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?

I agree, housing costs have increased hugely.

The problem with talking about "things we think we need" is that there IS a greater perception of need now. It's not just individuals thinking they need frivolous things - our idea of what is frivolous as a society has changed.

If you fed your children a set amount only at mealtimes and left them hungry in between, dressed them in patched up hand me downs, expected them to sleep three or four to a bed, in a freezing damp room with ice on the windows, reuse their bath water, only own one or two toys each and not have access to a telephone or the internet, most people today would consider that neglect. Likewise an eight year old couldn't be a "latch key kid" today, they would go to an after school club which you pay for. There are lots of normal life things you can't do without either a telephone or internet access, certainly if you lacked both you'd be incredibly restricted. Many schools use internet in their homework expectations.

Nowadays a fridge would of course be considered an essential and cooking on an open fire around children would be thought of as reckless. Perhaps an open fire is going back a bit too far, but certainly it happened and was probably cheaper to run than a cooker.

Housing mostly to blame, in 3 years our house gone up 65k in value, I have had a pay rise of 1300 and couldn't afford to buy our house at the current value. (not a stealth boast btw, we can't afford to move so the 65K isn't a benefit to us).

We live in a consumer world, in yesteryear people didn't have multiple winter coats/shoes etc/foreign holidays every year etc. Food shopping was a weekly shop to somewhere like Kwiksaves. Haircuts were at home, clothes were handed down, mended not bought along with groceries.

My Mum went to work when I (the youngest) started school, there was never childcare after school, we walked home alone from the age of 5/6 and let ourselves in using a key hidden under a flower pot.

Back when my Nan would have had young children it was unheard of for people to have a washing machine or a freezer.

Those are things people would say they couldn't live without now.
Plus microwaves,dishwashers,tumbledryers.

Were far more consumer driven now than we were back then.Not everyone had a tv,so not everyone would see adverts advertising things.Back then you didn't have all the credit cards and debit cards,no payday loans or provident.

You had HP back then but for most people that was treated as a dirty word.Back then most people believed that you didn't get something you wanted unless you'd saved up for it and could pay for it in full.

Hardly anyone had debts back then,being in debt was also seen as a very bad thing.

They didn't have all the catalogue shopping we have now.

Children's birthday party's were simple affairs.Few friends at home,sandwiches,weak squash,jelly and ice cream and a cake your mum had made and some party games if you were lucky.

Children's birthday party's are big money spinners now.Even lower key parties set lots of parents back £70-£100,Big party's at soft play ect can run into the hundreds.

There were far fewer people that went on holiday abroad back then.That was seen as a real luxury.

People lived within they're means back then.That's not something many of us are used to doing now.

I studied this in sociology (quite a while ago now tho)
It's basically down to our expectations of life have changed.
So for example, 50 years ago people didn't go on foreign holidays, didn't have 2 cars on their drives, didn't go out for meals or go to theme parks. Life was much simpler.
Wives cooked from scratch, they rarely drank alcohol, holidays were a few days in Blackpool, clothes were home made / hand me downs and people fixed things.
And it was just expected in those days that mum would stay at home so they prepared for that and they lived to their means.

Many more women could afford to be a SAHM if they were happy to live in a smaller house, not have a car, not go on holidays or buy clothes for two years.
But we want more from our lives now.

I agree with posters saying this is largely a myth. It's also worth noting that after WW2 the government started really pushing the idea that a Good Mother stays at home with the children, because they needed all the women who had been working to give up their jobs to the retuning men. Before that, the government had set up cheap and free nursery care so that women could cover all of the empty positions and even began drafting women who didn't have young children into work. There were constant exhortations for women to do their duty by working. When the war ended, the nurseries were closed immediately, to force women back out of work again! So the idea that working mothers are not as good as SAHMs is also very recent.

Kitten I studied this in sociology as well.It was one of the things I enjoyed the most.

Historically many women's wages may have been less that childcare costs? Plus going back a couple of generations you often couldn't work after marriage, and certainly not once pregnant- places like shops actually wouldn't allow you to continue once you were "showing"

Have a look round your front room and just total up the things that they wouldn't have had.You might be really surprised by how much it comes to.

Equate that to how much you earn and see what percentage of your earnings on items we see as being needed now have been spent.It can be quiet can eye opener.

I think cost of housing.

Also I think once some families have two incomes, this starts to push the cost of housing etc up because those families have more money. And high earning women tend to be married to high earning men (not universally but often).

But we wouldn't want to ban both partners in any given marriage/ relationship from working!

Def agree that the whole "mothers stay at home and don't have paid employment" is a relatively recent invention. I'm also not feeling any particular nostalgia (as some PP seem to be doing) for "the good old days" when people "lived within their means" and "knew how to be frugal" (and MEN COULD PROVIDE WHILE WOMEN KNEW THEIR PLACE) - there's a hint of the "working mothers could stay at home if they prioritized it above their lives of feckless indulgent luxury, with their unpatched clothes, occasional wine, and an actual fridge, the hussies".

My mother and both my grandmothers worked outside the home.

MuttersDarkly has it.

Markets will generally charge what people can afford to pay. Hence if more households have more disposable income (because both parents are working) things will gradually become more expensive.

The cost of living has adjusted to accommodate the fact that more households have two incomes; hence it is more of a struggle than it used to be to live on a single income.

To put it another way, you could say that, by campaigning (fairly successfully) for women's right to a satisfying career, 70s feminism has pushed up the cost of living in a way that's had significant unintended negative consequences for modern SAHMs.

Leedy my mother and grandmother worked actually and my grandmother was a single parent as my poor grandfather had died of TB!

My father had what would have been considered to be a good wage and my mother went back to work 20 hours when I went to school and my sister was 3. (Late 60's/early 70's). We lived in a small two bed roomed semi with my Granny. We had 1 small car, a two week caravan holiday on the coast and lots of hand me down or home made clothes. Very few items were bought new. We rarely ate out or had takeaways mum cooked all meals from scratch. We got a gift from Santa every year (not a sackful). Day trips were to the park, swimming pool and library.

We have a similar standard of living today although we do have a bigger house and my dc's have a bedroom each. We rarely have a holiday and if we do it is a friends caravan an hours drive away. We do have more technology. Most couples we are friendly with both work but they do this to support their lifestyles. I have few friends without two cars. Most have a holiday abroad every year and several weekends away. Many have gym and golf club memberships, nights and meals out and expensive pastimes for their children. They could afford to have a parent at home but choose not to. This, of course, is their prerogative and I'm not criticising their choice.

I appreciate that it is probably different living in the south with Huge property and rental prices.

Housing and living costs.

Different expectations.

Although it's no doubt true that most women always worked in some form or other, it was a very different type of work from men. Men were expected to get a steady job and be the breadwinner, and would often be quite 'hands off' with domestic and childcare related stuff. Women would often be expected to have a 'lesser' job, which they would then relinquish when children came along. Also, regulated childcare is a recent phenomenon. When women worked in the past, it often meant leaving the children with granny or a neighbour or an older sibling. Nowadays we have registered childminders, nurseries etc.

Going back a few generations many good careers were completely male dominated. Very different now, with more women than men graduating into certain professions. Women have far greater equality in the workplace than ever before, and men are far more likely to want to be hands on with the children, cooking and home- related things.
So it's two sided really: living costs mean that fewer couples can live comfortably on one wage, and the changes in expectations mean that fewer couples would want to anyway.

My GGP's generation - women stayed at home and bore children. My GM was one of 15 (live) children, there were a few mcs and stillbirths along the way too. They all left school around 12/13/14 to go into either the pits or service, and sending money 'home' was pretty much the norm. However, I don't think this is the type of SAHM-ing the OP is referring to - it wasn't a lifestyle choice, it was fucking brutal. My GGP died fairly young too and my eldest Great Uncle's wife took on something like 8 of his younger siblings .

My GM controlled her fertility, had two kids and went out to work, as did my mother and most of my mother's peers. I can't think of any of my pals' mums who SAH.

Yes, housing costs are a significant factor, as was the govt push to send women back home after the war. The sudden disappearance of service jobs - between the wars this dropped off, then almost disappeared after WWII - also meant one of the biggest employment opportunities for uneducated women disappeared. Ditto farming, actually.

Oh and we now educate our children to age 18 at least (and according to MN, have real problems accepting dig money off of them until they're 45 ) - I don't think you can look at the SAHM trends without looking at how differently we treat childhood. Can't see many people on here wanting to send their DD's off to clean boots and fires for a living at the age of 13!

"Women would often be expected to have a 'lesser' job, which they would then relinquish when children came along."

I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case for a lot of families until the later 20th century, particularly outside the middle classes - you're still saying that they became stay at home mothers "when children came along", while actually a lot of women worked from home (laundry, sewing, etc.), helped run family businesses (my grandparents had a shop), did farm work, etc.

[plans to send 5 year old up chimneys in the spirit of "the good old days"]

Poor then was far worse too IYSWIM. Not having room for the baby meant it slept in the sock draw (my great uncle) and not having enough money for heating meant you went nicking coal to heat the house (my great nana).
And not being able to go to school because you have no shoes (other relative of mine) to wear.

I'm not saying people don't have it bad now - they do. But there people above considered themselves normal rather than poor but those things by today's standards would be horrific.

you'd have to go back to my great grandparents to find a generation who were less affluent than we are!

They certainly had far more material goods than we do (& still do!), massive houses, boats, my grandmother (nearly 95 years old - a pharmacist married to civil servant) had a lady who 'helped' around the house - we've slid way down the socio-economic ladder! DH works longer hours for less (relative) money in an equivalent professional job. My job/career was the same as my great uncle's - the difference in pay, conditions, regard etc is astronomical.

They could afford private schooling etc - but didn't out of principle - they had what would now be regarded as large families. For us it was a decision between me working full time + one child + private school or move out of London + take a career break + HE/state school + have another child. We went with the latter hence our relative poor-ness!*

(*that's tongue in cheek had the plan worked we'd have been fine but with a child who takes up a massive proportion of our time & income & my non earning status we do struggle - life throws stuff at you unexpectedly).

My DH's family were far less affluent, traditional working class - and as far as I know they all worked (back to his grandma/great grandma), they were all farmers & agricultural workers.

I think it's partly housing costs, partly expectations.

DH and I lived on one (modest) salary for years, because one or other of us were studying.

We managed fine, we even got a mortgage on a (teeny tiny) house. I didn't even feel we were particularly deprived or struggling at all; having grown up where my parents did actually struggle to make ends meet, it actually seemed to me like we had loads of money.

I don't think I am particularly frugal. But on the other hand, we never had (and still don't) a car, foreign holidays, a big tv, ipods/ipads, microwave, tumble drier, expensive furniture, expensive hobbies etc etc. We don't drink and seldom buy new clothes - but that is through choice rather than necessity.

The only time it really comes home to us that we aren't actually that well off is if we look at UK property prices . But I would be scared to get a mortgage based on two incomes anyway, it seems like too much of a stretch. I'd rather get a smaller place based just on one salary.

This is all rather interesting, as my family seem to have done things the other way round, from a fairly well-off farming family in Oz (my Gt Grandparents had a huge brand new farmhouse built for them, & everything that opened and shut in the 40s/50s, they all went off to boarding school, etc. ski clubs, etc etc. To now, where most farms in Oz are really struggling (they do not get subsidies like here).

I think it's mostly housing costs, but also the costs associated with the type of housing we have now. My Grandparents had their 7 children in a 2 bedroom tenement. Only the kitchen was heated, by the oven, and when they were home they gathered in there. The stories my Aunts talk about that even mention the house always mention the bathroom being freezing o the bedroom baltic. Now we have bigger houses, warmer houses and that in turn adds to the higher costs.

Also a lot of women weren't simply SAHMs. My Nana was a nurse, she had to quit when she got married, but over the years she did odd jobs like cleaning or ironing around the children. Although it was just for pin money the fact that Grandad's wage basically covered all of the essentials meant anything she brought in was for niceties.

Also larger families and families staying in areas meant childcare was far cheaper. I can only imagine people reacting with horror now when my Nana's sister brought her 6 kids to Nana's one day a week while she went to work then sister's neighbours being thrilled when Nana brought her 7 round to reciprocate later in the week! My Aunt also remembers being in charge of her younger siblings when Nana went out to work during the school holidays. I can imagine people being utterly horrified now if I let the 15-year-old in charge of his 4 younger siblings on a regular basis to go to work.

Mainly higher house prices. But also things like holidays, eating out and new cars becoming the norm rather than something that happened rarely. Also, people run up huge debts quite young nowadays. Large weddings, fancy honeymoons, wanting the house perfectly furnished as soon as they move in instead of making do for years with old bits and pieces and mis- matched stuff. And years ago people saved up for things and did without until they could afford them. Nowadays people take out loans or put stuff on credit cards. So a lot of couples are constantly chasing their tail trying to get the figures to balance, and never really clear their debts.

Cost of housing is a big factor. As I'll have to return to full time work sooner then I'd like so we can afford a bigger house. We are in the SE and only have a 2 bed house.

But I think life style choice is a big one to. Ihave freinds who could spend more time at home if they wanted to. But don't want to give up certain luxuries. We've given up a lot, the only thing I have kept is our second car but only as its fully paid for. We have cheep holidays in our inlaws caravan. And day's out are often thanks to supermarket vouchers.

But as someone up thread mentioned we also feel a bit like we are the squash middle. Due to a DH on a good income if I had returned to work before both DC started school I actualy wouldn't have been earning enough to cover childcare and we'd be earning to much to get any help with childcare. One of my freinds worked it out and you'd need to earn £34,000 just to cover costs well I earned £10,000 less then that. So we would have been a lot worse off.