Boomer generation - expectations of women and attitudes towards marriage

[mids2019]

In my family experience it seems to me a lot of the boomer generation who supposedly lived through a great period of sexual equality and liberation are in reality quite conservative and borderline misogynist in their attitudes towards woman, marriage and careers.

for instance a now elderly family member who worked his while life in engineering with a male team harbours a desire for a society where men could support a family and women didn't need to work to put all their energies into child rearing. I don't think he like a in reality the concept of the career woman and I think this article has influenced his daughter. Other elderly family members talk of my daughter's growing up and getting married as if that was somehow the sole goal of young women's lives.

I have reasonably clever daughters and it is concerning when they mention career direction and the family member loses interest.

I think there is a discomfort from some of this generation about the results of opening doors to women and they harken back to the 50s/60s where female professionals were more of a rarity and there were far more housewives.

Will these attitudes pass with the boomers passing!

I am one of the baby boom generation - how I hate the use of ‘boomer’ as a casual slur- I am 63.

My dad , born in the 1930s- definitely had those attitudes - women ran the house, men ran the world. But luckily , my mum , herself a teacher, put education first.

She encouraged my studies and they both took pride in my career. And it was tough, being the only female in the room, being mistaken as the coffee girl, and it is tough being expected to look after elderly PILs as they had sons and I am the only woman in the family.

But it’s not an attitude my husband shares, not indeed his siblings. So it’s not everyone from our generation, but as usual, it’s an easy hit Op.

It's frowned upon to say this on MN, but I'd love not to work tbh and to put all my energy into raising dcs. I'm a millennial fwiw

My boomer mum was a sahm and boomer dad was a "high earner" for the time, but 'only' a doctor - i know a lot of doctors who are not well off and all of their spouses also have to work. A lot of our friends growing up had the same set up as wel did. My siblings and I also went to private school on one income and my parents bought a massive house in the 90s for a little over £100k 😂.

I have a job to help cover the bills. Same wirh dh. I'm quite lucky that I enjoy my job and we have scrimped quite a lot over the years and will be mortgage free in the not too distant future. But our house which cost four times what my parents' did is pretty cramped (we have to live near London for work).

If I could swap my lifestyle for my mum's though....yes, I would tbh.

I do get that the assumption women should have to stay at home though us horrible as it removes the choices we have. However, I don't think we have much choice in the matter anyway - most parents, male and female have to work 🤷‍♀️

https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/research-and-campaigns/girls-attitudes-survey-2024.pdf

Girlguiding have done an annual survey every year for 16 years now. The research explores how girls feel about specific and emerging pressures facing them today, including comparisons addressing how girls' lives have changed in the last 10 years. It asks girls aged 7- 21.
Sexism, misogyny, concerns around safety and loneliness are fuelling the confidence crisis facing girls in the UK,

Little has changed. For girls, things are getting worse.

I think the law of unintended consequences came into play and has caused massive discontent with modern day life, leading to this wistful looking back to "better days", by not just the boomer generation.

I'm a boomer (1964) and was on that cusp of change, a bright new world of equality etc. Lots of women (in a couple) didn't have to work to be able to afford to live, own a home etc. But when we took hold of the freedoms allowing more of a career path for more women, there was suddenly a lot more money, so prices - housing in particular - rose to suck it all up.

So now, instead of most having the choice to work, most have to work and as a previous poster said, instead of having it all, we are all doing it all and it doesn't seem to be quite the dream we were "promised".
It is easy to think we could go back... "if only women would go back in their place" as I've heard said by one or 2 misogynistic family members - but that door is shut thankfully. We need 2 salaries to keep our nice life.

Two things

• culture changes more slowly than individuals within it (so they may carry unconscious attitudes they don't actually subscribe to)
• people follow a trajectory of becoming more small c conservative as they get older, so older relatives may seem more aligned to stability and tradition than change and progress.

I certainly notice that my brother gets asked about career by the boomer generation while I get asked about parenting - his worth measured in promotions and mine in my children. Including by my 80s career focused shoulder padded killer heels wearing mother who divorced my father and was commuting to a higher rate taxpayer job when I was 7-12 and then started her own business. (And as if to illustrate my point, look how I have betrayed my individual values by defining her by her dress and her marriage as our culture still does...)

Believe me the boomers are not the only misogynists!

Be nice if there was less agism these days too.

I agree.
Although many working class families where I grew up couldn’t live on one salary then either, both partners having to work to pay rent and bills. There were a lot of latchkey kids, and other family members (women) helping out with childcare. Women worked and did all the domestic/childcare duties.

The government didn't advise women not to pay their own NI.

They were given the choice not to so they could have more money in their pocket then as they tended to be paid less than their husband. Later they were to rely on their husband pension contributions to get a joint pension.

I remember my own mother, who was the silent generation, explaining why she decided not to do this. My mother had been widowed and suffered because of it. So she always made sure that she had her own money in the present and in the future. She drummed this into her own children of both sexes but some how my half-siblings got the memo as well.

I was born late 60s.

I'm glad I didn't have to grow up in a sea of pink or be told that if I have short hair I must be a boy.
I worked in a male dominated company and didn't have any issues with colleagues.

All generations have their flaws.

They were given the choice not to so they could have more money in their pocket then as they tended to be paid less than their husband. Later they were to rely on their husband pension contributions to get a joint pension.

Yes that’s what my DM did, unfortunately she divorced. In some ways my DM was very financially savvy and in other ways she made massive mistakes.

OP surely it can’t be news to you that, as a general trend, attitudes to women have improved over time (due to some heroic women fighting for our rights).

It might be interesting for you to read some feminist history.

@Runskiyoga
“ I certainly notice that my brother gets asked about career by the boomer generation while I get asked about parenting - his worth measured in promotions and mine in my children”

I am 64 and couldn’t even imagine doing this. Yes, my mother and grandmothers generation, but “boomers”, I just don’t recognise that in myself or others I know of similar age.

I was also able to kick back on stereotypes- e.g. sewing for girls and football for boys, and I cannot abide many of the current regressive stereotypical attitudes in society. Again, it was the generations above mine - my teachers, employers, and so forth, that were of “their time” so to speak and would have asked the sort of questions you and your brother got.

Yep, DM worked in the DHSS in the 70s when you could opt out, and even before all the pension scandals she always said she thought it was batshit for any woman to opt out, and told other women not to but most of them didn’t listen.

This was also the time of civil service marriage gratuities though - on marriage you were given a lump sum and demoted to the lowest possible role as married women were assumed to be just working for pin money. So DM went from being a manager to being a junior payments clerk. She has always regretted it.

Generalisations about so-called boomers are almost always unhelpful and erroneous.

I was born in 1953 and, like all the girls I knew, was encouraged to aim for a career. Attitudes to such things depend more on background than age - in fact, I was seen as more academically able and likely to succeed in a profession than my brothers.

I was lucky enough to be able to stay at home/work part time when my children were small, out of choice. I would like more women to have that choice, as it was one of the most rewarding times of my life. My children have been encouraged to live their lives as they choose - my DD has chosen not to seek a married/coupled status or have children, which is fine by me.

As for when we all die off - what I increasingly see is increasing sexual stereotyping and widespread misogyny. I hope this trend doesn’t persist, for the sake of my granddaughters.

Labelling millions of people with particular attributes because they were born across a particular 19 years makes no sense. People born immediately post-war grew up in entirely different circumstances to someone like me who grew up in the 60s, and each off those perks experienced different upbringing, circumstances and expectations. It's nonsensical and lazy to assign particular behaviours to millions of people in the way the OP does.

The misogyny in our current porn-drenched society far outweighs anything I have previously come across.

TBF in the late 90s when I was thinking about applying for medical school, the careers advisor (actually the headmaster’s wife, so no idea of her qualifications) told me “Oh no dear! You don’t have to become a doctor yourself! You should train as a nurse and then you can marry a doctor!” Like that would be in any way the same thing. Clearly assumed I would not be working after marriage. It was like something out of the Chalet School.

The boys were obviously not given that sort of advice. I moved schools for sixth form.

This!!

You do know we had the Silent Generation, Gen X and so on. Broaden your minds.
I’ve never known a generation so narrow minded in my entire life as the current one, nasty with it at times too.
Live and Learn is a good motto.
From a Boomer/Gen X if you’re going to pigeonhole me…🙄

That was why my mum insisted her daughters went to girls schools.

My headteacher didn't stand for that nonsense. In her previous school she stood up for girls who challenged an author who wrote sexist stories.

As a society we haven’t really worked out how to raise children well and support yourself in an average wage. We are two FT working parents, I have a career, I’m educated and I even question how liberating the last 25 years has really been. I’m liberated to work very hard and just about keep the show on the road with my kids. It doesn’t feel very liberating! We shouldn’t have made 2 FT salaries the norm. We should have got men to stay home more and shared care of the kids and shared having a career. I assume men wouldn’t do this so women went out to work as well as their partners. This just isn’t working.

Women my age still use the phrase "settling down", as if anything that comes before is a frivolity and killing time until the real business of their existence can begin (having kids).

I was born in 70s and am now grateful the my headteacher of my girls school - it wasn’t a great school in many ways but she was a good role model. The girls went into business and all sorts of interesting jobs.

You see post after post on MN though with young women stating they're SAHMs, or desire to be so. Then there's those who are complaining that their partner hasn't proposed to them ( nothing stopping them proposing to the bloke). It's all very well to label "Boomers", but it seems a lot from more recent generations are happy to subscribe towards some aspects of 1950s ideology.

Also got to say the elderly generation are lovely people

are they? All of them? I work with older ppl and that’s just nonsense and frankly ageist, older ppl are quite as capable as anyone of being absolutely fucking appalling

my parents are boomers and they encouraged all of us to get a great education and a job. My mum in particular hammered it home to me “never be dependent on a man“

The issue is housing.

When housing was cheaper you didn't need two FT working parents to pay the rent. You could also buy in decent but cheaper areas and rely on one wage.

My older sisters and SILs could have actually stopped working in the 90s when they had small children. They decided not to because their employers offered them decent career paths with paid for qualifications.

My parents are pretty good about this stuff but I think there is still some internalised misogyny in my mum, and from other women her age - for example when sexual harrasment in the workplace is in the news I've heard my mum and a few older women say 'Oh, well it isn't like some women haven't used their sexuality to get ahead' as though a) this is in any way comparable to women being sexually harrassed and b) as though it's some sort of female super power, whereas actually most woment wouldn't or couldn't do it and in fact it's about men having the power to gatekeep and pressuring women to sleep with them... and of course, being totally able to just sleep with them, renege on their promise and then tell everyone she's a stupid whore who slept with him because she must have though he'd give her a promotion, hahahaha. Can you begin to imagine how often that has happened? Because what woman would ever be able to complain about that without being showered with contempt?

I think some older people (not all, by a long shot) are missing out of the concept of power imbalance - that things are hugely different when one side has power over the other.