AIBU to wish I could be a 50s style housewife?!

[bigchanges]

Might just be that the past few shifts at work have been awful (think violent) and that I am stuck because the hours fit round my life and there are few jobs here.

BUT! I wish I could be a full on 50s, twee, stepford style housewife!

Pretty apron, spending my days baking and cleaning, wearing pretty dresses and pearls. No more stressful decisions. No more getting punched in the face at work. Gardening and embroidery all the way.

Lyingwitch - I have been looking for other jobs. I stepped out of admin and into care because I needed hours that I could fit around my life. And now I feel pretty trapped. I like caring for people but I don't like the violence.

I don't think there will ever be a shortage of care staff. There are always loads applying for every job. Plus you don't need qualifications. They don't help - even with a level 3 it is still minimum wage.

Maybe it sounds stupid to have a little 50s fantasy. But my old fashioned hobbies are what get me through a bad shift. Today I was punched in the face 2 hours into a 10 hour shift. 3 days ago I was stabbed with a fork and spat on. Last week I had a handful of hair ripped out.

Right now I would love to have no decisions to make at all.

You will always have decisions to make @bigchanges

My favourite Unachievable scenario is fantasy house shopping!

I imagine I've won a million (no more because otherwise I lose focus and get distracted) and imagine my life and the house I'd buy and how I'd help my kids.

I get what you did and it's escapism. Most people do it I think. But making decisions for yourself is really important. Maybe wish for time to go on hold for 24 hours. Or wish for a time machine. Anything you like. But still where you have control. Because you're still amazing even if you don't feel like it. Don't give that away

I'm sorry things are so shit for you OP. I think fantasy daydreams are wonderful for helping us get through the week when its just so utterly grinding. I disagree with some, and think it IS ok to just want to stop having to make decisions, stop being responsible and have someone take care of YOU for a while. God knows I need that every once in a while. Hope things start to look up for you soon

I'm just picking up on this post right at the beginning

Getting legally raped, having to birth whatever babies get conceived, getting legally beaten up, not allowed to own property, in most places not allowed to have your own bank account.....

Can I just ask if all your fathers and grandfather were rapists because that's what Idontdowindows is inferring. I'm not sure what backwater she hails from but women have been allowed to own property since the dawn of time, the Married Womens Property Act was abolished in 1870 and as far as I'm aware there has never been a bar to any woman having her own bank accounts.

The crap that comes out of this forum as verbatim fact beggars belief sometimes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_Women%27s_Property_Act_1870

A little escapism is great for helping us cope. I have a fantasy where I am on a spaceship just traveling around the stars, and it is so futuristic that we finally have reached the point where we all like and respect each other. That's mine...I go there in my head when I am feeling stressed or low and it actually helps!! Don't give up hope, OP that things will be better.

Oh love I really feel for you, I'm also a support worker in a similar profession (drugs and alcohol support) and it's so so hard. I ended up being signed off with stress last year, I couldn't get another job and I honestly thought about doing myself in on the really bad days. You have my total understanding re the fantasy life daydreaming, even if what you meant seems to have gone over so many people'a heads.

(And like the digs about women being off their tits on mothers little helper are so different from the 'wine moms' and 'thank god its gin o' clock!' Parents who apparently can't get through the day without alcohol all over Facebook 😂)

my parents were a young couple in the 50's but had kids in the 60's.
It was hard work for the woman and rationing was still about until about 1958 iirc.
My mum looked back on those early years with fondness, they were very happy and my dad treated her with respect, no way would he hurt her.
Just the same as today, perhaps it's worse today the violence we hear about in relationships, and the level of divorce.
Couples don't seem to last long these days.

NewYearNewMe18, if you don't see a crime as a crime and Society, let alone your religion, is pressurising you to fulfill your duties and banging on about conjugal rights, then you get a Woman who feels that she can't refuse and a Man who doesn't need her to be enthusiastic, just not fight him. Today we would view that as coercion. As well as that the threat of violence/abandonment/divorce etc would be enough.

Both my Nan and Mum earned the equivalent to the Men around them, but were denied Mortgages and Business Loans. On paper a bank may have promised one thing, but it was up to the Bank Manager and if he had the view that a Woman shouldn't own property, then that was it. That was Working Class Women. Do you think the Racism and sexism Acts of the 60's were implemented because the legislation existed?

If you were a 1950's Housewife, as my Mum was (but wasn't because she always worked) then you grew up in the 30's, which was grim.

Interesting timeline. Apparently it was only 1982 that landlords in pubs were forbidden to serve women alone, tendering their own money (paraphrasing but hunk that's about right!)
1982!

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history

I find the terrified little woman completely domineered by her husband scenario a bit of a (possibly unfounded) generalisation, tbh.
Some women were total matriarchs, ruling the roost completely and held the husbands completely under their thumb.
Bit like now, in fact.

There's endless women on FB and other social media platforms who can't seem to get through an average day without opening a bottle of wine, or having several glugs of gin.

Convictions for rape, marital or not, are depressingly low.

Women have always been allowed to own property.

Women in the uk could not get a mortgage alone for quite some time

1970 Working women were refused mortgages in their own right as few women worked continuously. They were only granted mortgages if they could secure the signature of a male guarantor. (www.eoc.org.uk)

No, I am not inferring that as you well known NewYear, but you go right ahead believing that the 1950s were some glorious easy paradise for women.

OP, which area of care are you involved in? Care work doesn’t have to involve caring for violent people. Have you looked at other areas such as physical disabilities, palliative care, community work if you have a car?

I used to get biffed by the elderly sometimes, but it was an improvement on mental health care where you do get beaten.

Efrig - I am in a challenging behaviour care home. Back again to cover a night shift tonight and not looking forward to it. There just aren't a lot of jobs around here sadly.

OP, I do understand what you are saying. I worked in MH for years and in the end, I just couldn’t take it. I quit to become a stay at home parent.

I lasted 5 months I was bored to death, got a new job in a different field and now I’m happy again (although getting rid of the ex also helped!).

Good things about being a housewife in the 50s: it was normal to send sheets out to laundry, and they'd be delivered back a week later clean and pressed. Grocer and butcher both delivered, and gave a present to your kids at Christmas. If your kids were sick in bed, the GP would visit them at home.
Bad things: No automatic washing machine, no tumble drier, probably no central heating so there were the coal fires to look after, quite possibly no fridge - the fact that a larder worked quite well to keep the week's delivery of meat gives some idea of typical house temperatures, anything that didn't get delivered required you to walk - few women drove. Rationing didn't end completely till about 1954. Available foodstuffs were limited, pasta was exotic, apart from macaroni added to stews or made into a milk pudding, there was no pizza or yogurt. No pre-school or mother and toddler groups - it was very isolating, especially if you'd been subject to "directed labour" in the war and had met and married someone out of your area ... I could go on for a long time...

I'd go up the wall with boredom within a week.

Women have always been allowed to own property. That's a bit of a sweeping statement! Until 1870, any property, inheritance, earnings acquired after the woman married automatically became the property of the husband.

Well, I can't say either of my DGM's enjoyed being 50's housewives, one had the shit kicked out of her by her violent DH, and the other was bored out of her tree and left to raise by DH and Duncle virtually by herself because her lovely DH unfortunately had to travel a lot with work (they didn't care much about family time in the 50's).

However, I totally get why you would feel that way. If it's any consolation by formally SAH DH just went back to work last year as a carer for a boy with severe autism who gets quite violent, so someday's he comes home and asks why he wanted to go back to work in the first place. Other days he loves it.

Vile responses on what should have been a lighthearted thread full of sympathy for OP. I think more women are on anti depressants now. Women are raped now — only became a crime in 90s so why are pp picking on 1950’s era rather than 80’s or any other decade? Many women had loving marriages with husbands who cherished them — divorce rate nowadays being 50% are marriages any better now? Women now are working and doing all of the domestic chores as well, not so much having it all as doing it all. And as so many women were housewives then there was more of a community, so not lonely.

OP, I can’t tell you how much I admire the work you do. Can you change your job or find a different home to work in? I realise this is not a simple or easy solution. Wishing you the best.