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.

It's only now I've had my second baby I appreciate how hard my parents worked.I have two siblings, I'm the youngest with a 5 and 10 year age gap. Rarely were we picked up or babysat by family, we were always with our parents. We even joined them when they had dinner parties My dad worked full time and my mum worked from home around us. They were both there for every PTE assembly, play etc. They had difficulties and weren't perfect but it's only now I realise how hard they worked.

My dad (who is now 61) was extremely hands on. He did his share of night shifts, bathtimeso, laundry, cooking. Lovely bloke.

So they were a real team.

I have just separated from my husband and am living alone wih a 10 month old and a 5 year old with special needs.I'm knackered and my house is OK but not spotless.

I think who you choose to have kids with makes a huge difference to your quality of life.

Valium!

(Not read thread)
OP I don't see how life is so different now- my DH works away during the week. I have 3 kids, work 4 days a week and do all housework/ ferrying kids etc. No help. No local family. My house is clean, my kids don't eat instant meals.

You just get on with it. I'm not complaining- it's life. I just don't see why it's harder or easier than 1970s?

I often wonder how my mother coped, on her own in London with a young baby (dsis) during the Blitz, wondering every day whether there was going to be a telegram to say my father had been killed. He was in the RN and on the terribly dangerous N Atlantic convoys for 2 years.

I do despair sometimes at the snowflakes who need 'safe space' from anything that might possibly offend them.

My granny, born late 1800s, had 6 kids and was fairly comfortably off by the standards of the day, but I remember her telling me she'd asked her own mother, 10 kids, how on earth she'd managed without a pram.
'I used my arms.'

A few things have changed about child rearing that have made it harder now. I walked to school alone from 5 years old. There was no expectation that I would do anything other than play out in the evenings. I didn't get homework until secondary school, beans on toast was normal tea for most people, I was only bathed on a Sunday, and we wore aprons so clothes were not washed as often.

Other things were harder which is why my mum was very depressed bringing us up. .

I don't understand this thread either.

How are things different exactly?

This doesn't chime with my experience at all. I don't know anyine who is a sahm and has paid help as well. Most of my dm's contemporaries either didn't work or worked part time only once their dc were in secondary school. Whereas most of my contemporaries worked at least part time from when their dc were very small and managed the house as well, mostly withput a cleaner etc.

Do we all have staff nowadays?

OP you are living in a bubble.

Differences and similarities for me(I was born in the 60's)
Mum worked full time from when I was 9, part-time before that.
I went back to work full-time when my youngest was 5.
Mum had 2 dc first born when she was 40, I had 3 first born when I was 27
She had elderly aunt (late 70's) who lived with us and did all the childcare, I used a combination of childminder, after school club and friends, no local family.
We had no tv growing up, Mum didn't drive so buses or walking was the rule. I had TV and later computers/mobiles etc.
Mum carried her shopping home on the bus or waited until Friday night or Saturday when Dad helped. I had a car and eventually online shopping.
Both of us had fairly traditional roles we both did most of the cooking and husbands did gardening/diy.
We both put our children in the garden to sleep but neither of us left them to cry out there, they were within sight and sound so were bought in if they cried.
She probably played with us more than I did with mine,mostly board games as we didn't have TV.
I think she had it harder but mainly because she was older plus lack of household gadgets, no tumble drier, no microwave etc. Plus she had a lot less money than we did.

As a mother who works FT, I find it interesting we're always comparing ourselves to what our mothers did. Why not our fathers?

When I was small my mum was a SAHM, my dad worked 9-5. He definitely worked hard. But once he was home, he was largely off duty. Didn't cook, didn't do laundry, didn't do dishes. Did do some of the gardening (although that was a hobby as much as anything), polished school shoes, and did DIY when needed. Did do some of the childcare but not most. My memory of evenings is my dad sat with the paper while my mum cooked dinner, after she'd already cleaned and tidied the house before he got home.

I grew up learning that Dad Works Hard All Day, he needs his rest, don't trouble your father. And I don't deny he worked hard. But I don't think I work any less hard than he did at work, and I definitely do more at home. Yet nobody's berating his entire generation for being too soft...

Great thread. My mil talks about kids sleeping in prams outside/all weathers whilst she did the housework. She prepared dinner for heating up in the morning. She would walk up to shops in afternoon and meet friends on route and do her shopping. Once a week they'd go to the one coffee shop in town. My fil had a fairly standard blue collar-white collar job in manufacturing. They lived in a nice house, ran a car and had uk holidays. She talks about no one having anything so you were happier with your lot. She was a happy sahm. The kids then played outside, where I remember if a family did have a car it parked in the drive and only moved at 9am and 5pm, therefore the kids played on the street safely. I'm in my 40s. My mum worked, she didn't want to stay home. We were left to our own devices a lot playing out or were at our grandmothers. We got the bus to hers on our own. So different nowadays.

Same here

I dont know anyone with paid help

It isn't pysically different it's socially different and different social expectations on a variety of things

One example

When I was a child if you wanted to stay home and look after your dc no one batted an eye lid it was normal
Now unless you have a well off dh then it's virtually impossible to live off one average wage these days .
So then your a benefits scrounger ( not my opinion ) you see it on here and thrown about generally all the time .

So in this case The desire to stay home with dc is the same as it was 30 years ago but social implications mean it is viewed differently and there is pressure to work

Interesting thread. My mum, who brought us up in the 70s thinks she lived in a golden time. We lived in a four-bed house which was perfectly affordable on one wage, she was a SAHM but chose to work part-time when we went to school (with all school holidays off). She readily accepts that it's unlikely a first-time buyer could live in a house like that now on one salary and considers herself lucky to have had that choice. Lower income families at that time had secure tenancies in low-cost council housing so everyone (in the place where I grew up) had it easier in terms of housing costs. Her mum's generation had it much harder and she thinks my generation have had it harder too because to her mind having somewhere nice to live outweighs all the technological advances which as she says you can't miss if you've never known. She never had any help - both sets of grandparents lived too far away - but she did have the support of lots of other mums in a similar situation.

This kind of thread just shows how people think of the best as just one reality.

I'm born in the 70s. My mum worked FT after taking a career break when we were very young? I think she returned to work when I was 5 or 6. We had a mother's help 5 days a week who cooked all our lunches and also dinners for the family. And a cleaner who comes a few hours each week.

Not every one from even the distant 70s have SAHMs and no help.

My mum youngest sister has one child and also a nanny/mother's help.

I think the proportion of SAHMs in the 70's/early 80's was a really high amount...at least until all the kids were at school anyway.

There was no internet and there were only 3 channels on TV, plus channel 4 at a later date. People grew veggies in their gardens/allotments and so had more motivation to have to do stuff like that in evenings.

Homework was a lot less until kids got to secondary school so that wasn't really a stress until then. Kids had to entertain themselves a lot more than now....even though there is semmingly a lot more to entertain them today. I think parents generally were less tolerant of kids who said they were bored.

That said, my mum still says if she did it all again, she would do less housework and play with us more. I remember a lot of the time, I'd be playing on the floor with stuff she set up then me to get on with, whilst she was scrubbing the oven shelves weekly! In my mind, she was always doing housework and keeping the home clean and tidy was her priority.....she loved us but we didn't get the same parental input kids nowadays do.

My mother had it easy,

She never worked.

Babies were fed every four hours and parked at the bottom of the garden so cries were not heard.
Endless stream of friends drinking tea and chatting in the house all day.

Talking to my MIL (aged 50) she is very much of the opinion that I have it harder because I also have a career whereas she was a SAHM. She also admits that it was normal to leave your child crying while you got in with housework and children were by and large expected to entertain themselves although MIL did play a lot with her children . As PP have said I feel huge pressure to always be playing with and engaging with DS and I find that pretty hard.

I was born in the early 70's. My Mum was a sahm and had

Cleaner 3 days a week.
Gardener 2 day a week.
Car and any appliances like washing machine, tumble drier, hoover. When they came out dishwasher, microwave ... yogurt maker
There were afterschool clubs, local brownies. We could safetly walk to school.
As we were older we could safetly walk to the library and swimming pool without parental help.
Lived in an area that had some sense of community. There were lots of families with other sahms on the street and many coffee mornings hosted. Local teenagers to babysit for hardly any money.
Had the odd nanny and au pair.
Could buy house when they were in their early 20's.
Good pensions and the knowledge they would probably have years of a comfortable retirement.

My Mum wasn't a happy person.

If we had friends over from school no one batted an eye if they were all fed fishfingers, baked beans and angel delight.

It's definitely different. My mum was a SAHM until I was about 7 and then went back to teaching. She didn't drive until I was in my late teens, and we only had one car which Dad used to get to work.

We didn't have an automatic washing machine either, just one of those twin tub things which was much more labour intensive. I think the main difference I see with my kids - apart from the fact I've got a dishwasher and automatic washing machine - is the number of out of school clubs and things on offer. My sister and I did Brownies/Guides and that was it. Other friends did dancing or football. There are lots more activities available now, and many of the activities my kids do aren't within walking distance.

bugger, I was reading my mother's 1960s diary. We all had a measles vaccine by the way so I don't agree everyone got measles then.
I always worked full time and workeduntil I went into labour and was back full time at 2 - 4 weeks expressing milk at work. I think it's hard to compare lifestyles.

My great grandmother had 11 children and was widowed twice - once when she had 2 small girls aged about 1 and 3 and then just after she had baby number 11 (she had babies from about age 18 to 42) and she did not marry again. She became an unofficial village midwife although she did not qualify as a midwife. She kept a pig to eat too and grew a lot of their own veg which was more common in those days.

I suspect that a lot of how the various generations feel is more to do with their internal psyche than the difficulties we all manage day to day. Some people will be having a nervous breakdown over which socks to choose and others will sail through life's difficulties regardless which is one reason i don't really like generational comparisons.

The great grandmother's daughter (my granny) went to India to work as a domestic servant(nanny) an then when she got back she married at about 30 and had a baby (my mother) and then her husband died at work when the baby was only 9 months old. So that was not then a very easy life at all. Then my mother like her own mother put babies off until her 30s too to be able to marry, buy a house and save and then she supported my father through her teaching wages for 10 years (he was a medical student after a physics degree).

In fat most of us women have worked. My widowed granny obviously had to. I am a lawyer. My daughters work (as lawyers) including the one with a child.

I think we have better balanced lives by working and having children just like men do. It is equal and better.

I had this conversation with my mum recently, she said when we were growing up there wasn't the expectation that babies and toddlers were taken to what I take mine to (eg I take mine swimming, music class, gymboree as well as other groups I've tried) and she didn't know as many mums as I do, going out to meet for coffee or lunch wasn't done. She also didn't drive at the time so any trip out would have been a mission.

So she spent more time in the home, which I suppose must have been a lot more boring but her life was a lot simpler with fewer expectations. She was a teacher and she didn't go back to work until my sister and I were at school so not everything was harder I guess.