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Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children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?

Yup women not working is a myth. Being 'raised by the village' or with relatives help is a myth. My mum had no relatives to help with childcare nearby and neither did DH's mum

Life was fucking hard and no one tried to be perfect, was expected to be perfect or was expected to raise their child from day one with a focus on getting a first from Oxford or even an office based job.

Leaving a baby to cry was of course fine. It's not a big deal. There wasn't so much consumerism or choice so kids didn't have much to tantrum about or demand. There were no 'kiddy things' such as food menus or restaurants catering specifically for them. They had to rightly fit into adult life. You take it or you leave it. If you left it you soon learned there was no alternative and frankly that's life. Parents went about their business and kids had to deal with it.

Not neglect. Not by any stretch.

I think someone else mentioned lack of after school lessons. My sister and I used to have swimming lessons in the 80s but it wasn't considered normal and my brothers played football but that was free. Nothing else and we didn't expect it.
I can remember my mum being thrilled in 92 when we got central heating. Up until then we just had night storage heaters.
I think there was less pressure in a way but that might just be me. Where we lived most mums didn't work or were expected to so the majority stayed at home while the dads went out to work. Nowadays it's expected that both parents work but some dad's don't help out at home.

Malin Leaving a baby to cry was of course fine. It's not a big deal. that was actually only the accepted "Truth" during pockets of history and pockets of society. It is by no means a blanket truth applied to the entire past. Mothers carried thier babies in shawls or cloths in many societies (in Britian and Europe in modern industrial past not only in tribal cultures) in many, many communities. Many parents at all points in history have avoided leaving babies to cry and have not thought it was fine or natural.

It's actually physically fairly much impossible to leave a baby to cry if you're breastfeeding.

Menus were simple, same meal on same day of the week, every week. Shopping was done weekly, enough for all meals, no choices, no fads catered for, eat it or go without. Children were seen and not heard, expected to go out and play while mum did the house work, and reappear at meal times. No elf and safety. Not entertained! Children helped with chores, and it had nothing to do with receiving pocket money.

My mum's a historian and told me that in Victorian times and earlier and later, women would work in the fields, and simply leave their swaddled babies in the hedge and feed and change them every few hours. I'm not 100% sure, but it sounds plausible certainly at harvest times with all hands in deck.

She gave birth to me in the 70s, no family in this country, lots of shops refused to serve her because she was foreign. Lots of wandering the streets with a pram and making friends with another woman in a similar situation who had twins. The mum of twins would manage to get out and buy food in the mornings. Mum asked her what she did after that.

Just sit on the back doorstep and cry until my husband gets home.

Both mum and twins' mum took valium.

I do think expectations have got too stupidly high of mothers - see MN threads. And the paranoia over 'strangers' and CRB checks I think has gone so far, it's leading to children not getting opportunities.

I recall my dad asking if I was actually scared that my baby would be stolen from a buggy in the ladies toilets while I was in a cubicle. I had to tell him no, not really, but I was terrified of all the bossy women who told me I should be!

With disability etc I figure dc1 got a second-hand level of parenting, lots more benign neglect. Working OK so far.

My HV described it to me as formula is more filling than BM. So babies act like they have just had a massive takeaway and go back to sleep. They go longer between feeds plus the fresh air babies slept a lot.

This is totally and utter complete shit

andawe
Have you got any better explanation how mothers were able to get babies to go 3-4 hours between feeds and not have to worry about cluster feeding either.

I don't know any breast fed babies that would go 3-4 hours. Most BFing mums think they are lucky if they get 2 hours.

It's a recognised fact that formula fed babies feed less, as formula is more filling . Why would you dismiss that as totally and utter complete shit?
One of those statements is utter shit, certainly...

I believe it's (partly, at least) because formula is harder to digest, not more filling.

Still seems unnecessary to be so dismissive!

They didn't work. Nowadays- we have to balance work and children.

My mother always worked, part-time until I went to school, and once I went to school, full-time.

Not so much consumerism and if you couldn't afford it you went with out. If it was essential and you needed credit, you didn't mention it or you were a failure.
Some people want more so work more, some still live the same as they always did.
Mums stayed at home it was deemed bad if they "had" to work as it meant the man couldn't provide well enough.
There were latch key kids, they came to no harm.
Anyone could help out with your kids if you wanted them to, no OTT safeguarding.
Kid walked to school and played out, no being ferried to clubs and activities.
If you did go somewhere like Scouts, Church groups, youth club type of things, you walked there and back.
We lived a lot cheaper so parents didn't need to earn as much, no luxuries like today.

@cherish123, did you read any of the thread? I know it's long, but roughly one in ten posts is coming out with that nonsense about 'women didn't work,' and another one in ten is irritated people pointing out that they did.

I dunno why we have to make ourselves better by perpetuating these myths about the women who came before us.

My mum was one of 6 and her eldest sister would do most of caring. They also used to be out roaming most of the day doing good knows what! Couldn’t imagine doing that with my three lol

I just read a book called "The Victorian House" (I recognize some aspects of MN) and another called: (roughly translated) "The Brideschool" (all about what was expected of a 1950ties housewife).

And children were allowed way more independence: outdoor play, way to and from school, way to and from sport or choir, neighbours hand an eye on all children came to the rescue or told them off if necesssary.

They probably chucked all the kids who were old enough out to play on the street or to play each other whilst they did other stuff.

With *

I know how my mother coped. She taught my sisters and I to do the housework from a very young age, we were responsible for all bed making, vacuuming, dusting, ironing and general housekeeping. My mother cooked and did the laundry.
Once we learned to cook in secondary school we did a lot of that too.
It was the norm in Ireland in the 70s, at least among the families we knew.

For my own experience as a child growing up in the late 70's and 80's and talking to relatives, women did not pander to their children's every need. As a child living rurally, i spent most of the day even as a young child outside. I used to walk for miles across countryside on my own visiting horses, plodding through streams and rivers and building dens. No one ever bothered looking for me.

I think now mother's spend to much time mollycoddling their kids. Kids do not need and should not expect attention all the time. They need to be taught this from a young age.

They strapped the baby in the big Silver-Cross-style pram after breakfast and left him or her in the garden (or even on the street outside in poor areas) until lunch time or the next feed. Fresh air was good for babies and they could look at the scenery or sleep. If they believed in the prevailing child care theories, ie Frederick Truby King's, they didn't go to pick them up or demand feed them because it was bad for them.

Washing would have been done via a mangle prior to the washing machine too.
It depends on the era as different eras had different inventions.

Tinned food came in in 1800s at the earliest , ready meals in around 1950 if I remember correctly .

@totallyyesno

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!

This is SO true. I live in Germany and thankfully it's still fairly acceptable here to let kids play out. My two have been able to play out in the park since they were about 6 and 4 - now they are older (12 and 10) I can leave them in charge of their 4-year-old brother for hours at a time. They have been also sent to the supermarket to buy things for me since they were about 7 or 8, which is very useful. I don't always know where they are, but I have a lot of phone numbers of people who live close whose kids they play with, and we can usually track them down easily because someone always knows where they are. It does mean that we end up feeding more than just our own kids, especially in the summer when they are outdoors a lot - they all come swarming in when they're hungry or thirsty. What I haven't cracked is getting them to be really useful at home. They will make themselves sandwiches or an omelette but leave the kitchen in such a state that I'm not tempted to teach them to cook more...

As far as the "women didn't work " thing ,once a woman was married it was often common to fire her (I'd suppose before birth control was common maybe in 60s) as it was thought that motherhood exand a job didn't mix and it would have made it extremely difficult to have one. It was common for working class girls to work until they were married. It was seen as shameful for women to work , but the working classes had to (but they were looked down upon for this, mainly by middle /upper class people). The upper class ladies certainly would not have worked.

Thanks for the book recommendations, they look pretty cool.

My grandmother only had my mother to take care of, and then me when I was small, so I don't imagine things were overly difficult for her. I don't remember her ever being stressed... but maybe she was just very good at shielding me from such things!

I can tell you however, that I raised my three largely by myself, while having a couple of part-time jobs (learning support assistant, and freelance writing at home in the evening - so nothing particularly arduous or draining).

This was during the '80s, and while I did have some mod-cons (eg a vacuum cleaner and an oven with a timer!), some things, such as laundry, were very much a chore, as I only had a twin tub. No tumble drier, just a clothes horse. But at least I didn't have to wash everything by hand, so I wasn't exactly hard done by!

I had no family for support, so had to do everything myself. The kids helped with chores when they were a bit older but in the main, it was down to me. I also grew most of our own food, and cooked everything from scratch, including baking bread, cakes, biscuits, etc.

I would have loved it if mine had gone out to play but they were always happy to just stay indoors or in the garden. We lived in a really rural area, surrounded by fields and woods... but they never wanted to venture far by themselves. (Obviously I'm talking about when they were older, not little'uns!)

At the time, I didn't think anything of it - things needed doing, so they got done... but that was the case for most people. When I look back on it, I honestly have no idea how I found time for everything. I must have had so much energy back then... or been super-organised.

My kids are grown-up now, with families of their own, and I have a partner who does his fair share of chores, shopping, cooking, etc, and yet I never seem to have time for much else, other than work!

(And reading AIBU when I finish for the day!)

I grew up in the sixties. Rurally . My mother chucked us outside at 8 am and we were allowed back in for lunch if we were around. Other than that 6pm for Supper was the only rule.

My Nextdoor neighbour had 3 ponies and two kids so from the age of 7 I was out riding on the road . No adult supervision ever.. used to go for miles. Sometimes fell off but no phones so just had to get on with it. ! Rode home once with a broken ankle.. only found out after village doctor came round a week later (for a different matter )

I went to Brownies in the village but my mother never took us to 'activities' as we didn't need them. Made our own fun . Went to grammar school after village primary, got a job in a factory and saved up to travel the world. Came home and 'settled down'.. had 3 kids. Mum is still alive . Dad died when I was ten.
I had the. BEST childhood. I feel sorry for kids restricted organised lives and have tried hard with mine to replicate it.