To ask whether we could ever go back to what it was like in the 50s-70s?

[myblueheav3n]

I mean in a financial sense more than anything, although I know it wasn’t perfect. I only have a very superficial understanding of it all, but as far as I can tell:

• Affordable housing, and a lot of social housing for those who couldn’t buy.

• Liveable wages for unskilled jobs and good opportunity to work your way up in whatever your profession was. Plenty of work available for young people.

• Education was worth a lot more, e.g. now a university degree is minimum for a ‘decent’ job, and not even that is really guaranteed either.

I had more but after thinking about it for a while they’ve slipped my mind In general it seems like it was better, and people who grew up during these periods generally did well for themselves.

My mother worked all though the later 60s and the 70s as a married woman. Depended on the employer.

So did my mother and MIL.

I don’t think there’s ever been a generation in my family where the women didn’t work outside the home to some extent at least. My grandmothers did (one FT, the other PT). My great grandmothers did. They were not well off and needed all the money they could. My dad and his brothers worked as labourers alongside my grampa (on the roads) during the school holidays.

My mum was bright and wanted to go to university. She wanted to be an accountant. But everyone around her told her that wasn’t for girls like her. So she went to teacher training college instead and had a career suitable for girls instead. 🙄

In absolute terms,Yes some working class students attended university, but that in itself doesn’t equal social mobility

I didn’t say that it did. I was responding to a PP who said that hardly any working class people were at university in the 1970s, which is manifestly untrue since the evidence shows that they represented between 36% and 50% of all university students during the period.

I’m glad that you haven’t asked for the data because you would have been hoist by your own petard. Which would have been a shame because up until now I thought that you had made some good contributions to this thread.

Actually, think in the present tense! I still think that your earlier posts were good.

Grammar schools now exist in few places so yes, now it's mainly middle class children that go as it is more competitive to get in and housing in catchment areas is far more expensive. This was not the case when they existed in all areas, including the poorest boroughs/ counties.

It was always the case that many more middle class children went. There wasn't the same tutoring going on I will grant. Why not? My experience based on two primary schools in different areas, (because we moved house), is that primary schools streamed. In my last school, the year we took the 11+ the A stream spent their time cramming for the exam. So guess what, children who found themselves in the B stream didn't pass the 11+ and some children were allocated to the B stream at 7, so it was really 7+ selection. I knew one middle class family whose son was not considered bright enough for the A stream - they bust a gut to find him an Independent school, which were not very plentiful in my part of the world.

It's really forgotten how in the late 1950s, early 1960s exactly how much the Sec Mod system was hated because middle class children were being failed. For the Tories it was a vote loser.

Even when you did get to Grammar school, for girls their expectations were lowered. Grammar school girls tended to get pushed into primary school teaching.

Peregrina Exactly and it is not about the grammar children - a small minority but the secondary modern children pre-destined for factory work.

@KumquatSalad

I don’t think there’s ever been a generation in my family where the women didn’t work outside the home to some extent at least. My grandmothers did (one FT, the other PT). My great grandmothers did. They were not well off and needed all the money they could. My dad and his brothers worked as labourers alongside my grampa (on the roads) during the school holidays.

My mum was bright and wanted to go to university. She wanted to be an accountant. But everyone around her told her that wasn’t for girls like her. So she went to teacher training college instead and had a career suitable for girls instead. 🙄

1. You didn't need to go to uni to become an accountant.
2. There were plenty of female accountants around in the 70s and 80s.

Sounds like "everyone around her" gave her really bad advice.

I got a job as a trainee accountant in the early 80s and qualified mid 80s. That was in a small town centre practice. Over half the staff were female. Yes, the two partners (father and son) were male, but all but one of the trainee accountants were female during my time there, as were some of the seniors and a manager. By the end of the 80s, a couple of years after I left, one of the other female qualified accountants (who trained with me), took over the practice and bought out the father & son partners.

I lived my childhood through the 60s and 70s and there was a hell of a lot about it that was pretty shite tbh.
Going back earlier than that, my mum never had the opportunity to gain financial independence though a career, despite being as intelligent and able as my dad. In the late 1950s and early 60s when my siblings and I were born, there wasnt regulated childcare so even if she’d had a career she wouldn’t have been able to retain it. Childcare was an ad hoc thing whereby a relative, neighbour or even older teenage sibling would be used for child minding. Would I want a return to that? No way. Even when I had my kids, although childcare was available, it was very costly with no free hours kicking in at age 3 or 4, oh and maternity leave was 12 weeks. Paternity leave didn’t exist.

OP you are looking at this through rose tinted specs. Every generation has its upsides and downsides.

There's a big difference between the 60s and 80s though. By the 1980s we'd had the second wave of feminism. We had equalities legislation. I would have been much more surprised if a woman got a job as a trainee accountant in the 1960s.

@HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee

Grammar schools are how the middle classes game the system to get advantage and privilege from a state school whilst excluding the poorer school pupils.

Both my dps,went to grammar school in the 50s as many of their generation did from WC households, my dgm encouraged my dm. There was definite social mobility

Iamthewombat I am surprised you were bombarded with information about higher education I think this was probably down to your teachers

I was born in 72, went to an all girls school in a very mc area (I am wc) we were not encouraged to consider higher education unless we knew what profession we wanted to go into and exceptionally clever. I don’t know anyone who was going to university to gain a degree without knowing what profession they wanted to go into (teacher, doctor, solicitor, psychologist and one scientist) and more often than not what profession a parent/s were

I was the first to go to university in my family and I didn’t go until I was in my 30’s. Only one of my friends who was from a wc family went and she was considered to be exceptional bright so was encouraged. I got the results needed but there was no encouragement.

Many of us were encouraged to do vocational training

A few of my friend were born in the mid or late 70’s they certainly were encouraged there was a sudden change and even more so when Blair came to power

Not sure. I do miss shopping in the 90s though!

@cologne4711

Yes I'd love to go back to mums in the kitchen and sexual harassment being acceptable.

Covid or not, I'll stick to the here and now.

Of course absolutely everyone experienced that.

No.
The NHS was set up in a way that made it fail, there was nothing to stop rampant health tourism that started in 1961 and has continued. There were no fail safes set into a system that decided it could only cope with x amount of people when thousands more would be born/emigrate or live longer BECAUSE of the system in place.
So no, the NHS was always going to fail.
Affordable housing? Have you ever seen 1 single episode of call the midwife? Back to back terrace houses, kids in grubby clothes because there’s not enough space to dry them? Men drinking all their money away down the pub to forget their hardships at work? No thank you.
A “living wage” well it wasn’t exactly a living wage for my Great-grandparents, living in a 2 up 2 down terrace, with 4 children, my great Nan taking in washing to afford a bit of bread because my great-step-grandad couldn’t earn enough working the coal trucks, because of a twisted back? Oh and everyone renting their homes, being forced to move to where the work was, regardless of children being settled in schools, irrelevant was the fact that Nan was pregnant again, no they had to move because the landlord was offered 3p a week more for the property and they simply couldn’t afford it? Or the fact that my actual grandad ran off with a floozie from down the street and never paid a penny in child maintenance. No thank you
No, personally I think you are looking at the financial side in a very wrong light.

There isn't much health tourism, but the NHS was set up to deal with 1940s health problems, and was always reliant on recruiting foreign staff, either Irish or Commonwealth citizens.

Thank you @Peregrina, I obviously don’t know the statistics and was born in 1989, so I can only comment from what I know/have been told or researched myself. I definitely think the NHS was designed to fail eventually though, with the expansion of health problems that now come under it. For example dental, diabetes and Foot Health which all used to be fully paid for services and not part of the NHS.

With any thread like this, where people hark back to some theoretical ‘golden age,’ what they really mean is, can I cherry pick the best bits from each generation and ignore everything else.

Well yeah! Please can I have 1950s house prices but with current mortgage interest rates. I’d also of course like central heating, internet, several hundred TV channels to choose from, a kitchen full of modern appliances and a bedroom for each child in that house.

Oh and can I have year long maternity leave, the option to share parental leave, regulated childcare with free hours when my child turns 3. Naturally dh and I want the right to request flexible working alongside that.

The annual camping holiday I had in the 60s was a little dull, and it annoyed the hell out of me that I didn’t go abroad until I was an adult so of course we’d like foreign holidays a couple of times a year. Oh and we’ll eat out once a week and Friday will be take out night.

I’d like the children to have a 50% chance of going to university but without having any tuition fees or maintenance loan.

Can I have a 2020 salary too please? Should be able to pay off my tiny mortgage within 3 months.

It is really uplifting to read about those posters who have attended uni and/or had professional careers 1950s - 1980s from working class background. This was statistically the exception it’s not the norm. Yes of course there are and were exceptions,those who did Break through but it was a minority

It’s not as simple as individuals choosing to follow bad advice. At the time The prevailing gender and social culture reinforced notions of what was appropriate and available to the working classes. Often Reinforced by a familial and social structure Plus limited numbers of role models and lack of affordable childcare etc were all barriers to social mobility

Currently working class students are still underrepresented in what are considered to be good universities , less than 5% of the students are from the low participation neighbourhoods

@woodhill, no, grammar schools have always favoured the middle classes. Yes there were exceptions , a minority of working class children who attended . This was not the norm, it was the exception

Anecdotally knowing of someone working class going to grammar school doesn’t represent a normative pattern for other working class pupils

1. You didn't need to go to uni to become an accountant.
2. There were plenty of female accountants around in the 70s and 80s.

Sounds like "everyone around her" gave her really bad advice.

Yes. But it’s a pretty standard tale that working class women of her generation were widely advised by their families, friends and schools into ‘suitable’ occupations.

She didn’t know she didn’t need to go to university. She’d also just have liked to go to university. But everyone tried to persuade her ig just wasn’t for ‘people like us’.

By the time I was applying for university, things had changed dramatically.

One big change for children gendered school uniform.
Girls was skirts even in winter with a 2 miles through snow walk.
Girls didn’t have the option of trousers for school. Then you joined the workforce and again women only wore skirts even though you were stuck in a back room somewhere having little to no contact with any member of the public or management you still had to wear your work skirt and nice blouse.

Plus quite a lot had changed between the early 70s and the early 80s. There was enormous social change.

I understand what you are saying but I think there was more opportunity for the WC to go to grammar schools than now without tutoring and I think anecdotal findings are valid. A lot of their friendship circle had similar backgrounds

There would be more MC dc there as there is now and in good comprehensive schools

MIL also passed 11+, again WC background

[quote myblueheav3n]@HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee

The council housing is a good thing in my eyes, now only the upper-mc have much of a chance at buying and those who can’t buy also can’t get a council house.[/quote]
I agree there needs to be more options for those that require social housing, but ti suggest that on upper middle class can afford to buy their own home is ridiculous.

Buying a home isn't easy, requires a lot of cutting back ti save the deposit and pay the mortgage, but its possible if you want it

Talk of skirts for work has reminded me - I attended an FE college, 1969 - 70 and they decided to let the female students wear 'smart trousers' but not jeans. The reasoning was that trousers hadn't been acceptable at work and many of the female students at the college were doing secretarial courses, so had to get used to wearing what was suitable for work.

I went over to Amsterdam with some friends in 1972 and when we went into the bank to change some money, we remarked on the fact that some of the women staff were wearing trousers - this wouldn't be allowed in the UK.