Life was hard for my mother. She gave up work when my elder sister was born and never worked outside the home again.
At the time of my sister's birth, in the mid '50s, my parents were living in a small flat on the 2nd floor of a terraced house in London. There was no water in the flat. They shared a bathroom, which was on the floor below, with 2 other families and for drinking water they had to go down to a tap on the ground floor.
There was no kitchen in the flat, only a gas stove out on the landing. On that stove, my mother had to cook meals and also sterilise my sister's nappies by boiling them in a metal bucket on the stove top, having lugged the bucket of water up a flight of stairs from the bathroom, then having to lug it down again before emptying it, rinsing the nappies and then putting them through a mangle. There was a small, shared garden with a washing line but most of the time the nappies were dried by being draped over furniture indoors. Anything dried outdoors usually got grey and dirty.
Mum walked everywhere and there were no supermarkets, so shopping was a tedious process. At least rationing was coming to an end by that time, so the queues were shorter than they had been.
Shortly before I was born, my parents moved to another flat, this time it had its own water supply and, what's more, there was hot water available on the same landing (luxury indeed!).
My father had 3 jobs. On weekdays, he worked in a civil service department on a 9-5 schedule, on Saturdays he worked in a shop and in the evenings and on Sundays he made costume jewellery at home, which he sold by mail order, advertising in local newspapers.
Through hard work and disciplined saving, dad was able to get a mortgage and move us all out of London in the early '60s to a 3-bed semi on the edge of a town.
When my sisters and I were growing up, my parents were always hard up. They never went out to eat, actually never went anywhere that wasn't free - so a lot of our entertainment was walking in the countryside, a pursuit that is still a passion of mine today.
Did my parents have a harder time than I had when my DCs were born in the early '80s? Absolutely yes! No doubt about it.
Did I have a harder time than my own DCs are now having with their little ones? Yes and no. Yes, we were poorer, we had fewer (none) luxuries, no holidays, no central heating etc. But life was simpler and we were happy. I think nowadays young people feel a lot more discontent than we did. They can't cope with going without things and those things appear to be essential to happiness now.