The Waltons weren't poor

[Redflagsabounded]

I'm watching an episode and a neighbour comes by saying he's been living on skimmed milk and wild onions for 2 years. Grandpa sympathises and pipes up that he's lived on the edge of poverty his whole life. The show description says follow the family through the hardships of the Depression. Admittedly, there are episodes where the children walk to and from school with no boots/shoes. Generally speaking it's presented as a poor family.
But

• they had 7 kids (people then did know how babies were made and didn't have to have large families despite lack of contraception, the pull out method is not infallible but been used forever)
• they own a bloody mountain full of timber, and run a sawmill business
• they have livestock, chickens for eggs, and garden for veggies
• they own a truck
• they own a massive house
• everyone's well fed and well clothed, just maybe not always the latest 'smart' outfits when they want one

They were in no way 'poor' for the 1930s.

AIBU?

I never thought that the Walton family were meant to portray the people living in absolute poverty like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath were. Rather, they had been a fairly well to do family who were suffering the effects of the depression. They had their sawmill and the mountain but business wasn't good due to nobody wanting to buy lumber. The real dirt-poor were the cousins of the family, Boone Walton with his moonshine. In later episodes Mary Ellen visits the very poor families living up in the hills who never come down. If you visit the area around Schuyler, Virginia where Earl Hamner came from, there is still a lot of poverty amongst mountain people.

The Appalachians are known for a lot of extreme absolute poverty long past the dates here. I guess I want a more accurate portrayal but that wouldn't make cosy Sunday afternoon family TV, would it. At least the Waltons to acknowledge that they aren't that badly off compared to many at that time.

ALSO, they and the whole town are very forwardly-thinking PC when it comes to racial integration and acceptance. Black neighbours? Sure, come for dinner anytime. 1930s America?

My grandparents were poor and had sixteen children. In a house with two bedrooms.

That's fair. I've always had the impression (not helped by Grandpa today) that they thought they were really poor.

I have had the summer bug from hell for 3 weeks and The Waltons have kept me going 🤣 I've had the very same thoughts as you OP. There's struggling to maintain your previous lifestyle and comforts and then there was dirt poor. They were not dirt poor.

They probably thought they were, don't you think? Relative to the Baldwin sisters, or Ike Godsey even! I remember one episode where Olivia says she remembers how they never failed to save a few dollars a week but now they didn't even have a dollar for something.
(I've just realised I'm coming across as a bit of a Waltons weirdo 🤣).

Gosh, your poor Grandma. That must have been a terrible struggle.

Did they ever claim to be dirt poor though. I thought it was more 'we didn't have much but had each other' sort of thing.

Slightly off topic but is anyone watching the new LHOTP on netflix?

The depiction of people in the USA back in those times, regarding contraception and women's choices, are so strange. My grandma had 14 kids and always said she wanted more. She was born in 1920 and had her first child in 1934.

She wasn't forced into her lifestyle so it is so interesting to me how people just assume something is true because they made it up, someone else said so or they think it should be that way based on standards of today.

She wasn't raised poor but married poor out of love and against her parents wishes.

People were 'poor' even though they ate. Poor is different than destitute.

My 'poor' grandma also owned chickens, broke their necks herself when they could no longer lay eggs. She had a garden and a car that she rarely drove because she didn't have a license.

Her older children gave their clothes to their siblings when they outgrew them. Some, not all, had shoes. They didn't always have three meals a day and sometimes skipped meals for a day or so. Some times were harder than others.

Her neighbors were destitute. They couldn't afford a garden or chickens. My grandma would help their family out as much as possible.

My grandpa was a bricklayer.

He built the house that was able to accommodate 14 kids with the help of his father in law on land that he bought before marrying my grandma.

John Boy once described his family as "a bunch of dirt poor hicks" but they weren't.

I don't think I can 😳 I was brought up on both of these and can't imagine remakes at all. Are you enjoying it?

No, I have too much of a crush on Pa's (ML) twinkly eyes

They got by, all kids went to School and they had two hot meals a day (and lunch). They ran two cars (ok a truck and JB’s little car). Compared to some of the poorer people up the mountain they were well off.

No. It's too twee but not in the cute way that the original was. Also no realism which is a shame because I thought a remake could address that.

"Not everyone had big families. My very working class parents born in the 1920s were 1 of 4 children, and 1 of 3 children, no sibling deaths."

Of course not, I don't think that anybody is saying that though. There was a rapid fall in household size in the UK after the First World War but that was a continuation of an ongoing trend since the 1880s.

Up until around 1880, the median number of children that a woman would give birth to was around five. This gradually fell to about 2.4 by the 1920s.

So, even in the 1920s, your parents came from larger than average families.

But there certainly were families with more children at that time.

I guess that I'm about half a generation younger than you, my parents were born in the late 1930s. My dad was one of six children as was my mum (although one of her siblings died at a young age).

A generation earlier than that, my grandparents (born between 1906 and 1914) one was one of nine children, one was one of seven children and two were each one of six children. My dad had 13 sets of aunts and uncles and my mum had 11 sets of aunts of uncles

Appalachia was and is one of the poorest parts of the US. the Waltons were relatively okay: they had a decent house and food on the table. But don’t underestimate rural poverty. In the 1930s US, that meant barefoot kids with hookworm in clothes remade from flour sacks, eating cornmeal and salt pork (pellagra was an epidemic in the South), and no work to be had outside the mines. The biggest tell on the Waltons is that they could afford to keep their children in school. They didn’t drop out for lack of shoes.

Not everyone knew how to limit families - or make them. When Marie Stopes was doing her work, there was a couple who didn't know you had to do a bit more than literally sleep together to have children.

However, I would have expected rural families to have a little more idea of how mammalian conception works, if they had a cow for milk.

The only reason why my grandparents didn't have more than 5 children was that she kept on miscarrying (plus one neonatal death). My grandfather had good luck in employment because he was a good groom and initially travelled from breeder to breeder, stables to stables, wherever there was work and one of his employers decided that he should learn to drive, meaning he was later able to get driving jobs.

After WWI, with unimaginable sights, death and loss leaving entire areas bereft of youth and a traumatised generation, people wanted life and hope, which meant children. What's more, I think the Walton children were all born prior to 1929 - and nobody's going to be able to go back in time to practise abstinence in a time of relative plenty, are they?

If I remember rightly, the effects of serving in WWI were also a frequent feature in the episodes and went on to have the next generation doing it all again, along with a lot of bartering going on because there wasn't money.

I would think it was extremely rare for working class couples not to know how to make babies. Especially rural ones, or those living in crowded urban conditions. They would be well aware.

OOH Where can I watch it. I loved it so much, and that theme tune!

Up until around 1880, the median number of children that a woman would give birth to was around five. This gradually fell to about 2.4 by the 1920s.

Women gave birth to more children, but fewer of them survived. When infant mortality improved, more children survived, so women began to have fewer of them. The era of big families of twelve children who all lived to grow up only lasted a generation or so either side of 1900.

Also more opportunities for women meant they were more likely to have good jobs and be financially independent therefore have less incentive to marry early.

As for the Waltons, they got by, but any emergency, such as Pa being unable to work, or someone needing hospital treatment, or the sawmill needing repairs, would leave them struggling.

And as pp said, it's a tv show and was supposed to be a feelgood family show. No-one would want to watch a show which was all about lives of unrelieved misery.

As a child, as well as the actress called Michael confusion, I also wondered why they had given a daughter the boys name Aaron (Erin with US pronunciation)

Weren't they fairly self-sufficient? They were fairly handy with fixing things, had chickens, a cow, grew their own vegetables etc. Probably, one of their biggest expenses would have been fuel for the truck.

They all looked like they were very practical, all having jobs to do and willing to get their hands dirty wearing their dungarees!😂

Use to love it as well - such a wholesome programme. Good night Johnboy!

Great tv (34 on freeview, 157 Sky) 1pm-4pm weekdays and Sunday morning omnibus