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Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children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

The answer to most of your questions is probably yes. You were not expected to keep nearly as close an eye on babies and children as you are now. People felt safer in letting their kids go off on their own, or leaving a baby in a pram outside somewhere. If they could walk then they could go outside and play until tea time. Babies were tended to when you had the time and they had to fit in with your day to day life, you didn't just drop everything whenever they started crying.

And yes, there weren't supermarkets and a lot of people didn't have cars but it wouldn't have mattered because most people lived close to a butcher, a green grocer and a baker etc, and you weren't trying to buy a week or two's worth of food, so it wouldn't have taken as long as your typical modern supermarket shop.

You also had more support from family and the community in general. Children used to be seen as a normal day to day part of life, as opposed to the more modern take on it that parents need to "shield" the world from their children.

Generations ago, the rich ones had nannies, scullery maids, cooks, sent the kids to boarding school etc and had a dull life paying calls on other bored wives or doing charitable stuff.
The poorer women often worked in mills or factories, children were outside unsupervised or at best minded by older siblings. The older daughters would be doing a lot of the chores. My grandmother had 8 kids, 4 died as infants, of diphtheria. She had no flush toilet, just an outside midden, emptied once a week. She used to knead 14lbs of flour at a go, to bake the week’s bread.
By the time you get to the 1950’s, when I was born, many women were housewives without a paid job, but there were a few labour saving gadgets such as hoovers, and people sent some of their washing out to laundries (such as bedding).
Shops were usually close to home, so a few minutes walk to buy the day’s food. We had no freezers and tiny fridges, so couldn’t do a week’s food run even if supermarkets had existed (which they didn’t!).
We accepted much lower standards than today. We only had hot water once a week, so we had a single weekly bath on washing day, and just a wash at the sink the rest of the week. Unpleasant body odour on public transport was a fact of life. Soap was actually marketed for removing smells, rather than its moisturising properties or pH balance - “ what your best friend won’t tell you” was one campaign!
Kids were independent much younger and parents never played with us. I went shopping alone at 3 years old, and was alone in the house from 7 years when mother went back to work. I babysat neighbours kids when I was 10.
A group of us played out on the street or in the woods all day in the summer- we were only home for meals and chores.
Many more children had accidents and injuries - broken bones were a rite of passage, ditto burns and scalds. Bonfire night was like a war zone in Casualty departments as kids played with fireworks. Modern helicopter parents would be appalled at the neglect!
So yes, previous generations of women had a bloody hard life and often looked worn out at 40. But they didn’t do all the modern hands on parenting as well as chores - it would have been impossible in the time available. Kids might get read a story while the dinner was in the oven or while waiting for the washing to dry, but not supervised play dates etc!

Because things were different then! Vast majority of women didn’t work after they got married. Kids over the age of 7 looked after themselves and their siblings! My mum was the oldest child and at 10 was expected to look after all 3 her siblings ages 1-8 whilst my gran went to the shops Most days (on foot) . She was expected to care for the baby for a couple of hours on her own with other small children to look after too.
She walked her school age siblings to school and back and even walked younger neighbours children to school- this was from age 8.
Few cars meant kids played outside most of the day. Older kids (around 9/10 up) would leave in the morning on a bike, meet with friends and he asked to get hole for tea. My dad did this all the time! He would cycle miles with friends at that age and just be back for tea!
If you had a baby, you might push it to the shops every day in a pram as you would have needed to go shopping most days to get fresh meat and food. You would have chatted with other mums doing the same thing. As most mums didn’t got out to work, they were all about to meet with during the day.
No modern appliances meant that house work and cooking / washing took a long time so this would have filled much of the day but plenty of other women in the community to get support from.
I actually think it’s worse in some ways now as so many mums are desperately lonely, most kids aren’t allowed out to play on their own from a young age (even before the virus) so are stuck around mum or dad / inside bickering with siblings all the time.

I'd imagine actual parenting was far less intense.

I remember when my ds was 9 and it was the summer holidays. He loved playing football in the park. I'd sit there for hours while he did that. I'd get home and obviously nothing would have been done as we'd been out and I remember thinking, years ago, you'd have just sent your dc to the park alone and got on with your chores.

A lot of it would depend on class. Much like now, the middle and upper classes would have varying degrees of outsourcing tasks and paid for help. Life would also be different depending on whether you lived in a large town/city (more shops, more convenience such as it existed) or more rurally.

You wouldn't do all of your jobs on a daily basis. Nowadays we can run the washing machine daily, cook varying meals, wear fresh clothes daily, and so on because we can. We have the tools and the means. A hundred years ago we wouldn't have.
Our roast on a Sunday would help to save time on meal prep for the next 2-3 days as the leftovers would be used for stew/pie/hash. Our meals in general would have been simpler and using what was available locally, it wasn't uncommon to cook meals that would last several days and I remember my nana (born 1930) telling me that her mum would make a huge corned beef hash on a Sunday and that would be their lunch and tea (dinner) each day until was all gone.

You could buy bread so didn't have to make it but if you did make your own then you'd have a baking day each week and get it all done in one go. Stottie cakes were often baked here, they're cooked low down in the oven so other things can be cooked at the same time, use less dough than a full loaf, and are only proved once instead of twice so are faster to make, they also keep for ages before going stale.

Clothes would be worn multiple times before needing to be washed and the main wash would be done on one day. Clothes would be worn and then either worn again the next day or hung up for use at another time. The fabrics used helped with this, things like a wool suit could be brushed and hung up. People generally had fewer clothes than now too so there wouldn't be a towering washing pile.

Community played some part. People often had family close by. My nana remembered that her mum would send her along to her and her siblings to play outside her aunties house when it was her wash day so they were out of the way and her auntie would send her kids to play outside my nana house when it was hers. Kids played out more and younger siblings would be left with older siblings so it was usually only the very young children at home although there would often be a group of girls willing to "play mams" and push the babies around in a pram. Some areas had a communal oven in the back lane which was shared by several houses and turns were taken to watch it so you could leave your baking, etc there and then collect it when it was cooked which saved time. There was no TV so that 2-3 hours in the evening that I spend in front of Netflix would instead be spent making or mending, knitting, peeling veg for the following day, etc.

Women died much younger and exhausted.

One negative side of things is that it was a lot more acceptable to hit your children (and your wife, for that matter). Your five-year-old is going to stay a whole lot quieter if they know perfectly well daddy will come home and hit them if they misbehave.

I'm aware there were always families where violence wasn't even considered. I remember both my grandfather and his cousin talking about how incredibly gentle their family was and how much they were treated with respect as children growing up in the 1920s and 30s. But, equally, there will have been plenty of families where violence was a shortcut in parenting.

And yes, children also got hurt a lot more through being unsupervised. A friend of mine is currently going through hospital records for part of London in the 1950s and some of the stuff is absolutely hair-raising. Repeated injuries of kinds that'd mean social services coming round to talk to you about the basics of supervising your child these days. It's really easy to demonise social workers and all the red tape around children and injury, but a lot of lives have been saved.

Sorry, I must be feeling down today, that was a really grim answer!

Mothers didn't work outside the home and they basically worked in the home the whole time (cleaning, washing - I just can't imagine how horrible washing clothes was without washing machines!) and then queuing at every shop for food before supermarkets came along.

And "parenting" wasn't a thing. You were a parent, you didn't "parent" - that is a modern invention.

It was utter drudgery. I am so relieved I live now where we have modern technology and we can work and have our own money and make our own choices about having children (at all or how many).

I was a child in the late 40s/50s and although the 1950s is always used as a reference to a time when women did everything re the house and DC and men did nothing, it wasn't true in my family.

My DM worked making sample dresses for a fashion company but arranged her hours so she was always home when my DSis and I got home from school and my DF worked virtually six days a week. He washed up every night, me/sis dried up and on a Sunday morning we would all do the housework. We had 3 meals a day - snacks were non existent probably due to rationing.

Parents back then didn't panic about how they were going to amuse their children 24/7. Babies would be put in a pram and put in the garden and older children spent all summer playing out with friends, making their own entertainment.

If you had a baby, you might push it to the shops every day in a pram as you would have needed to go shopping most days to get fresh meat and food. You would have chatted with other mums doing the same thing. As most mums didn’t got out to work, they were all about to meet with during the day.

As a SAHM, this sounds nice! I'm sad that all my mum friends are back at work

They didn’t have Mumsnet to suck their time away!

And "parenting" wasn't a thing. You were a parent, you didn't "parent" - that is a modern invention.

See, I don't think that's true really. I know the terminology wouldn't have been used in that way until recently, but I think people have always 'parented' as well as just being. There have been advice books written for parents for centuries, so people have obviously worried about how to raise their children, what they should be eating and learning and playing with.

I do see it's a privileged issue - there will always have been people who are too shattered by life to begin to have time or energy to parent. Then again, there still are.

Well I am loving the idea of parking the baby in the orchard to sleep all day...

Although given my 10mth old can walk and climb onto sofa independently (and then walk about oh sofa, no sense of danger yet) they would probably be able to unstrap themselves and walk home if I left them in the orchard!

@RainMustFall - people really like stereotyping the 50s, don't they?! My granny had her children in the early 50s and went back to work as a teacher as soon as she could get the childcare, but we're always told mothers never worked outside the home.

I think there was a lot of unhappy women and a lot of violence towards children! At least that's my experience of my parents/grandparents upbringing.

Babies and young children were kept clean and fed, but were not entertained. The housework came first, but children were expected to be resiliant and if you go back far enough weren't really seen as complex social and emotional beings, so only their physical needs were tended to.

Also the poster who mentioned 4 kids on the train and leaving the baby with someone to take a child to the toilet... these are the kinds of logistical things that I find really stressful and I only have 2. Like you say back in a time when you could trust the people around you and everyone looked out for each other, it seems a much more obvious way to live. Our society has become too big to allow this now. Back then you probably knew most of the people on the train by name!

I do think expectations were lower all round. And along with all the comments here re children being independent etc, I think that applied to school too. if your kid was bright, he/she did well at school and got on with homework etc. If your kid wasn't less bright, you weren't sitting helping them, nor was school. It was definitely more sink or swim, certainly for middle and working classes.

The comments about accidents are interesting. I partly agree - there's no doubt that children could be badly h art with what was the normal amount of neglect. But we definitely go too far the other way too. DC both have the odd injury or scrape but they have no idea how to cope or do any even basic first aid because they're so protected. DS was allowed to go for a run with an older friend the other day, they got caught in the rain. Personally, I was thrilled - they first sheltered under a bus stop then decided to leg it. And survived. And were exhilarated on their return.

This is really fascinating and thought-provoking to read. It’s also worth noting that the concept of ‘children’s rights’ is relatively new, and the idea of the state intervening to protect these rights would be alien to many parents (still now) but only decades ago.

This obviously has lots of benefits - abuse was rife and ignored before there was even really a word for it. But as has been said, there is now so much fear and risk aversion that kids suffer from the lack of freedom and community cohesion that used to be the norm.

And the same pros and cons for the mums - they were able to punt the kids out, or childcare to older kids, and get on with what they had to do, and they probably suffered a lot less from the current trend of ‘perfect mothering’ ideals - they just did what their mam etc did, so less self doubt. But a lot more backbreaking work, grief and loss with accidents and disease. And I would imagine relationships with children were somewhat impacted by the ‘fend for yourself’ approach - although looking at that through a modern lens, hard to be confident on that as plenty report good relationships with their mums from these eras.

They worked hard, long hours.

My great grandma was up before 6 donkey stoning her front step and window sill. Every single day. Then the days were filled with cleaning, cooking, washing, darning etc. Wash day was big pot, washboard, mangle, finish the white with blue. Elbow grease and black lead to clean the stove.

It was a hard life!

I honestly doubt many of us could live that life today. We complain about having to "do the washing" when it's little more than shoving clothes into a machine and pressing a bloody button.

@TheMurk No, I don't think you did know the name of the person on the train. I think we were just more realistic. I believe evidence suggests that child snatching etc has not gone up but rather that it's visibility has. I generally assume people are good, but have learnt that asking for help is considered extremely rude.

My working class grannies worked from home, laundry, ironing, machining. Kids were expected to play out, not under feet, babies fed and changed 4 hourly. Children were not the centre of parents attention. Corporal punishment was the norm. Washing was a once a week all day job. Kids wore their clothes several days running.’ Call the midwife’early series show how it was for the majority. Life is much better for most women in this country now.

SarahAndQuack my grandmother, who would be nearly 100 if she were alive now, worked when her children were small too (as a nurse). Her children were looked after by her mother in law. She only had two children, though her own mother, going back into the late 19th and early 20th century, had 14.

Many of the children from the very large families died in infancy.

Yes and they didn't have dishwashers, washing machines, driers etc ppl nowadays have no idea how easy it is to actually do housework!! My granny hand washed all of the clothes, dried them in a hand turned spinner and then hung them out!! Pressing a few buttons these days is hardly laundry!!

But that's your personal choice, @blingloving. I do get it (my DP is a super-anxious parent and it's a battle to get her to relax about DD).

But there's a big difference between choosing to wrap a child in cotton wool, and not having the capacity to supervise it properly/knowing your home - or your husband! - was dangerous and not being able to do much about it. It really makes me sad for some women in the past who must have known their children were at risk, and were unable to do anything about it.