Calling all ladies who were mums in the 50's and 60's... 70's even... how did you cope?

[Jacksmamwahahaha]

Hi all -

I've never ventured onto Gransnet before, but have been thinking about this the last few days... how did you cope with motherhood and housework and childrearing etc 50-odd years ago?

I started wondering a few days ago when I had a very busy day - laundry, housecleaning, cooking, groceries... and my 20 month old toddler wasn't having a good day. So here I was slinging clothes in the wash and then the tumble-dryer, loading the dishwasher, throwing stuff in the slow cooker, driving to the grocery store, all with an unhappy toddler in tow... and I started thinking, man, this could all be so much harder.

I might have to do the laundry by hand in a tub. Peg out all my washing. Wash all my dishes by hand. Cut up every vegetable rather than be able to use a food processor or other nifty appliance. Sweep the carpet, rather than vacuum it. Wash nappies rather than use disposables. I might not have hot running water or an indoor toilet.

I might not be able to drive or have a car and have to haul a mahoosive shop home in a rattly pram rather than my sleek three-wheeler with huge basket underneath.

I might have a number of children really close together rather than just the one because I might not have birth control options.
I might be trying to do all this without having the damage from Jackbaby's birth repaired. I (or both of us) might have died during his birth. I might not have had access to medication for post-natal anxiety and depression... in fact, such a thing might not even be recognized and I might have had to struggle along without access to counselling.
I might have not have a husband who works part-time so I can work part-time and so he can have his time with our toddler. I might not have a husband who does as much housework as I do and changes as many nappies as I do.

All this really gave me cause to think, what was it really like 50-odd years ago to be pregnant, give birth, raise children, keep house etc.
We are so blessed with modern conveniences these days, and I think we take them for granted. Some people like to argue that these days women are also under more stress than they were years ago, but I don't know if I believe that entirely.

I would love to hear about your experiences.

Oh yes! The BBC was the home of all things wholesome! Bet in later years you watched Swap Shop and not Tiswas eh?

why yes I did shocking

I can't remember being told not to but it was inconceivable to have turned over

remember lazy arguments about who was going to get up to turn the volume up or down?

No daytime TV, & everything went off after the Epilogue (like a Thought for the End of the Day)

We used to rent our TV because they were way too expensive to buy. It cost 10/- a week, reducing by 6d a year. (Presumably after 21 years they would pay you if it lived that long - they reneged on that deal after a while though.)

Another foodie memory - roast meat on Sundays (never chicken, too expensive) & shepherds pie or rissoles on Mondays. Every week!!!

omg, broccoli, none when i was young. where did it come from?
like riven 3 of us in,on or at the side of a huge silver cross.shopped everyday.nappies hung over the side of the loo,out of them by the time i was one. solids at 12 weeks, well mush.
no play dates or entertaining kids.made own way to after schoolactivities.
one can of soup, plus can of water added in between 3 of us and 2 next door.

i was talking about this with my dad a few weeks ago, he was born in the 50's and has 8 siblings all born then aswell. they lived in a very tiny village in rural ireland (really just a road with a few houses along it.) they had no hot water, washing machine or dryer. his dad was a labourer and definitely didnt take anything to do with childcare or housework, my gran did it all aswell as running the village shop from their front living room. she only did washing once a week and it was all cloth nappies. she had 3 children in 22 months so you can imagine how many nappies she had on the go at that point. however from what my dad says she still made time to be with her children. he remembers her making hallowe'en costumes for all of them and making all their bedlinen out of big flour sacks. nothing went to waste. if a jumper was too small, it was unpicked and the wool wound up in a ball to make something else whenever the need arose.

i felt really guilty for complaining about housework after he told me all this.

I was born in the 60s. We lived in a council flat with no hot water and no inside toilet: my mum would boil up water once a week for us all to have a bath. She didn't have a car, and when we were tiny public transport wasn't accessible.

She was a single mum on benefits, and some of our neighbours were VERY disapproving and treated her like a scarlet woman.

My gran had 11 children, the youngest my age. My memories of staying at her house were the sheer number of children sleeping in each room of her 3-bed cottage, the horrors of washday (she had an old-fashioned mangle!) and the industrial-scale catering of boiled potatoes and tea.

god i have it easy. i really shouldnt complain.

"if a jumper was too small, it was unpicked and the wool wound up in a ball to make something else whenever the need arose" - oh YES, Booyhoo, I'd forgotten that! My mum was always doing it, the wool was all curly - she used to unravel & I'd be sat on a stool in front of her winding it into a ball.

And when sheets wore out they'd be sides-to-middled

What a great thread.
My mum has told me a few things about bringing my brothers and sisters and I up in the 50s and 60s.
With the first babies her mother was around and seemed to have ruled my mother with an iron rod. She told my mother that she must not pick up the baby when it cried and that she must feed it at three hourly intervals only. The hand washed nappies were soaked overnight and then must be out on the line before breakfast or what would the neighbours say?
Luckily my mother them moved further away [I wonder why? ] and was left to bring up the subsequent children, 6 in all, her way.
One of her children was born in Dublin in a ward with other labouring women and not much attention from anyone.
The first baby had a new big pram like a silver cross which was then lent out to other mothers and she borrowed or was given second hand prams for her other children. I sat on a toddler seat on top of my brothers big,bouncy pram. The messages went into the end or basket of the pram. We went to playgroup where we did excercises and lay down for naps on little cot beds.
I remember our fist vacuum cleaner like a big grey sausage with a hose. A salesman came round with them to demonstrate. In some places we lived there was a grocer's van and a fish van. A 'pop' lorry came round and you could swap empties for big bottles of ginger beer or cream soda. We wore wellies all year round supplemented with 'jesus' sandles in summer.
We ate a mixture of scottish home cooking and exciting things like Vesta chinese meals, findus beef burgers, arctic roll and supermousses.

My mother was born in 1927, eldest of three children. Her father was a doctor. My grandmother, who was a graduate but never had a job, had the help of a full-time nanny (referred to as 'Nurse') and a cook-housekeeper and a maid. Then the war started, my grandfather joined up and the staff all went off to make munitions, leaving her to run the practice with the aid of a locum and learn to cook and clean. Her hair went white in a month. I remember her as a wonderful cook, and ocean of calm in later life, but my mother claims to have learned most of her choicest bad language during the period when Gran was learning to cook!

Mum qualified as an OT, and worked until she married in 1953. She and my Dad lived in the far East where I was born in 1958.There she had a full-time amah and a cook. We did however live in the UK for 2 years in the mid 1960s, when I remember very limited help in the house, but the full gamut of automatic washing machine, dish washer and hoover. Mum did a 40 mile return trip twice a day driving us to school, but during the holidays we were out all day and not really underfoot. I don't remember much in the way of homework, and I certainly don't remember her supervising it in any way!

I had ds at 41 in 1999, and worked full-time until he was 8. After I went back to work he went to a childminder, and when he started nursery we had a part-time nanny. No other help in the house, but the full range of clothes and dish washing machines, and a decent hoover. DH (who also worked full time until DS was 6) does all the cooking, I do all the laundry and we co-operate on a fairly minimal level of housework. I probably spend more time with DS than my mother did with me, and certainly more time than her mother did with her children. I have a lot less leisure time, and fewer hobbies than either of them. The other main difference I remember is that my grandparents house was bloody cold (heating went off altogether if it was above freezing outside), whereas both Mum and I regard warmth as a basic necessity.

According to Mum, the big difference that she notices is just how much baby care both DH and BIL did. My Dad never changed a nappy. Her Dad needed a map to find the kitchen!

And of course fathers were scarcely allowed near the hospital/maternity home, & the mums stayed in for 2 weeks, mostly in bed

Ah yes heating in all of my childhood homes was a fire in the front room, I do remember parafin heaters vaguely and maybe a three bar electric heater. We took hot water bottles to bed and had many blankets.
Which reminds me of the excitement of getting Duvets! Early 70's.

and there was no MN to wile away the hours distract them.

I too remember campbells soup which came out of the tin in a tin-shaped lump and had to have a tin of water added (or was that just for thrift?) And nursery school where we had little army style green campbeds for our afternoon nap.

Mum wore a corset til she was 7 months gone so no-one would know she was pregnant. She fainted at work and the doctor was called and he told her mum- she was 19! She was sent to a nursing home for catholic girls in Kendal and was supposed to come home without me. She refused to give me up but wasn't allowed to interact with me as my Grandparents pretended they had adopted me. Mum left home when I was 3 and took me with her... this wouldn't be thought of as brave now, but she was! [proud of mum emoticon]

shockers, that was incredibly brave of her - I meant to comment earlier, on you & your uncle sharing the pram & the cot(LOL)

When was this? How did she manage with you on her own? Did she work & put you in a nursery? Did she have to fake an absent DH, or just stick her chin out & say up yours?

What a role model

PS the campbells was supposed to be diluted (it was condensed - smaller tins, took up less space in cupboard )

shockers that is brave, even today. my mum can be very scary and it would take alot to get your way if she'd her mind set.

well done your mum

Flymetodunoon - supermousses!! I remember them! Funny half frozen things with cardboard lids. Am I thinking of the right thing.

And for the record, I'm not that old either, they must have been around well into the 80's

I have yearnings for supermousse even unto this day.
Anyone know if you can still get them.

ponders when she left home she got herself a job on a mobile library and we lived in a flat in a Lakeland town. Downstairs was a retired policeman and his wife who would take me to nursery, pick me up and generally act like supportive Grandparents. At weekends mum used to take me on walks or to the park where we would sit on a rug under the trees. I don't remember any negativity from other people but I may have been too young to notice. I do remember comments about my clothes though... mum liked to dress me in bright coloured cord trousers for nursery ( they had a card elephant for a label) that were really for boys with knitted cardigans. I don't think little girls wore trousers as much in those days!

Forgot to say... she met my SD because he worked at the library ( the main one, not the mobile) He came to live with us and I also got the most wonderful set of Grandparents out of the deal!!

All these stories about how it used to be are really making me think... do we really have it better now??

My mum had my sis in 1964, and with granny living in her town got lots of 'advice' (=pressure) about how to care for babies - leave them out in the garden in the pram, let them cry etc. She hated doing this. When I came along in 1970 she just had me about with her all day, in my bouncer watching her doing her chores - said I was a much happier baby... We wore terry nappies (I think she had a twin tub, or similar); we were bottle fed (no encouragement to breastfeed in the '70s); and she felt rather lonely in her existence. I can't really remember what she did with us - whether she got us doing arty things, or if we were left to our own devices. When I was older we were able to run free-range around the estate (from around 7 years, if not earlier). She made the most amazing outfits for us if ever fancy dress was called for, or incredible cakes (one birthday had a fantasy landscape of coloured meringue trees). Whereas I don't even cook puddings at all so my DS thinks the only pudding is ice-cream or yogurt...

Hi

This is my 1st time on mumsnet - I was lucky for a 1969 Mum as I had an auto washer. However I always used towelling nappies and managed to have him out of them by his 1st birthday. I was only allowed to have 1 child but I know how lucky I was with the above as my sister had twins who were a nightmare and enough work for 3 people but I got to practice on them. Even now we always eat meals at the dining table and I believe a lot of families would gain from this as many subjects are aired and discussed without making big issues out of them.

I was brought up in care - I'll be 62 this month.
I got pregnant in 1971 [ the year decimalisation came out] and had my oldest of seven children in 1972.
I was so ignorant of what was happening to me - I had no idea I was pregnant.
I had my daughter in a mother and baby home and refused to give her up.
I was housed in a rat-infested tenement in Glasgow and then moved to England where I got a live-in job in Bucks.
Got married in 1975 and had six more children.
I now have 13 grandchildren and custody of one grandson whom I've had since he was 2 and is now 10 and also home educated.
I remember my coach-built Silver Cross pram with the sun canopy with the fringes.
I remember going into hospital for 10 days to have baby, cooked breakfasts, as many terry nappies as you could use.
I remember my triple McLaren buggy with the three youngest in it, and everyone used to jump out of the way of the wheels on the narrow pavements where we lived.