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Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children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

Well now I’m glad I posted, nearly didn’t. So many memories (I am old!), so many resonated with me

How did things change? No idea, but here’s some thoughts, just guesses, they’re not answers.

Societal attitudes change slowly over time.

Second World War speeded up change. Women had to go out to work meaning some children became almost feral.

Did guilt play apart? If I’m not there when they get home, should I give them more time than usual?

Dr Spock encouraged parents to see their children as individuals.

Did that introduce the concept of Psychological correctness - there isn’t one way to bring up a child?

Politicians were making decisions that were more humane. Even before the war things like pensions and paid time off were being introduced. A week’s holiday meant parents had to spend time with their children.

Liberal thinking (in a non-political sense) was beginning to develop and ideas about social engineering emerged.

Plowden Report 1967 (much criticised since) brought into schools ideas of a different way of learning - based on I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and understand - old Chinese proverb (thinks, are there any new Chinese proverbs?)

I think people expected less out of life too, new their place in the world.
ou worked whether it was out of home, or inside home.
Sometimes just being can take all day.
Lighting a fire, shopping for food, preparing a meal, washing up, etc can take a full morning depending on what you use.

My mum was largely stay at home when I was younger. I remember her getting her first tumble dryer and being bloody delighted. Nonetheless, she was constantly frazzled, very impatient, a bit liberal with a whip around the backside with the wooden spoon, and certainly didn't EVER try to entertain us. Exhausted by 8. We were booted outside during the day. We had an au pair when I was really young when my baby brother was born so not totally without help. At the age of 8 or so I was going on long bike rides. She wouldn't see me all day. I think we're now too concerned with entertaining kids as well as doing everything else. But you need help - be it a cleaner, grannie, au pair etc etc. The less help, the more stressful I guess

I think people expected less out of life too

Nowadays there are so many expectations on everyone, that are impossible to live up to. It's not enough to just have a job, it has to be a career and you have to love it and it has to be rewarding and fulfilling and you have to want to be promoted. It's not enough to work then go home at 5 then watch TV with your husband in your 20s, you have to go out and party and drink till 11 and "work hard and play hard". When you have kids you have to entertain them constantly, tutor them so they're "top of their game", drive them to sports clubs, have family days out, have a perfect home, etc.

It's not possible to live up to without feeling like you've failed. Every day I think my job is OK I go on LinkedIn and see all my friends grinning in their smart corporate photos with "senior" and "manager" in their title and feel shit, or when I'm tired after work and want to sit on the sofa I see pictures of cocktail parties and posh dinners on Instagram. I imagine mums feels the same about raising children. With social media it is easy to have ridiculous expectations based on.....well, other people's lies really.

I find this quite interesting as my DH grew up in the 60s, I grew up in the 80s. I sometimes resent the fact that he rarely gets involved with our DC and just gets on with his hobbies or chores at weekends but I guess that was, in a way, his parenting model (his parents were either at work or doing chores, not hobbies)

However I do think there are downsides to more free range parenting. One friend I grew up with was often left more to her own devices and was allowed out alone when she was 4 or 5 (fairly large suburban town, not rural) ...but she got into some quite potentially dangerous situations as a young teen.
Also I know other people in their 50s who really struggled at school, and labelled naughty, or not very bright, and later (in adulthood) discovered they were dyslexic. But their parents had no idea (I know it wasnt known about as much in previous generations but the model of parents not getting involved and kids being more self sufficient would surely make it much harder for parents to be alert to potential difficulties)

Excellent point Beijing

Mind you we are all watching more tv atm

I wasn't shoed out in the 70s but did play outside it's my neighbour and we were allowed to go to the park up the road. We were much freer.

I did put my dc out in the garden in prams in the 90s but obviously brought in if they woke up. It worked well.

@BeatrixPottersAlterEgo, sorry for late reply. The thing with coal was indeed the extra cleaning, and laundry, as DuestotheDirt said. It is not a clean fuel, it contains all sorts of oily substances. Everything surrounding the fire becomes covered with sticky soot and has to be scrubbed, regularly. Similarly you get a lot of smuts in the air, and everything textile becomes covered with it. Laundry apparently went from being a once a month business to once a week purely because of that. Plus, because it's sticky you need stronger soap, which needs activating in hot water, and you need to burn more coal to heat the water.

The shift to wood fires also necessitated the shift in cooking equipment, and the new stuff could not last as long as the old, so more industry was needed to resource the demands of industry. It does make you wonder just who the beneficiaries were.

I can't recommend that series enough, and the others the BBC did with Goodman. It really ties things together. It's been good lockdown viewing!

It's not enough to just have a job, it has to be a career and you have to love it and it has to be rewarding and fulfilling and you have to want to be promoted.
Some at least of that is the extra competition now. For all we're told how wonderful the economy is, most of us are more insecure and paid less for more skills. I don't care what figures the government makes up - there are less jobs available to be shared between us than there used to be. Employer's market.

I sort of know where you're coming from @beijingbikini.

But I think you're being unfair, too. No one should have to feel they have to pretend to 'love' their work if they don't, sure. And I get that it can be middle-class smuggery to insist you have a 'career' and it's oh-so-superior to having a 'job'.

But I also feel for women in the past (and now!) who feel their whole identity is reduced to being 'mum,' and sometimes that does happen because a woman gives up a job she enjoys, or because she doesn't get to find a job that's really rewarding for her, because she's already busy looking after the children or arranging to be home at the right times for school pick-up.

There are lots of women who would feel absolutely shit about having to do a job where they're not very interested. My mum's like this. She's someone who really thrives on solving problems and getting stuff done. By all accounts she was really good at her job before she had children, and it gave her a sense of identity and made her feel happy and productive. Then she had children and felt she had to give it up. In a lot of ways she was quite a good mum, but it's really damaged her in life that she automatically had to take the 'mum' role and do jobs that were just fitting around childcare. For her it wasn't a nice relief, it was really depressing and upsetting.

There are lots of women like that. I'm definitely not hankering after a past when women were expected never to hope for a 'career' and never to enjoy working.

I look at much of society at the moment and I have never felt happier to feel as though I don't belong.
That's not meant as a slur on how other people lead their lives, I believe we should suit ourselves.
I just think the world is crazy, spiralling out of control.
A hill, a tent, horse and waggon is all I want and my freedom to roam.

I get that, I just feel that in the past a job was something to pay the bills, whereas now it has to be your "passion" and has to be fulfilling and a million other things. There aren't enough fulfilling and interesting jobs to go around, most people will end up doing something quite repetitive and mundane. But your job is now expected to be all these things that it just can't be for everyone, just like parenting is, and holidays, and everything really.

Lots of people will never find fulfilment in their jobs, they might find it in a hobby or their family or volunteering, but society nowadays makes you feel like you've failed if you're not career-ing as well as the 30 Under 30 on LinkedIn. Same point goes for all other aspects of life. There is lot of pressure for things to get to this "Insta-worthy" level of living that's just unattainable for most.

I could see why you might be less anxious/depressed being born in a time where there was one thing expected of you, you do that, you can't compare yourself to everyone else because there is no social media, and you just follow the path set out for you. Now there is this paradox of too much choice - should I have done this, or that - and FOMO all the time because of the path not taken.

I think that's still not true or fair.

Sure, there's a tiny minority of people who care about being enormously, unrealistically prestigious, the '30 under 30'. But for most people, it's not about that. For a lot of people a job has never just been something to pay the bills, and that's nothing to do with how 'interesting' or how 'mundane' the job is.

My mum's aunt had to give up a job as a clerk in the post office when she married. Her job was totally repetitive and not at all 'interesting' in itself; she had no career prospects. But she earned her own money, and she saw people all day, and she loved it. When she gave it up she felt miserable because the money all came from her husband and she was cut off from all the human contact.

Same with my partner's mum. She has no qualifications above O Level and she did a range of different jobs, nothing you'd call a career, but she was miserable when she wasn't able to earn money and do something that brought her into contact with people.

If you'd given either of them the chance to look into the future and see how, these days, we're not expected to give up jobs when we have families, they'd have thought we were so lucky.

Oh, and I also think they had the huge pressure to pretend to be happy, too. We have instagram and they didn't, but I know my mum's generation were pressured to feel they should claim to be so happy, because they were SAHMs. My mum told me that her GP (whom she'd gone to see because he was prescribing her antidepressants, FFS) once ticked her off for not being more cheerful, because no man would like to think his wife wasn't glad to be a mother at home with her children.

@BeijingBikini - you've hit the nail on the head here. Being simply content seems no longer to be enough , and in the constant striving for a perfect world many lose the ability to actually enjoy living.

@Devlesko - I know just how you feel, and agree that the world is spiralling out of control. Give me a simple life any day, I want no part in the madness.

Isn't it just a case of what you want to conform to, though.
You don't have to conform to all of it, or even half of what you are told, or told to believe.
I don't mean we should all become free spirited hippies because even i don't intend this, but not fully conform either.
I have no idea how to define myself though and I'm not bothered I'm just me.

BeijingBikini I'm nodding my head at every line of your posts

"Isn't it just a case of what you want to conform to, though."

There was a poster above whose 9 year old wasn't allowed to walk alone to school by the head teacher, so there are obviously other people preventing parents from giving their children some autonomy.

Gwen

You missed my point, I was speaking ito things you can control.
I'm not suggesting if your boss wants you in at 9am you wander in at 10am.
More like generally speaking, you don't have to do everything you are told by the media, society, etc, that is usually spun from whitehall anyway.
Most people do as they are told, either directly or indirectly.
But you don't have to, you can be an individual and make your own choices.

Devlesko I know what you're getting at. Obviously most people have to work to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, but beyond that most things are optional. My husband and I have made some careful choices regarding this, that don't fit in with what people would expect of us, given our ages and all the rest. But we've talked and thought long and hard about what makes us happy, and beyond working to pay the bills and maintain a certain level of security, it mostly involves lots of time in our garden and in the woods. We had brick phones until last year, when a contract became cheaper than monthly top ups I would like to change my job to something that gets me outdoors more, because it turns out that's what makes me happy, even though I was the usual bookworm/academic A star student all through school. But that doesn't matter one bit when most workplace environments leave me strung out and good for nothing,and believe me I've tried plenty

That's it, exactly.
Unless you were born with a silver spoon, you have to work. But, you can do whatever you want to earn that money, as long as it's legal.
I just think we are on earth for such a short spell of time why make it hard for yourself, or have regrets, or resent your life.
I think it's a shame to limit your choices just because society expects something different from you.

My grandmother always says money was tight and at one point they had lodgers but it seems to me that they were very comfortably middle class. They had Aupairs and a daily help so that my grandmother did minimal heavy housework. She had her hair done weekly and appears to have spent a lot of time having coffee with her friends in department stores where they lower the babies outside in their prams

Yep, your grandmother was really living on the edge

But, you can do whatever you want to earn that money, as long as it's legal.

Plenty people have to take whatever work they can get.

Of course Paska, but they don't have to stay there if they don't want to.
Nothing stopping them applying for work elsewhere, or retraining.
It's up to you how you live your life, you don't have to be dictated to if you don't want to.

Right, because it's always that easy, especially in this job market.