To not understand how housewives of yesteryear could afford to stay home but being a SAHM is a lifestyle choice now?

[PeachyParisian]

Am I missing something really obvious? Or is it just a case of the cost of living rising and our standards of living increasing too? How could everyone manage to get by on just one wage?
I understand that work wasn't really an option for most women but traditionally families got by on one wage didn't they? When did that stop being possible for so many?

And linked to that, greater levels of expectation from the late 60s on, thanks to the number of women who'd been educated to degree level, thanks to the post-war educational reforms. Some of them did spend some time as a SAHM - and then started working; others just worked steadily through the years of small children. They lobbied for equal pay, for maternity pay, for the recognition that yes they could do a 'man's job'. They didn't want - and they had the not do so - to spend their lives scraping ice off the windows and mending clothes.

Yes, this is socio-economically linked but not entirely so (see my point about greater educational mobility post-1945).

Sadly or perhaps inevitably most changes come about because of money issues. We needed women to work from about 1914 as the empire was failing, communism on the rise and people were not happy to be one of the 1 million servants the UK and votes for women.

Then WWI we needed women working as men were off in a pointless war.
Ditto WWII.
Then 1970s we needed more women in work after the awful 60s and post war austerity so suddenly we had the 1970 Equal Pay Act. It might all seem brought about through social change and better moral values but often grubby money is at the heart of it. We need many more people in work to support paying old age pensions so we raise retirement age for stat pension to 67 or 70 for some not because we want people to be able to work as long as they choose, but because of money.

I feel lucky I have no career I have worked part time since I had my first child in my 20s now in my 40s with one teenager an a grandchild I am a sahm. I love I dread the day I have to go back to work. I never wanted a career always wanted to be a house wife. Love keeping house happy to live off my husband. Still run his bath put his tea on the table and look out for him coming home. He is fantastic.love the fact that at weekends and evenings there are no chores to do can just relax an enjoy being together much less stressful than working 4 days a week with three kids whoch is what I had to do for a few years.

Lots of people do not have "a fullfilling career"!
Some people enjoy being a SAHM!
No people shouldn't be prevented from from having a career because of their sex, marital status or whether they have children.

But being a WOHM is not the only valid choice - it is not utopia.

If you are fortunate today you have more choices - if you can afford it.

Well said mummytime

Yes, the idea that anyone is lucky to have no fulfilling career, live off men for money and spend their life minding the house and cleaning is almost a joke.

This is so typical of MN. The idea that everyone working has some sort of 'fulfilling career' or even career is a joke to me. Most people i know have jobs. Jobs they hate. I know 2 teachers and a nurse and every other woman i know does crappy admin/care jobs at about £8 per hour. I can't see why doing that is any more desirable than being a SAHM.

People trying to 'do better' for themselves and living beyond their means. I could survive on one wage if I moved from 4 bed to a 2 bed house and rehomed all my pets and horses. It is a decision I will have to make as I have just found out I am pregnant - do I bring my children up in a lovely home in the country, or do I downscale so I can be a SAHM?

I've no desire to rush out and forge out a career and get to the top of any ladder. I want to be at home for the DC. There's more to life than having luxuries! We're content with one of us at home full time, the other out working full time. It's straightforward.

My point was that far more women do have the choice of an interesting and worthwhile job than they used to. I realise not everyone does. But many women who would, in the 1960s/1970s, have had their career ambitions blocked have more opportunities today.

I think one of the things that made the seventies women's movement such an exciting place to be, was the feeling that we were able, as a group, to challenge the status quo. It is hard now to explain just how much women were considered inferior, infantilised, talked down to or just plain ignored in some circles. I still remember the colleague of my OH who responded to my explanation that I couldn't be part of the company wife support group (FFS) because I worked full-time with, "well I suppose it gets you out of the house". I really can't imagine anyone saying that now. I also remember that so many of the women who were loyal "company wives" ended up being left for younger women and then had few skills or training with which to join the workforce. I knew people who were really unhappy because everything had been focussed on their husband and his career and in their forties and fifties they felt they had nothing left.
For me, rightly or wrongly, work was part of how I defined myself as a women. I totally understand why some people want to be at home with their young children, but those years are so short in the whole scheme of things.

I've always hated every job i've had and i've been shit at them too, the idea that i be defined by any job i've done is really depressing. I'd rather be defined by my personality.

As i said, i doubt i will work again, but working in a call centre is no big loss to me.

I'm not sure where the myth that mothers didn't use to work has come from. My mother worked (though she took a career break when we were little) my grandmothers worked, not sure about my great grandmothers, though 8 kids and a family business kept them busy, I'm sure. Being a SAHM has always been a bit of a middle class status symbol, I suspect, and the reality is that lots of women have always worked, whether to keep the family, or to buy the extras, or because being the doctor's/ butchers/ builder's/ farmer's wife has always meant running the business as well.

Yes, women have always worked and many women do like their work. However it is not true it defines men or women. Most of us with balanced lives with work, children and hobbies in them are a mixture of our different parts.

My mother, grandmother, great grandmother all worked. My father's mother stopped work when they married in about 1916 and she is one of the few in the family I can think of who has not worked for about 200 years although I would be surprised if she did not help out in her husband's small business (I was too young to know one way or another). My other grandmother was widowed with a one year old baby so always worked. her mother, my mother, kept my father through her teaching earnings for about 13 years whilst he did a physics degree, then a medical degree, then did exams until he was over 30 to become an NHS consultant. She always said she was the first woman in her City to demand from the local tax office the married man's tax allowance!

she is one of the few in the family I can think of who has not worked for about 200 years

200 years? Lazy bugger.

Yes, women have always worked and many women do like their work.

Surely the point is about having the option to SAHP?

The thread title is 'To not understand how housewives of yesteryear could AFFORD to....'

Clearly 'the housewives of yesteryear' could afford to be housewives because they were housewives.

I don't believe that OP has claimed that all women/mothers were housewives/SAHPs, has she?

Or has she?

Many families in the past could not afford to live on one wage actually.

The working classes lived in pretty straightened circumstances and most would do without the basics of food and fuel from time to time.

Women took whatever work they could to increase the family wage in addition to their domestic duties.

And they were very grateful when it became possible to work in properly paying employment.

Many families in the past could not afford to live on one wage actually.

Of course not, but many could.

What many people do is compare parents and grandparents who had similar qualification levels and jobs to themselves, with their own circumstances and note that, on a like for like comparison, SAHPing is less viable.

The fact that some socio-economic classes have always had to hustle for pin money doesn't negate the fact that for some strata of society, things have changed.

Many working class women worked fittec jobs in around school etc most of my friends mums worked the friends I remember off the top on my head their mums worked in shops offives 1 was a nurse mums worked ime

My mum was still classed as a housewife even though she always had a job granted it wasn't fulltime

Many people still endure 'straitened circumstances' now, of course. I'm not sure that that is the key point.

cole until very recently the working classes were the majority of the population.

The majority of families lived in straightened circumstances.

The majority of working class women worked in any capacity they could out of need.

A minority of middle class families could afford to live comfortably on one wage. But people today look back as if the reverse were true and that the majority were living comfortably on one wage and feel aggrieved that it's not possible today.

ColeHawlings nope, not at all! My own GGM and GM have always worked, I'm under not illusion that every woman until recently has been a SAHM.

Just it seems that being a SAHM is more 'traditional' which implies it was the natural way in the past (although we know differently). I wanted to know why how the seeming majority of women (although more likely just the middle class) could afford to stay home and didn't have to work like many do today just to cover basic household outgoings.

My gran and mum didn't work, I don't think my nan did either

My mum got a job when I was 8

None of them were middle class...indeed my gran wouldn't have been considered working class either I don't think

Although my mum absolutely was middle class when she died

Well it is highly unusual for working class women not to work. At all.

And live comfortably on one working class man's wage?

What did the men do?