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Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children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

Forgot to actually answer your question 😂
They did it because they had to. It was just accepted.
And I don't think they dropped everything to run round after a crying infant, it was a constant juggling act same as today, but with harder physical work to find time for.

DH’s great-grandmother died at the age of 44, in about 1920, 3 months after the birth of her SIXTEENTH child (15 of whom made it to adulthood). When she died, her eldest daughter (Aged 22 and recently married) had to take in the 3 youngest children into her own home in order to relieve the burden on her widowed father. Life was hard and brutal.

Children were expected to do much more to help around the house than today. I once knew a lady in her eighties who was from a large family. Each child was given a responsibility and expected to do it daily (often a large chunk of the day and obviously for nothing in return). The old lady's was ironing - she spent a decent amount of her childhood doing family ironing.

Loads of other factors too of course.

I think our relatives of previous generations, particularly war generations had way more resilience than any of us living now. They just got on with things. Many didn’t see their loved ones for five years whilst the wars were on, yet they had no option but to plough on and hold the fort and family together.
I think we are pampered and spoilt generally speaking nowadays. It’s shameful really.
But in other ways we’ve progressed so much. Women can have careers, aim high in business and be financially independent. I suppose it’s progress in many ways and not necessarily in others.
I’m still very happy with my little life and @Desiringonlychild is so right that comparison is the thief of joy.

I have a 20 year gap with my kids, 2 born early 70s and another 2 in the 90s. With the first 2 I didn't have a car, a fridge, a freezer, a washing machine, a tumble dryer, I worked part-time. What I did have with the first 2 was an alcoholic husband who was never there to help even if he'd been prepared to help. I remember going to a meet up with NCT mums after my last child, all were saying how hard it was. I said try it with no disposables/fridge/washing machine etc. They were a mixture of horrified and fascinated. The main thing I remember was exhaustion and constant worry about money.

Children helped - older and younger.
One of my grandmother's used to be taken out of school once a week to help with washday.
When she had her own children, she worked - she ran a shop and her husband did too.
The kids (my mother) looked after themselves and each other.
My other granmother on the other hand only did the house and childcare, so had a much easier time of it.
Housewife was definitely a full time job in those days though.

That's fascinating, @AllIMissNowIsTheSea. I can't imagine 14 children.

I love a good social history thread. Isn't it strange thinking that in another 50 or 100 years Mumsnet will be an archive somewhere, with another group of people reading about the weird things we did in 2020?

Baby routines were by the book jot by the baby. So it was fed changed and put in the pram outside until it's next due feed and change.

Not a routine many would choose today but I imagine if you stuck to that religiously, you would have time to put the sheets through the mangle and rustle up basic meat and 2 veg meal.

I imagine expectations were different. In a few decades people will probably look back at us and think how did they do it without so and so!

Also I imagine people had more help from family and neighbours in those days and kids were allowed to play outside more from a younger age.

They didn’t waste hours on Mumsnet, fb, Instagram etc ( like I seem to do!)
They didn’t compare themselves to anyone else and just got in with it I reckon
I constantly waste time wondering if I’m parenting ok etc and I know it’s from spending way too much time online
We constantly feel the need to take children out, entertain them etc

They didn't cope, not well. Perpetually exhausted, permanently pregnant, the eldest children would help raise the younger ones. It was a hard life and only slightly more bearable if you had a husband who didn't drink his wages when he got them.

When my grandmother was raising her family, the welfare state was in its infancy, no contraception, no fridges or freezers, few families had a car, you walked everywhere. It was hard hard work and you often went cold or hungry.

Babies were tied to the leg of the kitchen table or left in their pram in the garden and you just got on with piles of laundry and dishes and housework.

But the difference was family. In yesteryear there was no social media, people lived close to where they were born. Extended family were always close to lend a hand if needed. Families were close.

Children had more freedom and women had more housework. Now it's the opposite. Children take up more time than the housework. I know this is a really simplistic way to look at it, but I think the older generations ended up physically fucked (poverty, outdoor loos, no central heating, rickets) but mentally a bit better off than we are now, whereas we aren't under the same strains physically, but mentally are at more of a disadvantage (rolling news, social media, isolation, breakdown of communities)

You never see proper old ladies any more do you?

My great granny worked in a mill as well as raising her many children in poverty. She did a very good job and all the kids did well, but she died at 70 and pictures show that she was an old lady, complete with grey "set" hair, tiny and twisted with arthritis, from about 50.

Her daughter, my gran, is well over 70 and looks 20 years younger - she is fit as a fiddle and wears jeans and Adidas gazelles.

I think we are pampered and spoilt generally speaking nowadays.

I suppose a lot of normal everyday activities we do now would have been unheard of...so frequent trips to coffee shops, cinema trips, soft play for children, swimming every week.

I guess kids played out and women got on with it.

My dad talks about this, alot. The differences.

From 3 he was pretty much out of the house all day. Most of the village kids where, the older ones (no more than 10 or 11) were expected to look after the uoinver ones and keep an eye out.

Unfortunately, dad lost 3 friends to accidents while they were playing.

Routines for baby's were stricter.

And yes, no big supermarkets. Bit not going to the shop 3 or 4 times a day. They went once they wouldn't take all the kids. Or the kids would be sent.

Somethings were harder. Some things were better.

I do think life is generally better for women now.

I think we are pampered and spoilt generally speaking nowadays.

I do sort of know where you're coming from with this, and the resilience thing, but I also find it a bit disturbing. Yes, some people were resilient (though I reckon some people are currently having to be incredibly resilient in really hard situations). But again, some of it was just bloody awful.

This is going to sound twee, but have you read Michelle Magorian's book 'Back Home'? It's for children, but it's a really good exploration of what some post-war families were like. You'd got a whole generation of men who went away from their families for years, and saw some awful things, and women who'd suddenly and unexpectedly got years of relative independence. And when the men came back, there were a lot of divorces and separations because things were shifting so rapidly. Women who'd been doing responsible jobs and getting respected for them didn't want to be treated like servants. Men who'd been traumatised didn't know how to be parents.

My dad was born in 1950, and sometimes I feel terribly sad for him, because although he is in many ways a thoroughly unpleasant person, he was brought up by parents who were basically just damaged by what had happened to them, and they passed that damage on.

And that's before we get to thinking about the trend of doping women up on valium to get them through the day.

So, resilient? Maybe, but I'm not convinced.

@MrsTannyFickler lol at the mangle ...

I absolutely get that comparison is the thief of joy, but I’m not really comparing so much as wondering how it was all possible, genuinely wondering if babies were left to cry etc.

I actually find the sound of the baby crying almost physical in me and I can’t bear it, so my instinct is to go and tend to the baby. So years gone by with 14 kids etc you must just be blocking out that kind of noise.

My other grandmother was one of 9 and having done a family tree all the great grandparents were from large families too.

I mean I am finding it hard as we have an open plan kitchen/living room which is more or less the only room downstairs save for the toilet, hall and two cupboards, so we are living in this one room while DH works in the spare room upstairs, but we have our own bedroom and the kids have a small room each So I know we are very lucky but I am claustrophobic in the house all day. How people then slept all in one room too, that would send me loopy. The best thing about each day is getting to go and lie in my bed in a dark, cool, silent room all by myself!!!

Well, as far as I know, my grandmother had staff; a cook, a housemaid and a laundry maid when living in the UK and probably far more staff, including a nursemaid, when living abroad.

Extended family helped out.

Kids played outside from a young age and were 'minded' by other older kids on the street. Kids were kicked out after breakfast and didn't come back until the evening.

Babies were put in prams at the bottom of the garden and left to scream.

My aunt once confessed to putting whisky in my cousin's bottle to make him sleep.

The good old days...

Children got much less individual attention than they do now. They weren’t indulged. The older ones helped out with the younger siblings and children generally helped their parents with chores. They were sent to do the shopping and stuff. They were not entertained but were outside playing on the streets and the fields in the countryside. Car traffic was much less so they could kick a ball around and play other games. Often they had part time jobs when they were older. Parents didn’t ferry them from piano lesson to French class, then netball. Kids were more independent just a generation ago and parents had way less parental guilt.

My mother (who had young children in the 1970s) shocked me by telling me she used to put my sister in her pram in the garage when she wouldn't sleep/ cried for hours.

She said that by way of explaining that she understood what having a non sleeper is like. She said my sister was "so bad" that she "had to" just put her in her pram in the garage so we could all get some sleep.

She absolutely would not accept there was anything wrong with doing that because the garage was attached to the house and not a separate building, and I (as a toddler) would have been woken up otherwise.

She still thinks she was in the right and had no other choice, and that the fact I didn't do similar means my poor sleeper can't have been "as bad".

My mum is a retired pediatrition.

she was an old lady, complete with grey "set" hair, tiny and twisted with arthritis, from about 50

Yes people definitely looked older. I remember growing up in the eighties and really old looking people everywhere...grey set hair, like you said, those little scarves wrapped round their heads. A definite style of dress which set them apart as 'old'.

Older people nowadays are so much younger looking. I have friends and relatives in their fifties. They dress like people in their twenties and do the same leisure activities.

My gym is full of women in their seventies in gym wear working out, talking about their nights out and having a fabulous time.

We're definitely more pampered

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

I think this is spot on actually.

And, rightly or wrongly, children were not the most important members of the family. Thanks to primitive contraception, having them often wasn't even a choice, they just "happened" and hit to fit in. No mini-emperors back then.

I did a childcare course in the 70s and I fully intended to go by that book. No cluster feeding for me, oh no. Twenty minutes on each side then back in the nursery/garden for four hours. My unborn children are probably very grateful to have remained unborn

My Mam was born in the 1940s and grew up as one of six on a farm. I can only recount a few things which she told me:

1. The kids all regularly got a "clip around the ear". Not advocating this at all as a form of discipline btw. If they didn't behave they got a slap. Mam recalled regularly being hit around the head with a dishcloth.

1. Sometimes the children were locked up in the cupboard under the stairs so my grandmother could get on with her chores in peace (not a regular thing, just if they were misbehaving and had not responded to the clip around the ear)

1. Most of the time they were sent outside to play rain or shine. Baby in a pram. Toddlers looked after by the older ones

1. The older children had to look after the other. My Mam had to look after her younger brother who was only 18 months younger than her. He was a "hooligan" she used to say. If he misbehaved, Mam would get the clip around the ear for not supervising him. If he misbehaved in school, the class teacher would call for my Mam to deal with him. You should see him now - such a proper, upstanding, member of society and he's made an absolute fortune in the computer industry.

1. The kids got one bath a week, if that, and all shared the bath water so there was no daily bathtime/bedtime routine which does take time and energy.

1. Clothes were washed once a week. The children wore the same clothes day in and day out. It would have be unthinkable for them to have a clean school uniform every day.

1. The parents were not involved in the children's schooling at all. I don't know if primary school children had homework back in those days but there certainly weren't these big stressful projects that some schools like to set. I know that Mam got homework at the grammar school but her parents never asked her if she had done it let alone help her with it.

I am sure there are other things too but that's all I can remember off hand at the moment.
I don't necessarily think that they did manage as well as we might think though. Mam used to tell me she often remembered my grandma sitting at the kitchen table in floods of tears.

I think all about expectations vs reality, and the gap in between.

That was just how it was.

• had to fit in - not hit to fit in - even I can see that would have been inappropriate!