I think most of us appreciate that times were very different for many women in the past Floisme ..... I saw the same thing in my family for example, Mum not working in paid employment until I was 10 (and then it was 10hrs a week term time as dinner lady) and finally going FT when I was 14 - due to the cost of childcare. Many other women in my family and amongst friends followed a similar pattern though I don't actually recall any who never again worked in a paid job after getting married or having kids.
Personally, I wouldn't have a pop at such women for 'not working' per se and happen to think that raising your kids is a valuable occupation. I really wish more women (and men, for that matter, it doesn't really matter who does most of the child raising) still had the choice now - if they wanted - to do the same because one full time salary would be enough to live on, even frugally. What does rile me though - and I suspect others feel the same which is why 'sneery' remarks might have crept in - is that many 'Margarets' persist in insisting that their relatively comfortable and secure financial positions in retirement are all down to their relentless 'hard work' when they were younger. I'd never dispute that raising children isn't hard work, but unless you have loads of children and/or several children with large gaps so the childrearing years are extended longer than usual, I think it's fair to say that many 'Margarets' would have had a reasonably 'easy' life once their children had left home - and of course, the sheer drudgery of doing all the time consuming practical stuff for your children does tend to tail off considerably before then. In other words, women who may not have worked (in paid employment - I keep saying that so as not to offend anyone raising children) since their 20s could, quite feasibly, have had close to 15 years (or more) without any childrearing ..... and whatever they chose to do with their time then, whether it was housework, hobbies, socialising or voluntary work, sorry, but that's not hard work! Not when you have a choice about it! (Disclaimer: voluntary work is often very valuable - I know that - and could well take a lot of effort but at the end of the day it's not compulsory in the same way that earning money is if you need to pay the bills).
Let's face it - anyone who enjoyed the relative luxury of not needing two salaries, and who's still relatively 'well off' in their retirement was/is very lucky (from a financial perspective ... because again, I do appreciate that some women would have liked to continue working). And I just think it rather disingenuous to attribute all that to 'hard work' if you didn't - for whatever reason - have paid employment for decades, and likely no childcare for a good time either. It's quite insulting to younger women who somehow have to run a home, look after their kids and bring money in as well to insist you 'worked hard' for what you have - when most of those younger women indisputably work harder and often have much less to show for it now (in assets, savings, time), let alone when they eventually retire. That's all .... why do women in Margaret's position find it so difficult to accept they were lucky and leave it at that ?