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?

My SAHM was actually a childminder when I was tiny. I don't think that many mums were truly SAH when I was a kid.

I do however think that more women looked after their own babies/preschoolers when I was young. They worked earlies/lates/weekends, but they didn't really use childcare. Family filled in the gaps rather than childcare centres or nurseries.

Lots of people are saying "all my friends at school had mums who worked" - yes but most women go back to work when their kids are in school. Or does SAHM mean until the youngest child is 18? Because that is surely incredibly rare.

I will be the first sahm in my family for generations but only if I continue to sah when the youngest goes to school.

1964 my husband (now Ex) was earning £1100 pa when we bought our first house for £3,500 (semi detached). He earned 31% of the house cost. I worked (before DCs) but my salary was not taken into account. These days he would have to be earning £78,000 to buy a £250,000 house, using the same rules.

£1100 pa then is the equivalent of £20,109 pa now - eighteen times more. £3,500 then is the equivalent of £63,984 now. Where would you find a naice semi detached house for that price these days and how many?

My mum is a baby boomer and as mentioned already she had to work her whole life.

The thing is, today it's not acceptable to treat children as it was back then.

My paternal granny was a "SAHM" but in reality took in washing. My mum was telling me recently how when my uncle was born, and Granny literally caught him in a bucket - no MW, certainly no hospital - and went back to laundering that same day, as she simply needed the money.

One of her children died in infancy as they couldn't afford a doctor (pre NHS).

They ate bread and dripping or chips which were strictly rationed, or oatcakes, for weeks on end as there was nothing else.

My dad was taught to lay the fire from the age of 5. When she got a job cleaning later she locked him in a cupboard or out of the house, as she couldn't take him to work and he needed to stay out of trouble.

When he was 9, he went to work after school for a relative. He is mid 60s now and still talks bitterly about how tired he was.

He broke his front teeth when he was 11 and couldn't afford proper dentistry for ages so got bullied at school.

Can you imagine a HV assessing a family like that now? The children would all be taken into care! But my granny was a loving mum and just did the best she could on their wages.

So no, no illusions about the past!

My mam was a sahm until I was about 8 years old. Most of my friends at school had sahm at primary school. When we decided to have children we always did so with the aim of me being at home with them, working from home part time. We have been lucky enough to be able to do this, but live quite frugally with no holidays abroad (we live by the sea though :) ), very few items are bought new, if something breaks we fix it etc., cook from scratch, grow our veg, no fancy mobile phones (although we have an iPad and a tablet), second hand car paid for outright, no sky tv etc. I think housing costs are definitely a factor too, we couldn't do this in the SE for example.

Plus back in the days chores genuinely took ages (no supermarkets, washing machines, internet banking etc) so a SAHP was a lot more necessary just to run the household than it is today.

Yes, I think it's the idea of a stay at home parent whose main "job" is their children that's particularly novel. Rather than, eg, staying at home but spending most of your time putting sheets through a mangle, making bread, etc.

In the 1970's when I was a kid my mum was a sahm then got a very part time job ( approx 15hours a week)when I went to secondary school. We had a car , a holiday every year etc and never went without. Me and my dh have always worked since our first ds was born 15 yeras ago. the longest I had as a sahm was a year when I had 3 kids under 5 and took a years mat leave. The reasons being that we simply could not have paid a large mortgage ( £800+ a month) on one wage and still had money to give out kids a good life. Probably our fault fr having 4 dc's, if we'd stopped at 2 I guess I could have been a sahm longer !

My house sold for £5k in 1970 to a couple with a SAHM and a teacher. It sold in 2006 for £570K and today would be about £850k.

Has the salary of a teacher kept up with that? It is now 20 times the salary- when back then it was £1800- now it is about £35k.

I got married 35 years ago. Our 3 bed semi cost £22,000. Our combined salaries were £19,000 pa.(mine a London salary)

So the mortgage was just affordable on one salary when I became pregnant.

Got a bit tricky when the interest went to 15% though...

I started weekend working about 8 years later and then took more and more till I was full time when children were at secondary school.

Oh and that house is about £250,000 now.

I think, to a point, we have all been sold a pup about women and the workplace. It is wonderful that women now have opportunities but it has made the limited supply of family homes and the items the previous generation aspired to far more expensive in line with demand. On the whole, we all now have as essentials, things that were luxuries, such as cars, holidays, new furniture, etc

Back in the mid 80s DH and I bought our first home. We were working in London and bought a 2 bed maisonette we could commute in from. Our combined salaries were around 2/3 the value of the flat. Last year (so almost 30 years later) DS and his GF bought their first home. They are working in London and bought a 2 bed house they could commute from (yes theirs is a house but it is smaller and in a less desirable area). It cost around 10x what ours cost but their salaries are nowhere near 10x, in fact they are less than half that amount

The thing about the "being sold a pup" thing, though - what's the alternative? Make women stay at home? Go back to the bad old days of the marriage bar?

1. Going back in time, working class women have always worked - all my grandmothers and great grandmothers worked. Elderly relatives plus older children provided some basic childcare.

2. Housing costs more

3. The share of national income going to labour has been falling continually since the end of the 1970s.

leedy If workers received the same share of national income as they did in the 70s, then I guess one answer that might suit a lot of people esp those with small children would be for both parents to work part time.

I know quite a few people who do this (better paid, so can afford it). Say if you each work 3 or 4 days, you both get some time at home with dc.

" I guess one answer that might suit a lot of people esp those with small children would be for both parents to work part time. "

That would certainly work for some people/jobs, but certainly not all - neither myself nor DP work part time, nor do I think I'd be able to in my current line of work, nor (I think) do I particularly want to.

I think the cost of housing is a major reason but not the only one. People just lived much more frugal lives. No car, no gadgets, saved for years for things like a washing machine. They just didn't have much. They lived near their friends and relatives quite often so no petrol costs. Holidays in a caravan and so on.

I agree with Vivienne. There was a time when buying a new sofa was such a big deal that friends and neighbours would be invited over to see it. A new coat was a major purchase that was saved up for, and lasted for many Winters. Everyone used up leftovers and nothing was thrown out.
We live very different lives nowadays, and they cost a lot more to finance. For most couples, paying a mortgage plus having all the normalities of modern life is just not do-able on one salary.

Housing mostly. But also, for us, its so we can run 2 cars and travel and pay for music lessons for the kids and other things that my parents never aspired to.

I think the main thing is housing, but all the 'extras' that people used to do without are also a factor.

Housing costs
Inceasing standards of living:
Bigger houses as the expectation is now each child has their own bedroom from 10 years old. Houses fitted out to showroom levels
consumer goods,lots more clothes bought, cars changed regularly, expensive phones, iPads xboxes etc
regular holidays and weekend breaks away
Days out at expensive theme parks, eating out regularly
Children's birthday parties and Christmas presents seem now on another level in terms of costs
General travel and Petrol costs as are driving a lot more than we use to

" A new coat was a major purchase that was saved up for, and lasted for many Winters."

I agree.

Although I think that there are a lot of cheaper clothes about now which weren't then?

I agree though that there have always been women in the home & others at work as now.

My mum gave up work when she married & went back 18yrs later when I started secondary school.

most of my aunties never went back to work after marrying.

My dad's mum didn't go back to work although she used to look after her youngest GC so that her youngest daughter could work.

My mum's mum worked as her husband drank & then left her!

She managed to buy a house & feeds & clothe two children!

If a major hike in children's living conditions is the pay off, it's worth it.

Was the hike in housing costs avoidable? Or a natural by product of some households having 2 wages coming in.

I know not all mothers were SAHMs, but that does seem to be overwhelming stereotype though. My own GGM was a nurse and worked full time, GM and her 5 siblings had to look after one another whilst she was out.