to wish I was a 1950s middle-upper class housewife?

[cruikshank]

I reckon it would be great. No need to work. The husband does all that, in the city, and maybe bothers you once a year for marital ghastliness. And you have STAFF. Someone to cook, someone to clean, someone to do the gardening. You'd see the kids all washed and ready for bed for a couple of minutes in the evening. Your days could be free for doing embroidery and playing the piano and shit like that. As for nights, well, you'd have to eat dinner with the husband but then he'd go off and smoke his pipe somewhere while you read a book. And you wouldn't have to wash up! Sounds a lot better than trying to fit 48 hrs worth of activity, working, ferrying around, cleaning, cooking, washing etc into 24 and then congratulating yourself that you've 'got it all'. Bah.

If you needed any "white goods", your husband would have to authorise the purchase. Your husband would spend a few hours at his club/s after work, play golf at weekends.

Bulbasaur! History
women did have the vote in the 1950s

Whoops.

So they did.

I would love it! I know there are some drawbacks to the 1950s but I do think equality has made life much harder in some respects in the present

The 50s good wife's guide is a bit far fetched.

Reminds me a bit of an article I read in Cosmo about a million years ago that advised a woman how not to feel awkward and still be appealing in the morning after a one night stand. That was a load of bollocks as well.

People write books and articles in magazines all the time, doesn't mean the majority of people live that way or take the advise.

I don't know why people are saying that widespread and accepted use of substances such as gin and Valium is a bad thing. I should imagine that my piano playing and embroidery would take on an interesting new dimension.

Oh, and I remember my sister telling me about a conversation she had with our mother in which she, mother, told my sister how much pleasanter life is if one's husband is good in bed.

I was born in 1948 the youngest of seven children.

Contraception would have been readily available for married women in the 1950s, possibly less for unmarried although I don't know. The first family planning clinics in the UK opened in the 1920s.

Any one else read "Revolutionary Road"? I did, recently (shudder). Paints a horrible picture of 1950s stifling housewife-dom (and lack of contraception).

Boooooooorinnng

Yes Revolutionary Road paints a horrible picture of life for the 1950s housewife. As does The Outcast by Sadie Jones.

I think we'd all be board stiff and very frustrated, mainly by the middleclass obsessions with "appearances".

It would sooooo boring. You'd have to shag the gardner.

Could I shag the maid, instead?

I would hate it.

I love work too much.

Extremely unreasonable and naive.

It'd be shit.

I like modern medicine and technology and modern ideas of equal rights.

Oh me too ! I love the film brief encounter, but not for the romance - I want to go shopping with a basket on my arm. Pick up my library books from Boots, take myself off for a little jolly into town, have a daily wot does the housework. Although I suppose I could try to find time for a torrid affair a couple of afternoons a week. As long as it didn't upset the daily or lead to my books being overdue .

I can't think of anything worse.

I'd worry about my girdle pinching while I was trying to beat the rugs in the back garden.

Is that code?

cyclechic of course anything to help the boredom

Here's the Snopes page on the good wife thing above www.snopes.com/history/document/goodwife.asp

They didn't have valium in the 1950s- it became available in the 1960s. They had barbiturates instead which were prescribed as sleeping tablets and were much more addictive than valium (!) I'm an old age psychiatrist and have patients who were on these things in the 1950s/60s. Many women were in abusive marriages which they couldn't leave because of social convention and because they didn't have their own money/job- still affecting them now in their old age whether they eventually managed to leave, husband has since died or they are still together "because we're too old to get divorced." Others enjoyed life in the 50s- my granny didn't have much spare money and had to give up the nursing career she had worked so hard for when she got married but loved being a housewife (and is convinced that everyone else did to and there was no domestic abuse back then despite me telling her I listen to people's life stories all day at work and there certainly was!)

I've always been jealous of Laura in Brief Encounter, she didn't know where she was well-off compared to the stresses of today's life !

I think it was a bit of a jolly if you were happily married, could easily afford a house on one salary, liked tennis and bridge. Imagine if the most stressful decision of the day was what to cook for dinner...........

My DM was married in the 50's, but was not upper middle-class.
My DGodM used to tease her about the Cordon Bleu cookery classes she did at night school so that she could entertain my father's bosses appropriately!

People who want to learn more about sexual attitudes in the late 50s/early 60s will probably enjoy Masters of Sex. It's a dramatisation of the story of Masters and Johnson who did some groundbreaking research into sexuality such as the female orgasm. The show takes a LOT of liberties with the life story of M&J, but there's some really interesting stuff about how the studies were done, and how attitudes changed over time. Plus it's just one of those shows that's gorgeous to watch, and there's a 50s housewife going slowly insane!

Plus Lizzy Caplan is in it. I'm more than a little gay for her.