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Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children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

From what I heard about my gran (6 kids, 2 foster kids) is that the kids spent a lot of the day playing outside with other children (easier to do if you already have an instant football team). My gran spent her days washing, ironing, cleaning and preparing food. Babies were expected to cry themselves to sleep, or if crying when woken left there because it might just be a nightmare snd it will calm down again later. Older children helped with household chores, taking care of younger ones (my mum was mostly raised by her sister) and when old enough they had to get a job and give the money to the houshold. If gran did get sick or have a new baby the church community (everyone went to church back then) stepped in and helped. "Difficult" children, like the ones that need more help or attention because of autism for instance, were sent away to boarding school to teach them to shut up.

I think it was a hard life, but they coped by having certain strategies that we wouldn't like to implement today. Also, today children tend to be mostly planned, and welcome because if you really don't want one you get an abortion. We have more expectations of motherhood and more ideas about what kind of childhood we want to give our kids. Back then children should be seen but not heard. In my grans day you got married, were supposed to have sex when your DH wanted to and got pregnant if you wanted to or not.

I was born early 50s, not everyone had family around for support, I think I just spent all day every day with my mother until I went to school. The only exception was when my younger sibling was born when I was 4 and it was quite traumatic that she disappeared for a few days.

@SarahAndQuack you legend. I've been trying to remember the name of that book for weeks. I was telling my 12 year old about it, I read it to pieces when I was about her age. Rusty and her gorgeous warm American clothes, and how she was raging because she had to sing Cherry Ripe instead of Shenandoah!

People had their mum or relative helping.
“Village” to raise a
Baby.
I know a few people who have their mums around 9-6 like employees
So they don’t have to do it all:

As everyone basically has said, I think things were less child-centric. Older kids looked after younger ones, kids weren't entertained and occupied the whole time, were freer to roam the neighbourhood etc.

Even in my not-so-distant childhood (born mid-70s) in the holidays and at weekends my friends and I pretty much had breakfast and then went out/got turfed out to play out all day and only came back for our tea. Being taken somewhere 'formally' by parents was quite a big deal and there was no such thing as a playdate organised by parents.

One of the biggest stresses for me was having enough money for the pill every month. In the early 70s it wasn't just that it wasn't free, it wasn't available on the NHS so I had to pay GP for a private prescription, which was a weeks shopping money, and then paying the pharmacist every month, it was 55p which sounds ridiculous but my rent was £4.50 a week so that gives some perspective on it being a big chunk of money to me.

When the Brook opened and I could get the pill free it was a revelation.

I was born in '86 and I had to help a lot. During the summer holidays we played out from dawn until dusk. My mum literally had the house empty all day every day!

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.

This theory of mine is entirely anecdotal based on very very limited findings but.... I have noticed that younger mothers seem to be stricter/cope better with children crying etc. I had DS in my 30s and definitely found that. But I've had a few friends who had DC in their early 20s and they always seemed to be tougher. The friends I know who did controlled crying successfully were the ones who had children younger. One friend from my NCT class was just 22 when she had her DD. As the kids have got older I've also noticed how much quicker she was to encourage her DD to be independent.

No idea if this is just an anomaly in my extremely small sample, but I do wonder about all those women having children younger. They were tougher and just saw it as something they had to do while doing everything else too.

I know that communities were stronger for one. Women helped one another more. I saw the tail end of this during my childhood in the 70s. older kids helped a LOT too.

We used to go out every day during the summer holidays completely under the care of kids who lived locally...but were a bit older.

I remember on here years ago a poster said her great gran used to tie her little kids to the table so she could tidy the house.
See also valium, lower standards and it takes a village.

During the war (continental European here) half of grand kids were sent to live with a childless aunt to make the difficult situation easier.

Grand = the

Life wasn't so child centred then, you just looked after your kids as you were doing things.
We had to help our Mum with the housework, older kids helped look after the younger ones.
Feeding babies was done to a routine and the baby was swaddled and put down for a nap, often in the garden, back yard or even balcony if you had one.
Older kids were expected to play without adults, either with siblings or neighbour kids.
I had my first baby in 1988, and tbh I did things pretty much the same way as my Mum did. Apart from a few crappy days I didn't find looking after my kids difficult at all, it really came quite naturally.

Even in the 1970s older siblings were expected to look after younger ones.

My sister is 3 years younger than me and I remember being in trouble for refusing to play with her because I wanted to read my book on my own on a very regular basis, and only being allowed to catch the bus into town if I took her with me. My parents expected me to keep her out of their way. If she got muddly just before we were meant to go to church that was my fault too, until she was 6 or 7, even though it had also been my fault when I was 6 and she was 3!

My Mum was sent to live with a family friend who was having twins at 12 years old. She brought with her clothes that she had sewn and knitted for them. That was normal then.

My great grannies two husband both died - she had 11 children (10 survived) so in 1917 she was widowed for the second time with a lot of children at home. I suppose the oldest ones tended to leave home earlier or helped with younger ones. My granny escaped to India to work as a servant in 1921 for a year perhaps to escape all the domestic childcare duties (in 1911 they lived in 3 rooms including kitchen) in a mining village. Also my great granny's husband took himself off to fight in South Africa in the 1890s (probably more fun than coal mining duties and childcare help at home) and then fought in WWII which is why there was gap between the second last and the last 1917 baby (he was invalided out in about 1916).

I suppose if you live in a living room and a bed room you don't have much cleaning. I was 22 when I had my first but was working full time when she was 2 weeks old so had that break in terms of work (even though I was expressing milk at work) and feeding through the night etc. Not veryone did cope. My granny was widowed in 1930 with a baby and although she managed okay as she had all that family near her, she did end up in Sunderland lunatic asylum and was in and out of there in the 1950s and died there in the 1960s by which time it was called Cherry Knowle but same place....albeit nicer name.

I wonder why babies were sent to sleep in the garden?

I heard this was a Scandinavian thing but didn't know if was commonplace in the UK. It makes sense because of fresh air etc

I was a mother with none of the modern appliances. I had an outside toilet, no hot water and did all of the washing by hand. There was no on demand feeding which takes up most of the days of mother’s today. The baby was fed at 4 hourly intervals and none of mine screamed for a feed in between.

After breakfast and first feed, the baby was put out into the street, in a pram, while I got on with the housework. The toddlers just followed me around ‘helping’ . There was a line of babies outside the front doors, which were kept open so that we could hear if the baby woke.

After lunch we walked to the shops and again the babies were all left outside. This took a while as we had no supermarket and had to go to several shops. There was no question of meeting other mums or having a drink in the high street. There was no money or time for this. After shopping we would go the park and then come back to prepare the evening meal.

Toddlers amused themselves with the few toys that they had while the evening meal was prepared. Straight after the parents had eaten the children went to bed. We lived in rooms, so we could here them if they woke. I thought of myself as lucky, because my husband washed up while I got the children to sleep. He never did any other household job, nor was he expected too.

Apart from demand feeding the other big difference, was the lack of education for many women. As soon as they left school, a lot of them only wanted marriage and babies. A lot of men would have disapproved if a woman with children worked outside the home.

I got a job two nights a week working in a canteen for evening classes. My in_laws said, “I hope none of your neighbours know you are going out to work’. I married in the 60s so not that long ago.

I grew up in a rural Mediterranean village and even though I was an only child, my mum raised me pretty much all by herself as my dad was away working for months at a time. She didn't drive and didn't have any family living nearby, she also looked after quite a bit of land on her own (olive groves and growing all our veg), we used to walk everywhere.

She taught me how to be independent from a very young age and expected me to entertain myself. I still have memories of her emptying my toys on a rug in the middle of the house and telling me that I had to be a good girl and play with my toys quietly while she was getting on with housework. When I was a bit older she'd let me roam around outside when she was working in the olive groves. She'd spend time interacting with me, telling me stories and singing songs with me while getting on with her work but I remember having a very clear understanding from an early age of what was dangerous and that my mum needs to also do her work.

@BlingLoving

I agree with that actually. I live in a very diverse area and at baby groups met a range of mums from quite young to much older. I'd say by far the older mums struggled more and found it much tougher. The younger mums just got on with it and didn't stress about attachment parenting or whatever.

we're always told mothers never worked outside the home.

Women have always worked outside of the home as well as inside of it, especially in the lower classes where they needed the money and typical jobs for women revolved around domestic duties such as cleaning, washing, cooking, sewing, etc. Lots of women were in domestic service, employed in mills as machinists, etc.

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 you have a bit of a rose tinted view of it.

They didn't just bounce back after the war. Untreated mental illness particularly PTSD, depression, and anxiety were rife. Think back to how many adults from your childhood were "sick with nerves" or "highly strung" or "over emotional" or a "misery guts".

People then were like people now. They didn't stoically plough through the war years. Crime flourished during the blackout particularly crimes connected to the black market such smuggling, poaching, theft, etc. People broke frequently blackout rules which is why they had wardens.

Evacuees were often treated appallingly by host families who were operating under duress rather than blitz spirit. My nana was evacuated and ran away twice after one host family beat her for "being lippy" and the older son from the other kept trying to have a feel under her dress.

BlingLoving that's a funny definition of coping though, and actually probably more connected to breast feeding rates than coping.

A crying baby causes a scientifically observable hormonal reaction in a breast feeding mother in order to let milk down.

We're meant to respond to crying babies - being able to ignore them isn't coping.

I carried mine all the time and when they were in my arms or on the breast they didn't cry - my own upbringing made me determined to do the opposite of my own parents (which I think is often the way).

The boys would have spent all day out of the house, playing. Girls over 5 or so would have spent most of the day in the house raising siblings / doing housework. I am of Indian origin was only born in the 80s but was raised mostly by my gran and my DSIS and I were expected to cook for the family from 5 years old (it started with making tea and rolling 30 rotis and then turned into full on dinners), make all the beds in the house, sweep the whole house top to bottom with a dustpan and brush, and raise the babies. This wasn’t out of place even amongst my white friends (who were mostly Irish) and in fact many had it worse - one of my friends had to basically look after her siblings all day everyday and night as her dad worked days and nights in two jobs.

Standards of cleanliness were also low. My Gran and my friends grans would often not change bedsheets weekly, swept floors / carpets but only mopped and polished as needed, never saw any of them deep clean cupboards.

I live in a rural area, and the living with childless aunts was a thing here within the last 20 years. I heard of it all the time when I first moved here, eight year olds upwards living with their great aunt and uncle at the next farm over because their mum and dad had 5 kids and aunt and uncle had none. Ditto teenagers living with family members to be closer to their secondary school. I can't think of anyone I know doing it recently though

You have to separate classes.

The middle and upper classes in the big houses had paid help.
The lower and working classes provided the paid help. Often on a part-time basis. Took kids to work with them pre school years.

I also suspect school starting at age 5 was partly to help working classes and let the mother get time to work.

My mum a child of the 50s recalls messing around in the garden if she and her brother were home before their mum was.