To wonder what the housewives of yesteryear would have thought of this....

[Comedycook]

I'm a sahm of school age DC so probably more of a housewife than anything else

Thanks to the pandemic, obviously dh is working from home. Ds is isolating. There's is permanently someone under my feet getting in my way when trying to do stuff.

Even during normal times, in school holidays for example, kids are constantly around as it's not the like the old days when they'd play out all day and come in for their tea.

Honestly, I find it really quite unbearable despite loving my family obviously. I wonder how housewives of previous generations would have coped? I reckon having their men home all day whilst they tried to cook and clean would have sent them potty!

I do miss having everyone go out of the house so that I can play my music loudly and dance around the living room. The house is never empty anymore.
That said, I do like having my DH and kids home
In the past, divorce was rare. If you got married that was it - even if your DH was an arsehole. So I think many couples did their own thing because their spouse wasn't the person they liked most in the whole world. For my grandparents, I think that not being together the whole time might be why there were no murders in that house!

I have to be honest, I love my DH but I much prefer when he works away for most of the week and doesn’t come home till the weekend. He hasn’t been doing that much lately (agricultural engineering siting farm sheds) they’ve all been at most a couple of hours drive and it is making me potty

I have been wfh since the start of the pandemic and OH has been going to work as usual. However he had to isolate a few weeks ago and worked from home and it drove me mental!

All my routines and peace and quiet were disrupted. He had drum and bass on, was doing very loud work calls from our dining room table (the only place to work from) and I really struggled to get any of my own work done.

@Comedycook

I probably sound really old fashioned but I think being at home all day really is not good for lots of men. I know my dh prefers to be in the office...then he'd often go for drinks after work...so he'd be out from morning to midnight sometimes. I'd do my own thing, housework, cooking, deal with the kids and look forward to him getting home.

It's not good for lots of women either. Trust me.

Aww I’m the opposite. I loved my partner being home and I miss him now he’s back at work. But it could be because I’m off work on sick so I’m just bored!

@Comedycook

I probably sound really old fashioned but I think being at home all day really is not good for lots of men. I know my dh prefers to be in the office...then he'd often go for drinks after work...so he'd be out from morning to midnight sometimes. I'd do my own thing, housework, cooking, deal with the kids and look forward to him getting home.

Well, it doesn't sound as if it's currently good for you, so why not consider getting a job that will get you out of the house?

And yes, enforced continual proximity is tough -- we spent all the first lockdown in a tiny rural AirBnB because a house sale had fallen through at the last minute, and we were juggling two FT jobs in the same two small rooms with homeschooling a 9 year old. There was no phone signal in the vicinity because it was so rural, so we just had to try and rub along with one another's Zoom calls taking place twn feet away.

Gin
The answer is gin
Lots
Of
It

@DrSbaitso

I think they took tranquillisers and society took it as proof that women were inherently delicate and unstable.

You've been watching too many movies ! Tranquillisers were not commonly known in our grandmother's times. Nearly all married women were housewives because they had to give up work when they married ( not even when they had children . My GM was married in 1942 and was at home for 6 years before she had a child).

Women worked hard at home - I doubt that anyone thought they were delicate or unstable.

Oh OP I feel your pain. I did not sign up to be a sahm with DH here 24/7! It changes the dynamic totally, he is always getting under my feet with 'helpful' comments and suggestions and actually the children are less well behaved when he's here! Like a pp I really feel like it's straining us, it's not good for him or me.

We've agreed that he will return to the office 2 days a week from September (he works a 4 day week so it's half of the time) which is a happy medium for us both.

Yes I feel I've really lost myself with not enough time by myself. I have a 3yo and he likes to climb in and sleep with us from early mornings so I just never get any time on my own. I miss it so much. My DH is a DHT but WFH for the first 3 months of this yr then was off sick for a few months after an op and now it's the school holidays!

I can't wait for school to re-open!

Dd is out all the time but she'sc12. She was out a lot from age 7 playing...is it illegal now?

@endofjune

Yep. And there’s no way of changing this as he needs access to a phone which is only connected in the dining area.

Buy the cordless phones where one is plugged into the outside line, the other is anywhere in the house?

@derailment

Oh OP I feel your pain. I did not sign up to be a sahm with DH here 24/7! It changes the dynamic totally, he is always getting under my feet with 'helpful' comments and suggestions and actually the children are less well behaved when he's here! Like a pp I really feel like it's straining us, it's not good for him or me.

We've agreed that he will return to the office 2 days a week from September (he works a 4 day week so it's half of the time) which is a happy medium for us both.

Yes...I find it easier looking after the dc by myself. They bicker and I rarely interfere unless it's getting out of hand...they generally come to a compromise if I leave them to it, but dh insists on intervening everytime they raise voices at each other, which actually makes it worse. I agree I also didn't sign up to be a sahm in this situation.

@endofjune

DP has been to the office twice in the last year and once since we had our ds.

It was so much easier. We made a mess and then had it tidied before dp came home. No problem. I chatted, I sang, I laughed. I do sometimes honestly worry a bit that ds will be behind in his language skills because of this situation

That’s so interesting, I had DD in August and I reckon it’s beneficial for her language, because she’s hearing DH and I talk more. If DH was in the office every day it would just be me talking at her, with DH around she’s hearing us talk to each other too.

I’ve actually loved having DH around while I’ve been on maternity, it’s great to have company and I miss him when he’s not around (together 9 years and he drives me mad often, I promise!). He’s in the office today and has been so excited to go in though so I’m glad for his sake

My husband is away weeks / months at a time. The longest he's been home is 6 weeks.

It was strange in lockdown as he was home for 3 months. The weather was nice and he sorted the garden which usually it would be me as he doesn't have the time.

I don't be work due to MH so I'm either (currently) alone 24/7 for 6 months or when he's back home together 6 weeks. Never a happy medium.

tan I know you’re meaning to be helpful. But wherever he if he is still here.

@malificent7

Dd is out all the time but she'sc12. She was out a lot from age 7 playing...is it illegal now?

I'm not sure about legality but we live on an ordinary street in london...no other children here play out by themselves

You've been watching too many movies ! Tranquillisers were not commonly known in our grandmother's times. Nearly all married women were housewives because they had to give up work when they married ( not even when they had children . My GM was married in 1942 and was at home for 6 years before she had a child).

I was being a bit facetious with "tranquillisers", but I certainly had the impression that in times past, it was considered not at all unusual for housewives/SAHMs to take diazepam. It also seemed to me that one key reason why so many of them were struggling was precisely because they pretty much had to give up work and stay home all day whether they wanted to or not (different for working class women, though they of course had their struggles too). Effectively, engineer a situation so women have no choice and then, when they struggle with the situation they are in, see them as the problem and the ones with the failing. It wouldn't be the only time.

Some women are suited to being home all day; a great many really are not. OP annoyed me with the "it's not good for lots of men to be home all day" as if an equivalent number of women thrive on it. Like the time a guy (not my husband) told me that laundry is just so dull for men. Oh, and women find it bloody fascinating!

DrSbaitso starrynight21 Women in the 1940s might not have taken it, but housewives taking valium was common in the late Sixties and Seventies - it wasn't nicknamed Mother's Little Helper for nothing!

Although, to be clear, it was far more common among American housewives.

Some women are suited to being home all day; a great many really are not. OP annoyed me with the "it's not good for lots of men to be home all day" as if an equivalent number of women thrive on it. Like the time a guy (not my husband) told me that laundry is just so dull for men

Of course there's plenty of women who would hate being home and men who like it,but overall I think there's more women who are fine with it.

My nan was on diazepam. It wasn't unheard of in the UK.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

My nan was on diazepam. It wasn't unheard of in the UK.

I'd imagine even more women then would have been on it if their husbands and kids were in the house 24/7

@Comedycook

Some women are suited to being home all day; a great many really are not. OP annoyed me with the "it's not good for lots of men to be home all day" as if an equivalent number of women thrive on it. Like the time a guy (not my husband) told me that laundry is just so dull for men

Of course there's plenty of women who would hate being home and men who like it,but overall I think there's more women who are fine with it.

Because they've all too often been socialised to see their careers as suddenly optional as soon as they've given birth -- sometimes even those who've bought that particular line realise they've been sold a turkey, and that despite seeing the to me bizarre assertion on here that 'I'm fortunate enough not to have to go back to work', are obviously unhappy.

You used the word 'unbearable' about your own life. You also said that you're not even just talking about Covid times when your DH is WFH and one of your children is isolating, you mention how school holidays are 'not like the old days' when children played out all the time and had to be called in for meals, implying that you would prefer that.

That to me sounds as if being a housewife doesn't suit you. As it doesn't suit an awful lot of women.

Valium prescriptions were handed out like sweeties in the 60s. It’s where the Rolling Stones Mother’s Little Helpers came from.

Valium has long served extremely well as a vehicle for proving the perfidy of psychiatrists and the drug companies behind them. It was indeed dispensed in outrageous-seeming numbers in the 1960s and early 1970s. It did indeed lead to tragic levels of abuse and addiction. Its use did correspond to the tail end of a time when an oppressive mystique of female domesticity was making life highly unpleasant for women who didn’t — wouldn’t or couldn’t — find happiness within its constraints.

ideas.time.com/2012/10/05/valium-invalidation-what-if-mother-and-father-really-did-need-a-little-help/