To ask how women did it?

[TheMurk]

Generations before, how did women do this? Manage children and households 24/7 before all the modern luxuries and distractions we have become so used to?

Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children in the late 40s and 50s. My grandfather was a coalman and out all day working. Very traditional roles in that my grandmother was expected to look after everything to with the household and family while my grandfather worked and then did football or the pub when he had free time. He didn’t help her at all and she also had to do everything for him, he even cane home for his breakfast and lunch every day and expected it on the table.

So my grandmother was in the house all with 4 kids, had to do all housework, feeding, shopping, childcare etc. No car, no fancy double Pram’s or scooters to get kids around the streets for shopping, no supermarkets so multiple shops to visit to get the groceries, all cooking needed done, no convenience foods etc etc .

compared to me, I only have 2 kids and all the mod cons etc, plus a DH wfh and helping where he can, but I can barely put a slice of bread in the toaster without the baby screaming because I’ve put them down for 10 seconds, the toddler is (not ideally) occupied by TV but even that barely keeps them going. Toys are played with for minutes and discarded. Too smal for arts and crafts stuff etc.

I am finding it intense, almost unbearable, physically exhausting (not interested in the rights and wrongs of that “you shouldn’t have had kids” etc, I don’t think my grandmother’s generation made much conscious effort to think that deeply about having children, it was just what you did).

I’m interested in the practicalities of it. Did they just let the baby scream and hang of their leg while they made soup?

Did they just turn a blind eye to toddlers jumping off chairs while they did the laundry?

Did they let them roll about fighting and pulling each other’s hair because they were pressing the husbands clothes?

I can’t get any housework done at all, it’s just a constant merry go round of lifting the baby, managing the toddler, feeding them, cleaning up after feeding them, entertaining them, starting all over again.

How did they do it?

I have no idea! One of my great grandmothers had 18 children - 5 died in infancy, two more in adolescence, and another two died in their 20s. She died at 49, the day before her only daughter got married.
She and her husband had occupied 3 rooms with all those children, surviving on his wages alone until the eldest children started working.

I hunk there was much more community support, it takes a village and all that.

The older kids took a huge amount of responsibility for the younger ones. The mums worked together or with other neighbours and friends.

Older members of the family were often close by, sometimes even in the same house.

Kids had more freedom and less time indoors generally. My gran used to tell us of heading out early doors and not returning until dark. Everyone knew everyone and the kids just roamed I suppose.

We are fairly rural though so That may not be the case everywhere.

Even was I was a child in the eighties there as much less fear and less parental input. We used to play out all day from a very, very young age.

It gets easier

They didn’t work on the whole.

Honestly I think yes, they did just let kids 'get on with it' and only stopped them doing obviously dangerous stuff. Previous generations just didn't 'entertain' their children. They played with their siblings, their toys included household objects (wooden spoon and pan etc) and people of all ages expected less. One good thing to come out of this for us is that my children have learnt to occupy themselves more as DH and I have WFH and just not been able to go on play dates, round the shops in town, to a softplay etc.
Being a married woman was physically hard work!

I imagine any older siblings were expected to help - much more than kids do now certainly. So childcare, chopping kindling, feeding chickens etc would not necessarily be done by the mother alone.

Meals too probably were tried & tested meals that fed quite a few people with vegetables & grains or bread to bulk them up. Soups, meat stews, porridge etc. But then war time meant lots of sacrifices & rationing too. Lots of ingenuity needed.

My mum was born in 1930, & said often to us as kids that she had loved bread & dripping sandwiches for a treat. She too knew how to prepare & serve a roast dinner for their family of 6 by the time she was 10 years old. Some of these stories I think too were part of her efforts for us to help more at home.

My 1st husband was one of 9 children in his family & his Mum had a system to manage getting things done, usually with her 4 older kids each getting a toddler to mind/ watch out for, & her the baby. But that was in the 1960s & early 1970s.

I think children entertained themselves a lot more in past years. Now it seems that parents always need to be interacting with their child. When I used to stay with my grandmother, she might spend an hour playing a board game or whatever with me in the afternoon but the rest of the time I was expected to play by myself (can't really give examples re my own mum as she was neglectful anyway!). It just wouldn't have occurred to me to "play up" and demand attention, and I think most kids were the same back then. I'm often shocked when people say they're up with their toddlers at 5 or 6am! When I was a kid (and also when I had my own DC, who are now adults), that just wouldn't be tolerated. Any attempts to get up at that time would be met with a firm "back to bed"! We/they soon learned!

I think they did just leave babies to cry. I mean, obviously they fed them and changed them but once they'd done all they could, if the baby was going to cry they left them to it. I am purely basing this on what my great-grandmother used to say - she fed her babies every 4 hours then swaddled them and put them in the garden in the pram where they would sleep or cry until it was time for another feed! I assume she was fairly typical in that behaviour but may, of course, be wrong!

Different times and mores- babies would get whacked for whining and clambering up Mum’s leg or put in a play pen, so they wouldn’t pester. Babies would be looked after by older siblings and sent out to play. And sadly that lack of supervision led to much larger rate of childhood accidents.

Methods of discipline we would regard as abusive and levels of supervision we would regard as neglectful were the norm. I imagine in 50-100 years much of what is seen as good parenting practice now will be looked on very differently.

People lived close by to family and things like washing was done once a week !
Didn't have as much stuff as we do now.
Not so many rules and refs so children could stay with whoever whilst the mums worked.
A lot of women took in washing or worked at home. Many more were
just stay at home mums.
The washing machine was one of life's much better inventions!

From what I've gathered from listening to my great grandparents and grandparents (and to some extent my own parents) mothers had a lot of support from family and neighbours and children all hung around together and played out all day as long as the weather was decent. I also love in a country where I work with immigrants from Sri Lanka and India who are from fairly rural areas and they all helped their mothers from an early age - cooking cleaning helping out with siblings etc. I appreciate my family a lot more now I live 3000 miles away as I don't have that extended support network

I think children were pretty much left to their own devices. Allowed to roam with other children. My mum was the eldest of 4 and from a very young age she was mum to her siblings. Going home from school to cook dinner for everyone because my gran worked. At weekends she was left in charge of the other children, and at around 12 was taking her 2 year old sister out to play for the whole day.
When she was 6 and her sister was 5 they were left to make their own way to school, 2 bus rides away.
Same went for my dad's family. He was one of 6 and the 2 eldest girls were left to take care of the younger children
Also think there was a lot more outside help. Think a lot of women pulled together and helped each other.

I talked a lot with my grandmother about this and she said that she thought that for a lot of things it was actually easier. She stayed at home and raised four children but as soon as they were able, they were outside playing with friends and it was totally expected that everyone kept an eye out on each others' children. She also travelled around by train with four children and again, she said if she needed to take one to the toilet then she would look around the train carriage and give the baby to someone to hold (usually a soldier as she trusted a man in uniform - can you imagine?!) and that was that. It was totally acceptable to ask for help and crucially, to trust most people to give it to you. That's not to say that it wasn't hard and tiring but she said she never felt lonely. I don't think people nowadays understand how fundamentally changed attitudes are now to mothering - in the 70s my mother used to leave me in the front garden to sleep in the pram. When I was five I was off exploring the woods with my friends and wouldn't come home for hours - no adults around. Compare that with my experience of living in a flat with three children and having to accompany them to the park to play because it is frowned upon to leave kids alone nowadays! We have succeeded in isolating mothers from each other and also blame them for not loving their isolation!

I remember my gran telling me she would put my dad in his big old pram (1940’s) and park him up down in the orchard for his naps, well out of earshot of the house, if he cried he cried, or watched the leaves moving.
He was her youngest and then she just got on with doing several jobs at once.

(Sorry for lack of paragraphs in previous post!)

Also, not everyone had the same experience in the past, of course. I recommend the fantastic book "Can any mother help me?" which explores the experiences of a group of women who felt isolated in the 1930s and helped each other out by writing to each other.

www.amazon.co.uk/Can-Any-Mother-Help-Me-ebook/dp/B005G21COA?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

The washing machine was one of life's much better inventions!

Although standards have increased so more washing has to be done! I hate the folding

This book will give you a decent idea. In short, it was hard work and standards were lower.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/52855.Inside_the_Victorian_Home

Having more labour-saving devices like vacuum cleaners, washing machines etc hasn't translated into more leisure time for women, weve adjusted to expect things to be cleaner and more effort put into caring for kids. We could all do with stepping back a bit.

Kids were not in the house so much, they were sent out. Babies were often left outdoors in prams or cared for by older siblings.

They worked all the time and were knackered all the time.

And I second totallyyesno's recommendation of Can Any Mother Help Me?

That book has really stayed with me, it's like reading mumsnet but back in time!

Babies would be left to cry if a feed wasn’t due or nappy didn’t need changing.

Younger children were expected to entertain themselves and only bother mum if they genuinely needed something

Older kids were expected to help or bugger off and not come home until it was time for tea

it's like reading mumsnet but back in time!

That's a really good description! Great, isn't it?

I'm another who'll recommend Can Any Mother Help Me? - it's an absolutely brilliant read.

They say that comparison is the thief of joy. In the past, girls would have married very young after an adolescence spent caring for younger siblings. They wouldn't have experienced being young and free.

Nowadays we have a relatively carefree childhood, followed by university and often an extended period of childlessness in our 20s where we only have to worry about feeding and looking after ourselves. plenty of time and energy for me time. When we compare that period of time with early motherhood, there is a huge contrast.

If you look at orthodox jewish women, they often have 4-7 kids and as they are living in 2020, the same problems you and I face- high cost of living which makes it difficult to survive without dual incomes, but they get through it because its what everyone around them are doing.

This one is good too
www.goodreads.com/book/show/2705366-dream-babies

I agree that people had more social (usually family) support in those days. I think the nuclear family is a fairly recent and western thing. In the old days people would live with or very close to their family and they'd all help each other. I see this still happening with my in laws in India. When SIL had a child she had her MIL, SIL, and dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins heavily involved. Helping with cooking, cleaning, laundry, minding the child etc. Here in West this just doesn't happen to the same extent.