to ask how most of our mothers coped?

[ItalianScallion]

I was born in the 70's. My mother was a SAHM and there were three of us kids. My father worked night shifts.

The youngest of us was born when I was four and the oldest was 7. My mother got us up, took us to school, took us to after school activities and sports whilst maintaining a ridiculously clean home, and doing all the laundry etc with no help or family support.

My DH has a similar upbringing except his mother and father were living abroad and travelled to several different countries to live because of the nature of FIL's work. My MIL worked nights and so they would literally hand over the kids to each other as one came home and the other went to work.

I feel that we were all raised pretty decently and I have a huge amount of respect for my parents and PIL.

Which brings me to my AIBU to think that we are getting softer? My mother and MIL shake their heads in disbelief when they hear of mothers who SAHM, have a nanny/au pair and a weekly cleaner and still talk about how they're not coping.

Don't get me wrong, parenting is a hard job but it seems that popular parenting ideas and methods are allowing us to make rods for our own backs.

Please understand I'm not referring to women with PND or any MH issues. This is MN so I know I'll be flamed by people with their anecdotes of difficult babies and their specific struggles, and I agree that there will always be exceptions to the rule. Still, I can't help but feel that we don't 'just get on with it' the way our mothers did.

Peak = pram in the garden

Meh.

People who have cleaners etc are also providing employment.......if that's what they want to spend their money on it's up to them..

Mine used copious quantities of valium and alcohol, with 40 a day.

Then there were 'coffee mornings' where all the other SAHM would go to one person's house, all the kids would be sent out to play together and they got to drink coffee and chat.

Often followed by a 'cheese and wine evening' which was an excuse to get pissed while eating a bit of brie.

Although I sould flippant lots and lots of SAHM's were on Valium and the like.

i dont know if already mentioned
firstly no such thing as after school activities.
secondly they had plenty of friends in the same boat

as regards having help, i guess if you have a lot of activities, pilates, for example, horses, dogs, and the dc have a lot of activities you are running around and can afford help

I had my dcs late 70's/early 80's, was a SAHM initially then did night duty (alternate nights, no sleep during the day). You just got on with it ime, there wasn't an alternative! I didn't have any help, and certainly no social media around to vent on or seek advice.
My mum was a SAHM and learned to make the money stretch as far as possible with us children expected to help out. We had few treats and were expected to keep ourselves amused, little on tv back in the 50's/60's, certainly no technology 🙂
I think life was harder but far less complicated then.

Although I sould flippant lots and lots of SAHM's were on Valium and the like

lots and lots still are

Back then it was accepted that if you were at home you did the parenting and house duties whilst the other went to work.

Now lots subscribe to the theory that they are only home for the children and pay somebody else to clean, garden etc.

The rest work and parent and live more in the real world like their parents did.

My grandmother was of the generation where you fed the baby every 3/4 hours only and in between left them in the garden to cry and sleep. So of course she had loads of time to sort the house.

I fed more like hourly (whenever my DS whimpered), had him napping on me and never left him crying in his cot which didn't allow for much more in the day than showering and dressing myself.

My mother was somewhere in the middle. She considered the strict routines pretty awful but still was shocked how much I offered the breast to my son and I know she left me in my cot until 7am irrespective of when I woke up.

And oh yeah they both had siblings and their own mothers closer by. I have no one to pop in and hold the baby. This makes a big difference.

I am a DM whose children were born late 70s / early 80s and they were fed on demand, breastfed until they were 9 months, weaning started at 6 months.

Within my circle of mum friends, everyone did this.

Yeah my mum regularly says she doesn't know how I do it. Full time job, 3 kids, small house, no money (pretty much the lot of most of the mums I know!). My mum was a SAHM in a family's sized home because my dad earned a reasonable wage and they could afford to live modestly on his salary. She had time to do all the housework, there was enough space to keep everything so easier to keep the place tidy.

My DGM definitely ended up on Valium, for the menopause. DM remembers her having to go cold turkey!

One thing SAHMs didn't have to deal with, I don't think, is the sense of guilt that they should be working. I love being at home with DS but I do sometimes really feel guilty that I'm not at work earning a wage. (Of course I'd also feel guilty about not being at home if I were off working).

Also, I think many women had children younger - certainly looking at my own family, my DM was barely twenty when she married and she didn't work - they began a family straight away. In some ways I think that must make it easier - more energy and also no previous life of career and financial independence to compare to the restrictions that children bring.

People didn't have the Internet back in those days, so there was more time to do other things.

Valium
Relaxed standards

It is all about the attitude we were raised with. When I left school in the 1960s I worked in an office and stayed there after I married. However just a generation before, women where expected to give up work as soon as they married. Most of my generation gave up work as soon as the babies came along.

Once at home we expected to be cleaning, cooking and looking after children all day long. Men were not expected to help. It was frowned upon to meet with other women during the day. Our time was for the family. We never thought to question it.

I was a child minder from when my eldest was 1 year old and generally had the care for 6 children from babies to primary age. I did this for 14 years. I was lucky that by DH was willing to help at weekends. One Saturday my PiLs turned up unexpectedly. DH was washing down the limo on the stairs, bucket of suds rubber gloves etc. My In-laws were outraged that he was doing housework on his weekend off. We never heard the last of it.

Affordable housing meant most people in my parents generation and circle of friends had a nice 3 bed semi in a decent area with only the husband working. Once the kids were at school the sahm had a ton of time for cleaning / cooking etc.

My mum had that plus a cleaner and a gardener and an au pair in the summer.

We on the other hand both work full time and only have a small terraced house, childcare costs are astronomical and elate left juggling all the arrangements.

My mum definitely had it easier.

In my case, the comparison goes:

• smaller house - one bathroom
• not as much 'stuff' to manage
• fairly simple meals on a weekly rotation
• ONE club each - I went to Brownies/guides - nothing else
• kids more independent from an earlier age - didn't expect lifts to places or to be entertained by them when bored
• Dad did most of the gardening and cleaned the oven
• loads of other SAHM around for coffee/chatting in the street
• Didn't have to juggle it all with work too!
• Did it all a bit younger and own parents younger too
• in the case of MIL - both kids left home by her early forties but she continued not to work at all still (despite money being fairly tight) - just didn't like to work and that was seen as ok.

Seemed quite idyllic to me...apart from seemingly effortlessly making the money stretch so far.

Standards and values were different back then. As kids we were only bathed/hairwashed once a week. Clothes were washed less frequently and we had a lot fewer of them (the mantra was one on, one off and one in the wash) so an entire weeks laundry could be done in one day. We also had a lot less stuff (I had one pair of shoes + 1 pair of plimsoles at a time until I was old enough to buy my own) so keeping the house clean and tidy was simpler. There was no expectation of being a super-mum or a constant taxi service. Kids walked to school on their own and were sent to play out in the evenings.the idea of being 'involved' in a child's education was not around so no need for parents evenings, reading diaries or helping with projects and schoolwork. Shops were local, there was no such thing as a 'big shop'. Mum's could pop round the corner and get what they needed on a daily basis. Food expectations were simpler, no complicated recipes or exotic ingredients. There were fewer distractions, at the start of their adult lives my grandparents wouldn't have had a tv and even radio didn't start broadcasting until the evening. In the 60s most homes had tv but apart from Watch with Mother there was nothing on until about 4 o'clock, just a testcard.
And lots of people had nannies and cleaners thank goodness. My grannies were both cleanersand their lives would have been even harder without the money and cast offs they got from those jobs.

It's harder these days.

I'm a lone parent
I work
Do everything for my child - ex does very little
Have no family around to help

I look back at my mum's life and she had a lot of family around her and she didn't need to work. We were off playing much of the time with friends or in the fields. So yes, I think it's tougher now.

There was an interesting thing on bBC news last week saying that actually washing machines didn't save people time.

Before WM washing clothes was a pain in the neck and so people wore clothes for much longer.

Now we have WM it's not acceptable to be stinky so people do loads more washes and no time is saved.

no social media = less competitive / worrying about doing more activities etc etc etc etc !!

Less pressure to work / study / better yourself financially

Less gadgets and just less " stuff" to distract you

More common sense parenting less of twee mummy bloggers telling you what to do

People just got on with it because they had to so even if they struggled they probably just didn't say

Im a lone parent of a 2 year old and 7 month old and cope withour any help. When you have no choice you just do it and get through each day

Er, my grandad was in his late teens/early 20s during the 1940s and he was traumatised by his experiences but wasn't expected to talk or complain about this because he was a man and men didn't have emotions, plus he hadn't been on the front line so he couldn't possibly have been traumatised, despite the fact that many ordinary people were traumatised by their first hand experience of the blitz and other everyday but horrific aspects of wartime.

I don't really understand this thread.
The OP is describing what many women do today except a lot of them are working and not SAHM.

What help does everyone get and is everyone living in a dirty house while their kids run wild now?

I don't want to sound like a Monty Python sketch but I have never had any help with the kids or cleaning. OH has always worked shifts until he became too unwell. Five kids, one with SN and one who was seriously ill for two years until she died.

I am surrounded by women like me. I am not unusual.

BTW my mum worked as did her mum and her mum.

My mother was 30 having me, which was quite old back then (60s).

She had had to give up her job as a Librarian when she married. She went back to work as a Midday Supervisor when I was 8 and fell back into a variety of p/t jobs in schools.

She had family and community support, but we had diddly squat in terms of "stuff". No central heating, no phone, no washing machine, no car. Sheets were sent to laundry.

She loved the radio and I can still remember her singing along to Perry Como. We were a happy household generally although it must've been hard at times. Like others have said, she was never bogged down in after school activities, or heavy supervision. We made our own fun and came and went as we pleased.

It wasn't perfect, and there were some genuinely dirt poor families about until the Pill came in.

I think in general the pressures were different. People expected difficulties, and got on with coping with them. Measles was common and everyone got it. Polio was still a problem and many children lived with its effects. Children with special needs were hidden away.

Although I think some things are harder now, some elements of parenting are self-inflicted, like constant attention, constant supervision and the general faff around nutrition, education and "activities".

The main difference is the notion that somehow children will be "damaged" if their upbringing isn't perfect. I think it's called "parental determinism", and arose out of the research of Bowlby et al.

There's a brilliant book by the sociologist Frank Furedi called Paranoid Parenting that's a brilliant read if you're interested in parenting culture.