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?

"When it became normal to have two cars, foreign holidays, treat food for every meal, TVs in every room, a fitted kitchen which is replaced if it's even slightly non-perfect, fitted carpets, more than one pair of shoes..."

WHERE is this the norm? DP and I are reasonably well off by most standards and while we do have multiple shoes (without cardboard) and foreign holidays, we only have one (elderly) car, cook from scratch, have one telly, no fitted carpets, and a kitchen of dubious vintage.

Again, I'm not feeling the "it is the insanely lavish lifestyle that has become essential for all that means women cannot become SAHM" thing.

Just adding - I was the only child in the village whose mother worked out of the home (mid to late 1970s). I remember being told that I mustn't let anyone know that there wasn't an adult there when I got home from school on the bus. I can't have been more than seven, because that was when I changed school.

Skylark

I have photo's of my childhood and they show so much of the society and lifestyle of the 60's and 70's.
Sunday best and school uniform. hand me down clothes from siblings and cousins. No designer labels except for Biba but they were passed down from much older cousins when I was a teen.
A sweet treat on a saturday if you were lucky, maybe a magazine as we got older.
There were no expensive gadgets, holidays abroad, no eating out.
i can remember taking sandwiches and a flask on days out.
Parents were members of free clubs and societies and didn't spend anything unnecessarily.
Kids played out from dawn till dusk during the holidays and had a bottle of water/packed lunch, no popping to Subway, or McDonalds.
We walked everywhere and Dad cycled 8 miles to work, we had no car for quite a while.
One black and white tv, no central heating, just a gas fire downstairs.
All food cooked from scratch and some veggies that you grew yourself.
Much more sense of community and bartering which saved money.
Bath, once a week and used to share it with siblings when little.
Wash day was monday and only a couple of washes done a week. School uniform was wiped down if you spilt a bit of dinner.
No tumble driers or dishwashers, which saved on the old emersion heater.

I agree with those who say that the period when only 1 parent worked in a family was a very short one and unless you were very wealthy women working in agriculture or weaving etc or mills was very common in the UK and much of the world. The housewife was a very 1950s thing.
Our desire to buy houses rather than rent them is what causes many of us to have both adults working, plus the fact that work can be interesting and housework and child care deadly dull.

"while we do have multiple shoes (without cardboard) and foreign holidays, we only have one (elderly) car, cook from scratch, have one telly, no fitted carpets, and a kitchen of dubious vintage."

I think that pretty much makes my point. It used to be that almost nobody had any of those things. You feel like you're badly off because you only have some of them.

Cost of furniture to property ratio is vastly different to now so all these posts about people doing without, buying a house and using deckchairs are ridiculous.

My parents used to come out with similar things, suggesting that perhaps if we hadn't spend £100 quid on a bed from Ikea we might be able to afford a house deposit....

I think as someone mentioned, I think it's likely to be the baby boomer generation with the highest proportion of SAHM's. Going further back you'll find more working women.

But certainly as a child growing up in the late 70s/80s staying at home was the norm in the area I grew up in. If schools were closed because of snow and the buses cancelled, we just walked home, and nearly everyone had someone still at home. Working with pre-school children was very unusual as there wasn't the same range of childcare.

Not sure if it has been said yet but credit was frowned upon. if you couldn't afford something you did without until you had the money, that went for expensive things like cars, washing machines right down to household objects.
If you were seen to have credit it was a huge shame to you.

"You feel like you're badly off because you only have some of them."

No, I don't, at all!

House prices started to rise when lenders were allowed to take into account the second income.
They started to rise faster once borrowers no longer needed to be existing clients.
They rose even faster once interest only mortgages were invented.
They rose even faster once lenders owned the surveying companies and estate agents so all made more money by making prices rise every year.

Interest rates are now being held artificially low to allow tens of thousands of people to service utterly unsustainable mortgage debt on totally artificial house valuations that should never have been allowed.

How much would your mortgage cost if base rates rose to 5.5% as they were through most of the 90's ?

Housing costs are the driver for all families having to have two people working.

That and the ridiculous relaxation of unsecured borrowing

My mum worked & we enjoyed a very nice standard of living. DH & I both work & our children enjoy a very nice standard of living.

In contrast, one granny was in service until she married then gave up work and bought up a family in dire poverty in the Gorbals during the depression.

Don't look at the past with rose tinted specs - child poverty & rickets were as much a feature of life as mums in aprons baking for rosy cheeked children.

Many families couldn't 'afford' a SAHM - they lived in grim poverty due to lack of opportunties for both parents.

See, I am also dubious that we are soooo much more extravagant these days. DH and I both work ft and have DD.

We....

Have a kitchen of dubious vintage
A third hand car sold to DH by his mum for a nominal price and a secondhand car given me by my mum
DD dressed in friend's hand me downs - we have literally bought almost no clothing for her
No tv
No microwave
I buy new clothing when stuff looks un respectable (work) or weekend clothing when it actually gets holes in
Cook from scratch most nights
Use reduced section at supermarket
Ration heating
Use free council run baby groups for DD
Go on walks as our daily outing

And I don't think we are at all hard up. We pay mortgage, childcare, bills, food shop and save - not much personal spending. We are quite happy, and I don't think unusual!

No one should say child care did not used to exist! The UK had something like one millions servants in 1900. My grandmother was a children's nurse. All women in all places at all times and men for that matter have chosen to have others help them with cleaning and childcare as most of us don't want to do that most of the time. The Romans had slaves. the Victorians had servants. The Tudors (some) even sent children off for 5 years to a we nurse. Working or doing what you choose rather than doing dross domestic tasks is something men and women have always preferred and that is quite understandable and reflected in the fact that caring for the old, small children and cleaning houses is some of the worst paid work in all societies because anyone with arms can do it and it can be pretty boring.

Thank goodness women work. It was no golden era if you can find a few relatives who stayed home and operated the mangle or minded 10 small children. It was hell on earth.

Revolting, I don't think everyone is that much more extravagant - your mindset sounds fairly much like mine. But yes, I think you will find you are relatively unusual as your DD gets older and you see what proportion of her friends are never dressed in hand-me-downs and think it's completely normal to open the windows with the central heating on full.

What I was trying to talk about was the mindset of people who think they're so much less well off than people used to be because both of them have to work - but that work is funding a lifestyle which is massively extravagant compared to how most single income families lived in the 1970s and 1980s.

"We couldn't possibly get by on one income" when you run two cars, keep your whole house at 70 degrees, don't grow a single fruit or vegetable, never eat leftovers, eat out regularly, have holidays which involve flights and hotels... well, no, you couldn't, but the people who did get by on one income mostly had none of those things, even 20-30 years ago.

Being a SAHM in the Victorian era and before, would have been a full time job in itself. No labour saving gadgets such as washing machines, hoovers and electric ovens. Clothes had to be made as well. Everything would have taken much longer to do. I'm not sure the children in those days had the benefit of mum's undivided attention either.

families used to live together more. my gps lived with gms aunts who had a shop at the front of the house they owned.

yabu op

I really dislike this assumption that women only work because of financial necessity whereas men can be motivated by their career.

I could not stand being a sahm, no disrespect to anyone else's choices. So yes, it is a lifestyle choice for those who can afford it.

The only way it isn't a lifestyle choice is if you can't afford childcare. Luckily I just about earn enough to cover 2 sets of nursery fees and have about 20 quid left after tax .

Our household income is 90K.
We have one car, not been on hols for 5 yrs, eat home cooked food ( ready meals are garbage).
We light the fire, keep hens, have a veg garden and I doubt the CH has ever been on at 70 Dc.
We fight over leftovers
Mortgage paid off , 2 x pensions( extra AVC).
Aim to retire early.

Victorian SAHM aka women who did not work did not do the childcare or cleaning ! They had servants and nannies.
Their responsibility was to be charming, discreet and fragrant.

I am not charming, discreet or fragrant :(

That is why I am not a SAHM.

I'm not convinced it's just personal expectations, I think even the rich spend their money in different ways from generation to generation. My grandparents and DH's parents were all middle class families (university educated). All our grandmothers were 'housewives' after the war (all worked during the war obviously before they were forced out of work) although one of them was a farmers wife which involved managing the hens and dairy (and the maids who did the work) so an important income stream in the 1950s. They all had servants (from DH's grandmother who had so many servants in each of their houses that his mother didn't dress herself until she was a teenager (!) to one of my grandmothers who had a 'daily' come in to do the heavy work in the house), all but one could afford foreign holidays and educated their children privately.

Our parents were actually the generation who didn't have servants but DH's parents educated 3 kids privately on a single lecturer's wage (the same education now would eat up the entire salary of someone in the same job) whereas no-one in our generation have sent their children to private school. On the other hand those of us with kids spend a significant percentage of our income on childcare and have cleaners. Each generation has a smaller house than the one before though (except the farmers who concentrate the money down the male line each generation).

Thinking about my grandparents - my granddad had a lower middle-class job ad they never went abroad infact rarely had holidays at all, never ate out, had one car, ate plain, cheap food. I also think household items such as furniture, cutlery, crockery was supposed to last and they didn't go in for home improvements such as new kitchens/extensions etc.

Other GPs were better off but still eating out was a major once-a-year treat and everything was supposed to last.

I am utterly charming ,indiscreet and very fragrant < wafts>
I just love my job and have a great career and supportive husband.
god I hate myself!

I have to laugh at people talking about kindles, holidays etc... Plenty of people I know don't have those things and both parents still have to work. Unless you're lucky enough to have an inheritance which gives you a fairly low mortgage or live in subsidised housing, most of your wage goes on rent and bills.

Well in my family about 1900, neither Great Grandmother on my mother's side worked. Well one may have let out a property, her sons also helped out when they were old enough. They all lived with pretty big families in smallish houses.

By 1930s most of the married women didn't work, but might earn some money by sewing or knitting. They also grew food, kept chickens, and would think nothing of walking 8 miles there and back to go to the local market. They didn't necessarily have mains water, but had to pump it. Only one room was really heated. Washing was done far less frequently than nowadays, and took at least a day. I don't think they had time to go out to work.
Even in the 70s people didn't go out to work when the children were young. But they had a lot more labour saving devices.

In the early 80s a lot of married women could claim unemployment benefit when they had small children.