey) give the steward in the restaurant car and the guard a tip to keep an eye on me and my grandmother used to meet me at the mainline station. Imagine doing that with an 8 year old now!

My grandmothers were both SAHM and had many children. My great grandmother had 10 living children and several stillbirths. Her husband died leaving her to raise 10 kids alone. She had to leave the kids unattended (perhaps with older siblings) while she scrubbed floors to make ends meet. My grandmother was a happy SAHM. They had a washing machine, hoover, car etc. after a few years and it was perfectly acceptable to be a SAHM back then. The housework was overwhelming but she managed well and never wished she had a career.

I think it's alway hard no matter what the time, but we are lucky wth labour saving devices and medical care and benefits etc.; but maybe not as lucky in that we are expected to earn financially rather than be SAHM. For those who want to SAH it can be upsetting to hear their efforts as 'sat on the bum all day' and such like.

gaaah lesley your gran sounds wonderful. Three big cheers for her.

But/And, we are still carrying the flag forward:

Its not over, not by a long stretch. My husband was able to fly abroad stealing all our money and there is no come-back. He abandoned a wife a three children.
It's my son's fourth birthday today. I have given him a lovely birthday tea with his little friends. Hisn father driove away in his raybans when my sojn was 6 months old, pays nothing, does nothing.

He has done nothing illegal. How jurassic is that? One day this will change I hope too: he will have committed a criminal offence.

Smoking in cars? ffs,

My gran had 5 children under the age of 4
The younger twins were in a double pram, my grandad attached a very sturdy piece of wood over the pram, imagine a + shape, with younger twins at top and bottom, and older twins at the side. My uncle the oldest lad, sat in the base. How the hell she pushed that up the hill from the shops to her house, and with shopping attached too, but she did.
She also went back to work when the youngest ones were 2 months old, my grandad was a farm worker, and a condition of the tied cottage was that my gran worked in the fields as well as my grandad.
Actually, I am convinced my gran had ADHD, she would get up at 5, work a full day while looking after her children, come home and scrub her house feed the kids and cook the next day's dinner, then sew until 1 or 2 in the morning. Truly. Even as a 80 year old she never, ever stopped.

wow! such great stories. x

This thread is depressing me as I realise that some people (looking at you OP) think of when I was born (1975) as "the olden days".

• Mum had twin tubs.
• We had a car and carpets, a colour TV and a telephone
• There were definitely playgroups/toddler groups (usually in church or village halls) and vaccinations and antibiotics

-People still talked to one another in the street/ in the queue at the shops so that was another (really critical) form of contact. I genuinely think that the saddest thing about British society is how we have lost the art of "casual friendliness".

• I actually had disposables because they were just coming in and my dad owned a chemist shop so he got loads of samples which my mum filched for me .

I was born in the early 1960's. My parents were far from wealthy, but by the time my DSis was born ( two years after me), my mum had a washing machine and a a vacuum cleaner. We definitely had vaccinations - I clearly remember taking DSis to have hers done. We didn't have a car, but then, neither did most of our family or friends. There were playgroups etc - I went to one at the local church hall once a week whilst mum went shopping. She had to load the tray under the pram with all the shopping and walked about 2 miles into town, downhill on the way there but uphill on the way back. We didn't have a double pushchair, but there was a pramseat for me to sit on, on top of DSis's pram. Later, she had a heavy old pushchair. I think children and babies spent far longer in a pram back then - there are loads of pictures of me, and later on DSis, sitting up in the pram. I would put out ages at around 12 - 14 months. Most of the mums of my friends did not go out to work, so there always seemd to be someone around to help out in an emergency. think, as well, that we were less materialistic back then. Even when DH and I married ( early 80's), most people accepted that they would begin married life with at least a few items of secondhand furniture and equipment. The only new things we had were items we were given as wedding presents. Everything else was other people's cast-offs. Most of the young people I know setting up home now, want ( and usually get) everything new and couldn't understand how anyone could survive without a microwave, dishwasher, tumble dryer, enormous flat screen tv, home cinema system etc etc.

So, whilst we may have more things these days, I do think we have a lot more pressures as well and it is not so easy to access the support systems that many of our parents and grandparents did, purely because, so often we are forced to move away from family and it is difficult to make good friends when you have to work long hours in order to make ends meet and therefore miss out on a lot of the friend making opportunities.

I think maybe if you are quite poor, things havnt changed all that much.
When I had ds (5 yrs ago) we lived in a back-to-back terraced house, had no car-I had a massive pram that I put all the shopping in, I had a leccy meter that would run out, and then I would just go and get into bed because our house was soooo cold.
Ds has always been good at entertaining himself, and I had a playpen!(sorry but I am no martyr)
Then we moved to an estate, where there were scores of kids of all ages out on the street all the time.
It was quite nice seeing them doing pretty much the things we used to do as kids, although I did have to intervene once when I saw a couple of 7 yr old girls in charge of a 3 yr old, attempting to cross the really busy road at the top of the street.
That terrified me actually, and some of the kids were way too little to be out in the care of the older ones, but on the whole they were not "feral"
I went to a playgroup where I got to know lots of people, so had casual friends to hang out with, which stopped me from going mad!

Now we live in a posh area, everyone has a car, and my neighbour keeps saying to me "oh but you have to have a car soon! They need taking to clubs and after school activities..!"
Last time I looked ds had legs..

I suppose what I mean is that if you are poor, or just don't care about "activities" and driving everywhere etc things aren't that different.

"dishwasher, tumble dryer, enormous flat screen tv, home cinema system etc etc. "
Oh, and we don't have any of these!

"you weren't expected to entertain your kids for every second of the day in those days"

exactly. older children were watching younger ones and doing their share of the work, there was no "can I leave my 12-year old home alone for 2 minutes" or packing 15-year olds school bags, like we can read here. I don't think mothers in 50s had much time to do arts and crafts either - children did chores instead.

Well I was a kid 40 years ago, if anything I think a SAHM lot was easier as I think a single wage went further, and mostbof the household labourvsaving devices existed.

Also I don't recall the same anxiety about us kids always having to "do" something, there was no anxiety over letting us run wild free all over town and field, far less "elf and safety/peedo" rules so other parents would always step in to help, kids were expected to be more robust (aka fewer "rights") so there was just less hassle around organising things for loads of kids ad hoc.

I think there were more extended families. I also think that there wasn't as much pressure on women to provide top quality "learning experiences" as there is now - you made the dinner while little Johnnie sat on the floor and swallowed the bleach/poked his eye out with a spoon handle. Nowadays we are told to constantly play/educate/entertain our children on top of the daily grind. I also think (wild speculation here) that people were far more accepting of mess, dirt and houses that looked lived in. Now we are pressured to have a family that resembles the Von Trapps in a house that could be off the cover of Vogue Living. Christmas involved sending a few cards, sticking up a couple of streamers, buying a couple of presents in the week before Xmas and roasting a turkey rather than a bit of pork. Now people apparently have outlook spreadsheets to organise their Christmasses. This is replicated through almost all elements of our lives.

Sometimes I think we are our own worst enemies.

I was born in August 1966, went to school full time the September I turned 4. Small village school.
We had carpets, & vacum cleaner, an old black and white TV, twin tub washing machine, and a car, shopping on a friday night in our nearest town and Fish and Chips for tea that night.
there are 4 houses in a row and all had 100ft front gardens all the kids used to meet up out the front and play there mostly.
Mum never learnt to drive, still doesnt, so we were used to getting on a bus to go places and of course to Secondary school at 11.
No disposables for me and mum went back to work partime, cleaning other peoples house and in a small office, when Dsis started school full time.
We were left to our own devices during the school holidays, and used to play in woods down the road most of the day. Going home to be fed and watered.
No mobiles in those days.

I also remember asking my gran about life when my dad was a kid, I think it sounded a lot more like my childhood than my own kids', I think more has changed in the last 30 years.

She had no car and fewer household labour saving devices but she used a help on washdays. They lived close to most facilities so everyone walked, and the local shops delivered or the kids were sent off to pick things up.

I was born in the late 60's and we had a washing machine and a car and lived in quite a nice house. We used to play in the street with the neighbours children.

i think in my grandmothers day, babies cried as the mum had so much to do and she lived with her aunts so she did have some support. My grandfather was in India as the war was on. I think my mum used to help with the washing and hated it.

My mum was born in the 50s and was a SAHM (although I wasnt born until the 80s).

Our family have lived just outside this village for at least 8 generations and apart from the obvious stuff like electricity, mains water and so on from what she used to tell me about the (lack of) facilities in the 50s and early 60s, things hadn't changed a lot in all those generations! But there was a post office, shop, regular bus services to St Just and Penzance, none of which are here now.

I'm sure she was teasing me at times about the poverty and primitive facilities but the help and support she received from other families was wonderful. Being a SAHM for my gran and mum I'm sure was not as difficult as some on here might make out.

But, whilst I was growing up the area changed a lot. Although we still have quite a few lot the 'old' families still here, like the rest of Cornwall we have had a massive influx of English (although not as bad as someof the more fashionable places) and there doesn't seem to be much of a community now.

marriedinwhite - It sounds like you come from a well off family. A nanny in the 1960's was unusual except amongst well off.

northernwreck- I actually think some things have got better for the very poor. In the 60's and part of 70's when i was young my whole family lived in 1 room with shared outside toilet. In some cities thousands and thousands of families lived like this in 1 and 2 rooms. That is why they built all those 1960's/70's estates/tower blocks to house people from the slum like conditions they were living in.

My mum said for ages they didn't have any furniture except 2 cots and a bed, and she wouldn't let outsiders into the house in case SS took us away. And i remember going into friends houses when I was young where they had very little furniture.

There is lots of research around from the 60's done by people pushing for reform showing how terrible many of the living conditions were for poorer people. And we are not talking about just the unfortunate few, but a quite large minority of people.

There weren't the benefits or a NMW helping the poorest.

Mumsnet always seem a pretty well off lot and so I think threads like this don't tend to be representative.

It is true as kids we all played outside from a young age. But as most families round about had at least 2 kids in a maximum in total of 2 rooms, it would have been chaos if kids weren't allowed out to play.

Oh God Lesley, of course things have got sooo much better-I am not for a minute saying I had it rough at all!

Actually, what I was getting at(badly maybe) was that if you are poor(and "poor" is relative) your sort of have to make your own entertainment, and that there isn't so much this culture of entertaining them with educational activities when you are a working single parent with no cash.
Hence, I cant drive ds to football club in my SUV, so we go out to the field across the road and kick a ball about.

And now I am not so poor, I still want ds to get that making do, being out in all weathers, noticing the seasons change thing, which is why my neighbour annoys me when she raises her eyebrows at us tramping off to school across the fields!

Some really interesting stories on this thread.

I have always been close to my gran who brought up her family of 4 in the early 50s and 60s, she has said that because everyone was in the same boat (neighbours,friends) you didn't think anything about the lack of mod-cons or not having much money. It's only now that she has all these modern appliances she wonders how they ever did without them!
She managed to keep things together while suffering DV from my alcoholic grandpa (who eventually reformed) and struggled to make ends meet.
Yet she thinks she had it lucky compared to my gt-gt GM (her FIL mum) who had a violent alcoholic husband who would run off for weeks on end leaving her with a baby and no money to buy food. On many occasions she only had dried peas in the house and no fire to cook them on. My gt-GF (her son) had no teeth until he was 4, probably due to malnutrition. Sometimes she had to work down the coal mines pulling barrows of coal to earn money just to buy food and keep a roof over their heads. This was in the 1910s so not quite so recently.

I think every generation (usually) had it easier than the previous one. No doubt our DC/GC will be wondering how on earth we coped in 50/60 years time.

I agree with norternwreck if you are at the lower ed of the scale things havent really changed. Got a lot of people here with families of 3/4 in a one bed or often more in a two bed flat so people play out cause your all on top of each other.

Noway near as bad as the 'olden days' but in poorer areas 80% of what you see written on mumsnet doesnt apply because to me people stress about really little irrelevant things and I do think that is more of an affluent area thing