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!

Your dad was suprised because of who he is, not because he was born within a random 19 year timespan.

Yes, one can always rely on MN for good old ageism, and women blaming other women.

It’s amusing to watch.

But also quite sad to see how ignorant the OP is about recent women’s history. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I think that was Marx, and he was a wise bird, who showed us our world in a different way.

@YellowAsteroid "Yes, one can always rely on MN for good old ageism, and women blaming other women."

Ageism yes. Not so sure about women blaming other women.

I know. But take heart @CurlewKate

I’m an academic who bucks the current trend for “inclusion” feminism. I teach good old second wave and earlier feminist stuff - I love seeing my students’ reactions to reading Wollstonecraft or Mill for the first time.

There are some quite clued up young women although most of their education mitigates them understanding the structural oppressions they still experience.

Fuck me, this thread.

Look at the dates on the pieces of legislation that created the framework for women's rights in this country. Equal Pay Act, 1970. Married women's property, 1964. Abortion Act, 1967.

The Women's refuge movement, Greenham common. Boomer women did their bit and yet seem to have been erased from history.

And who were they fighting against? The boomer uncle who's currently sitting at your dinner table - the fact he's not managed to change his views in 70 years is boomer women's fault too???

Also: intersectionality.

He's actually not wrong about the two wages thing: that's where capitalism intersects with patriarchy. It would be great for everyone if one wage could run a house, wouldn't it? Think of the leisure time we'd all have. Think of the lack of excuses men would have for avoiding their kids and the dishes.

Also class. Working class boomer women always worked and in jobs that didn't have marriage bars.

I'm a Boomer, and I grew up with the expectation that I would go to university and have a career. I kept my name when I married as have most of my friends.

I don't recognize anyone I know in the situations you describe, OP. But it may be different in that I'm American and also that my mother and my grandmother were university educated. It was unusual for my grandmother's generation certainly, but not for my mother's.

@augustusglupe It is surprising considering they have so many advantages that previous generations didn't have, isn't it? Maybe adversity has benefits that we never realised. There's a distinct lack of critical thought and analytical skills in the younger generations. Of course you should now prepare yourself for the backlash and #bekind.

Well quite, @HelloMyNameIsElderSmurf

It’s a pity some younger women today seem so ignorant of what the women before them did.

I definitely remember a married pregnant woman in my office. She was a CO in Bristol.

Oh I'm so with you on this. To listen to younger people talk about the 70's you'd think they meant the 1870's, and they're not being tongue in cheek either. It's breathtaking ignorance of the very near past. Almost every benefit that women have today began in the 60's or 70's. It was a time of progress and anger which confronted the socio, political and conventional views of the establishment more than ever before. Actually much more so than today when people live their lives vacariously through social media.

"Will these attitudes pass with the boomers passing!"
What a fucking vile comment to make.

I'm one of those insultingly named "boomers" and I hope that I won't be "passing" anytime soon.

In the early 80s I attended numerous Greenham Common demonstrations, including the one where we women all joined hands and circled the perimeter fence. The police brutality there was shocking but it didn't stop me from going back again and again.

I was actively involved in my trade union (which I'm still a member of) and fought hard for women's rights. Went on numerous anti government marches.

After climbing the career ladder to a senior position (in spite of not having the benefit of a university education which was a rarity in those days), I personally introduced career development courses specifically for women. I also negotiated enhanced maternity provisions in my workplace.

OP how dare you lump us all into one generational mass and refer to us as "conservative and borderline misogynist" I'm fuming 😡

Exactly @TamzinGrey I’ll be working into my 70s because I’m good at my job and love it. I wonder if @mids2019 will come back and apologise?

We could also give her a reading list.

I'm 70. I am not how you describe 'boomers' although my ex h, was definitely in that camp. Yes I should work, but my main job should be to make his life easier and look after the kids. We separated in 1985, largely because I thought looking after 2 kids was enough. I was not going to look after a man child.

However, I am so disappointed that so many younger women still see the pinnacle of fulfillment is getting a man.

In 1973, I was 18 and started my nurse training. I had to get my father's signature in order to open a bank account. In the more recent past. I project managed my own self build house. I have come a long way.

My son, (40s) doesn't talk to his dad - but has a similiar attitude (their partners don't get on). My daughter (sensibly) has never married. She wanted children but wouldn't settle for a man who wasn't going to be an equal partner.

Women are still striving for equality with men (in terms of confidence, pay parity etc)

We are also striving for men's equality with women (in terms of child care, mental load etc.)

Neither of these 'equalities' suit all men or all women. Both lose some 'privileges' if/when we are all equal.

It may be older people who are expressing these views to you but many younger people are still living their lives in that way - the older generation are not making them

I know, i think you’re spot on in what you say.
I find their attitude upsetting. Always on about how the ‘boomers’ will be dead soon, or to quote mids2019
Will these attitudes pass with the boomers passing!
😕

The thing is there's still little real equality. For a lot of women having a career has meant they not only work full time plus they do the vast majority of everything else, life admin etc. I was stupid enough to think that equality was achieved when the Equal Pay Act was passed but all these decades later there's still a way to go.

@YellowAsteroid I would (genuinely) appreciate a reading list!

I'm a tail-end Boomer. We didn't have equality...I started teaching in '84. The first two years of my pension payments would have been lost instead of being passed to my parents when I died because I happened to have ovaries instead of testicles. (I compared notes/paperwork with two boys who'd started teaching in the same school at the same time.)

You were also seen as "less than" if you weren't married with children (including at least one boy).

I had colleagues who were asked about their childcare arrangements when being interviewed for jobs.

My worked from when she left school in the early mid 60s with CSEs aged 15, and Dad left with a few. While he retrained as a plumber, my mum worked in secretarial jobs. She got a bank account in her own name ( not joint ) when she was 18 - Her Dad (my Granddad) was very proud of her, and so was my Dad. She had a bank account before he did. My Mum, had children late in those days. But they stood their ground.

They have both always been self-employed, keen with their money, spent wisely, and knew how to do high quality work with low budgets.

They are still going strong, very liberal, and feminist. You would all dislike them because they are pro-trans, anti Brexit, and left the UK years ago :-)

I think the difficult thing is that many people don't know how recently much legislation came in, around equal pay (which I still didn't actually achieve in my career until about 5 years ago,) sex discrimination, being allowed to have bank accounts, loans and mortgages without having a man to sign off on it, rape in marriage, etc, etc. It's a long list.

I grew up knowing my grandmother had gone to Cambridge and worked as a teacher. My 5 great-aunts (born 1910s and '20s) had all had some form of higher education (very unusual for their generation.) My mother only worked part-time till we were teenagers, but she also read Germaine Greer, which was on the shelf. Nearly all my friends ' mothers worked - teaching, nursing, secretary, librarian, museum, so fairly stereotypically female roles, but they still worked. The teachers at my school told us we were "the academics and businesswomen of tomorrow." I remember one of them sighing and saying she'd ban marriage until 18 when one girl at 16 came in showing off her engagement ring (she didn't say it in front if the girl.)

We grow up with different messages, but in my family, from my Edwardian-born grandmother, my baby-boomer mother and teachers, I had a strong message I shoukd do the best I can academically and have a career, and be able to run a house, because it's what adults do, regardless of sex. Any man in my life should be just as capable as I am of using the washing machine, cleaning the loo and knocking up an evening meal. I was taught to use a saw and a drill as much as how to do the laundry.

We definitely seem to be regressing as far as gender stereotypes go, but I'm also aware that not everyone my age grew up in households where feminism was discussed, except in derogatory comments about women's libbers. We are not all the same.

Great post @EBearhug and I particularly agree with this I think the difficult thing is that many people don't know how recently much legislation came in

I was mulling over this thread yesterday, and came to the conclusion that if you are in your 50s, 60s, 70s+ and have seen the changes happen through the hard work and activism of those “boomers” and others, then it is all quite obvious. But if you are in your 20s (and perhaps didn’t pay much attention in your teens) maybe it’s a different matter.

@mids2019 I don't think it was a time of equality. My parents are of this generation and my mum says she had to reapply for her job when she got married. Then when pregnant with me, she had to give up her job.

They both still managed to encourage me to have a professional career.

I guess it depends on his motivations for believing women shouldn't need to work. If it's because he has an issue with independent women then that's not good. However, if it's because he understands that many women struggle to balance childcare and work nowadays but are trapped due to financial reasons then that's different. We certainly hear a lot about the mental load on here.

My DF, born in 1943 is one of the so-called 'silent generation'. My DM, born 1946 is one of the so-called 'baby boomers'.

DF hated when my DM went out to work; didn't speak to her for a week because 'he didn't like the thought that his wife had to go out to work to make ends meet' (it was a P/T job in a paper shop). Very proud man who was brought up with the view that women shouldn't have to work despite the fact his own Dad made his Mum find work?! He took it as a slight...that his job/income wasn't sufficient for the 4 of us to live on. Didn't once consider that DM may just like to have a job that made her feel more fulfilled. 🙄He and I have had lots of conversations around this, misogyny and issues around violence towards women and his views have changed as a result, thank god.

DM constantly asks me why my DD19 doesn't have a b/f. 'But she's so beautiful; why isn't she batting them away from the door' kind of speak. Drives me fucking nuts. I'm constantly asking her 'why does she need one? It's not like it was in your day, where a woman could only feel valid if she had a husband!' DM looks at me like I've grown a second head. 🙄

@Reallybadidea 😂solidarity with regard to the ironing. My DM was genuinely horrified, literally stood there opened mouthed when she popped round to find my DH ironing. When she picked her jaw up off the ground, she said 'ProjectMe, why is DH ironing; why aren't you doing it?'.

I've battled with my DM over such things since I was about 15 but her attitude has never changed; she now has dementia so it's pointless discussing things anymore. She's been more of a misogynist than any man I know. 😕

Yes-the "boomer generation" did absolutely nothing for women's rights and freedoms.

I am SOOO pissed off with this attitude amongst younger women.

Not my experience at all OP although I’m late 50s so not quite boomer
My main worry is the growing negative attitudes towards women today.

It feels like things are going backwards and we need to push against this.