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!

Absolutely.

I definitely hope so! We have a boomer in our family who was astounded that my dh was talking to a female boss. He said what!! His boss is a WOMAN! He thinks women are there to cater to every man's whim. He and his wife are stuck in the 1950s. We have all corrected him numerous times this is despite the women in the family having professional well paid jobs.

He thinks women are to be looked at. I do wonder if he's insecure. I dont know anyone else my generation that thinks this way. It's really disgusting. He even ranted on at me see look what happened now! You wanted equal pay just when I mentioned having to go to work 🙄

My boomer aunt was a WRAC in the 80s. She went to the Falklands (1982?) and said it was the big time of change for women in the forces. In the army -(to be fair, not full combat, unless situational), they were expected to just get on with it, blokes, women, armed, walking escorts etc. The naval service (her friend also travelled on the troop transports) was still expecting women to nurse and admin.

They have seen many, many changes.

I am a bit bemused sometimes by the blinkered vision of little old granny boomers.

I think when we lose the generation of women who were instrumental in getting everything through and the living memories of what is was like before all these rights were established and the period of change, we run a real risk of losing them again. People have short memories and rose tint the past.

My mum, a boomer, was at the forefront of women's lib. She even took a case to court that helped secure more equal rights for all women in the workplace around benefits that weren't pay.

My mother in law lived a far more traditional life but her memories are so useful in understanding life. She was asked to leave her job when she fell pregnant, being expected to move to wherever her husband had work, her ability to hostess a dinner was even part of his job interview at one stage. So there she was with a tiny baby, expected to host a dinner party.

They also have thier mothers experiences of pre women's rights to draw on, so my nan who had multiple children as she couldn't say no to sex and couldn't access contraception, and she still had to work.

An original aim of women's liberation was that women (at least middle-class women) should have a choice between working outside the home and working inside it. Over time this has transmogrified under capitalism such that few women feel staying at home is even a financially viable option.

High-minded talk of "careers" is all very well and good, and does describe the reality for a lot of women; but at the same time, a lot of other women are stuck in tedious jobs they don't enjoy, and don't get to see their children as much as they would like.

Got about 2 lines into it but my eyes rolled back in my head so far at the talk of "boomers" that i had to stop and have a lie down for a while.

That Generation built our country up after the war, in a time when married women had to give up work, couldn't have credit or bank accounts in their own names etc etc but many of them still managed to be 2nd Wave Feminists and hugely responsible for getting many of the freedoms we enjoy today past governments and into the mainstream.

And the fact that they grew up in a sexist patriarchal world and have absorbed a lot of that thinking is hardly unexpected, is it?

but if we're talking real lived experiences: i don't know many women at all of any generation who think the way you describe. One of them was my granny. (who gave birth to my boomer feminist mum)

‘openly said women shouldn't work when children are going’

Going where?

This is the world boomers were growing up in...

www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/history/edinburghs-politely-discriminating-women-only-26274844

It was thought a women only bank branch was needed in 1964, it closed in 1997.

A lot of that part of the movement ignored the experience of working class women who had always worked outside the home too. The women in my family all worked, my granny went out to service when she was 13 and retired as the matron of a boys home. I'm very proud of her story.

The longer I feminist, the more I anti-capitalist. That's the 'intersection' we don't talk about. It should be possible for parents of both sexes to gear back at work and still afford a home if they choose to have children. Actually, just musing on this, it comes back to Thatcherism doesn't it? If social housing was available and affordable, parents and carers could make different choices.