AIBU to wonder how some people coped in former times?

[Flyingfish2019]

When they had 12 children, husband was working down the mines 16 hours a day, no transportation, no frozen/canned food, no fridge, constantly pregnant. No help if somebody suffered a disability (and I think this was likely working down the mines those days).

I just wondered because I have far less then 12 children and dh does not work down the mines and still we are often soooooo tired. Children keeping us awake play a role in this... how would we cope if there was 12 of them and we had to live under the conditions described above?

Reading the comments above, many women suffered with their 'nerves' or couldn't cope in some way so were sent to asylums as the poster above mentioned. Some scarpered. There wasn't any escape and divorce was unheard of. Plus many men coming back from the war were so traumatised they were unrecognisable. Children didn't;'t know their own fathers. This happened in my family.
My grandmother in law divorced her husband for cruelty (very very unusual) as he was so screwed up by the war he used to chase her round the garden with a gun amongst other things.

The book of Call the Midwife is another fascinating read. You’ve probably all seen the tv series, I haven’t so can’t compare, but the book is very interesting, obviously with a particular focus on how poor women coped with pregnancy / parenting.

Can't post the pic, but the lady had 13 children ranging from adult to.baby.

One of the good things is that kids were exlected to entertain themsrlves and play outside all day.
In tje summer months dd is outside all evening playing with friends...she loves it and so do i as i can get on with work. We do stuff together but kids need to be outside in the fresh air, using their imagination and yes...taking risks. Better then being glued to a tablet.

Typos...agggr!

Dd has told me that the best thing about her childhood is the freedom that her and her local friends have to play outside and go to each others houses ( dosn't happen much...mistly they are in the park).

When my parents were kids, they were kicked out of the house and expected to play out all day in all weathers. They had to come back for lunch and dinner.

That was my experience - I'd make some sandwiches and go off for the day and had to be back before dark. I used to paddle in streams, climb trees, play on railways and all kinds of things but they were fun and nobody knew (cared?) as long as I wasn't under their feet because they didn't have time for children.

DH's grandad was the eldest of 9, born 1908. 2 up 2 down. All the children survived. There was little expectation in education for SEN to be identified.

No holidays, scant food, no NHS, fear of the workhouse kept people going and families did help each other when a man was sick.

Wages went on rent and food. No outings, no restaurants, no holidays, no trips to town. No car, no new furniture.

DH's grandad said they were happy and proud though. Oh and he was a clever boy who devoured books and his teacher begged his parents for him to stay at school. He went down the mine for the first time on his 14th birthday. On his 18th he walked 30 miles to Cardiff and joined up. Every one of his 6 children went to the grammar school and to uni and college. He was v proud he had three bedrooms and the girls didn't have to share with the girls.

I was a child of the 1970s and remember my mum washing with a machine that linked up to the tap in the kitchen and had a mangle over the top.
Our hot water initially came from the kitchen stove boiler, and we had to save up rubbish to burn for "bath night".
We didn't get central heating until the mid 1970s (late Victorian house) but we did already have an indoor loo as well as an outside one.

My nanna kept her twin tub longer than my Mum - she went to an automatic washing machine in the mid 70s, but Nanna still had her twin tub going in the late 80s.

A lot depended on the age of the house, probably, and how much money you had to make the necessary updates. My parents weren't massively wealthy and everything had to be saved up for.

Other than that life was shit i rekon!

My FIL is in his 70s, and by all accounts btw was poor and had a tough upbringing but he is amazed at the physical love and attention that DH lavishes on 1yo DS - he's even gone as far to say he is envious. I find that quite interesting - he doesn't subscribe to "things were better in my day" attitude.

My grandad is the same, he’s in his 90s now and when I had my baby he said he’d never pushed a pram or changed a nappy despite having 3 children and he regrets it now.

it was bloody hard.

fucks me right off when people idealise the olden days - suicide was absolutely rife- especially post wars but rarely mentioned, alcoholism wide-spead, wife-beating normal and yes, many many people were thrown into asylums.

Girls with the boys. Obvs had to go downthe mine at 14 for financial reasons.

Fascinating thread. The Who Do You Think You Are episode with Jeremy Paxman shows him learning about one of his ancestors - something like his great great grandmother. He sits in a tiny house remodelled to represent the type of home she would have lived in. He is told that she died in her early 30s - from "exhaustion". The realisation of the harshness of her life overwhelms him.

Life has changed beyond recognition with the advent of inoculation, birth control, sanitation, and so much else. Unimaginably harsh is the way I tend to think of the life you describe in your OP.

If we're being honest a lot of what was normal for children then would be considered abusive now.

That said I always used to feel jealous of the freedom children had when reading books like The Famous Five. I was bussed to school so didn't even get that level of independence in my teenage years.

I'm guessing the lower number of cars made life a bit more local, I can't imagine kids then being driven to the nearest football club or dance class like they are today.

OP have you watched Back In Time For Tea? It shows just how hard life was and what little families had to eat, at one point there was one slice of bacon that would be pressed on each family members slice of bread before being passed to the father for him to eat.

I don’t think it was “community spirit” or that people were somehow tougher back then, it’s just that people didn’t have any choice and they had to make do, they had no way out.

this book is really good if your interested in women's lives in the past OP.
Researchers in the 1930's interviewed a number of "working class wives" in detail about their daily routines and the state of their health. As you would suspect, things were pretty hard.
Really long days- up at 5 and in bed late in the night.
Backbreaking work: washing by hand, scrubbing everything, beating rugs etc
Very poor diet-the women would sacrifice their own nutrician for the sake of men and children.
Women simply not understanding the concept of leisure time or leisure activities. Researchers would ask them "what do you like to do to relax?" and they would answer with "knitting jumpers for the kiddies" or "mending". Women cited breastfeeding as a rare opportunity to sit down. Every Secound of the day was given over in doing things for other people.
Men not helping at all. Even if they were unemployed.
Everyone had some kind of health problem, generally anemia. Some women were carrying out this gruelling work routine with disabilities: missing limbs, polio in childhood etc.

My father - who was a young child in the 2 WW was brought up with the notion that showing love and affection would 'spoil' a child. He was very uncomfortable with the love and affection I showed towards my children and felt with boys in particular it would not teach them to be 'men'. Very sad. This is obviously how he was brought up and he had a very poor relationship with his parents as a result. His Dad was a stranger to him when he returned from the war and they never connected again. My Dad was sent off to Cadet camp at 16 living away from home , which was a huge shock to him and he never really recovered. I think they wanted one less mouth to feed and for him to be out of sight and mind.

I agree about being careful around the idea of not living as long as us.
A lot of people were dying young. Of illnesses in childhood or at war/fights etc... the others had a very similar life expectancy than us. You can actually see that in cemeteries.

I think that what helped is their diet actually.
Some people had not a lot. But those who could eat ate a diet that had no sugar and preservatives etc... I’m sure that made a big difference in their health.
There was also a community around them rather than being so isolated as we are now. It has been proven to make a huge difference and that people live longer when they are not alone.
I have wondered before about life being simpler and having less expectations. Maybe that also meant, that despite periods where they wouod have struggled to eat/have illnesses etc..., they were less stressed than we are and therefore happier and in better health??

well, during the 20s and the 40s/50s, vast amounts of people were walking around with ptsd. - 60000 people were killed in the blitz alone.
most people simply werent 'happy' - they were drinking, fighting, killing themselves- if thats not stress i dont know what is.

i genuinely believe this rose-tinted view of britains history has contributed to the mess we're in today.

Diets weren't healthier for poor people. Okay, they didn't have preservatives and sugar, but a lot of poor people were seriously malnourished!

My grandmother went into service very young. She was terrified of the young man of the house who was intent on raping her. She married to escape it, a man she didn't really love. Her brother in law was very bright and wanted so much to carry on at school but his parents couldn't afford Grammar school. He knew all the names of the flowers in Latin. There was so little opportunity for bright kids, particularly girls.
My great grandmother got married at 19 because she fell pregnant and was utterly miserable and took it out on my grandmother, the child she was pregnant with.

Facinating thread.

If you are close to the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, there is some amazing exhibits to do with Victorian childhood. Many of the elixirs for children contained drugs like morphine - I’m sure sleeping through the night wasn’t such a problem! A bit like how meletonin is given to children in the US. Old glass and China feeding bottles, which were actually death traps as the twisted mouthpiece became a trap for bacteria, killing babies.

You might also want to read up on Changlings. A very sad phenomenon across the world which probably resulted in the death of lots of disabled children. Steve Silberman covers this also in relation to autistic children in his book Neurotribes. I have two autistic dc and often feel sad about how they would have been treated in the past, particularly as it seems many of dh and my ancestors had ASD (pretty obvious to us when told about their circumstances).

I’ll be reading some of the recommended books above if my dc dont demand all my time!

I don't think the olden days are so far back either. A neighbour of mine had had polio as a child. This was very common then. Even in the 50's and 60's women were put on tranquillisers for their 'nerves'. Basically depression. My mother in law was on them for years and when she stopped taking them suffered dreadful dreadful symptoms for years afterwards because of the way they messed up her system.
Women were routinely depressed lonely and bored, stuck at home all day with endless chores and no outlet for their intelligence. Often having married very young, in early twenties.

How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a fascinating read on Victorian life

It’s very simply written about how the day unfolds (starting with the knocker-upper who were often orphan children waking up factory workers at 3am by tapping on their window with a gas lantern and how they would get ready what they would have for breakfast, getting to work etc) for the Victorians across the different social classes and ways of life, urban, farmers etc

Life was physically so much harder for the majority and people just survived

And many Victorian attitudes and ways of life were still very present in my grandparents generation (born 1912 - and 1918)