To want to settle a generation gap argument: older (female) relative is saying women had to give up work when they got married?

[Winnabella]

Got an older female relative (aunt) who gave up work when she married my uncle (now passed away). They got married in 1964. My parents got married in 1970 and my mum carried on working. My grandmother carried on working until she was in her late 70s. But my aunt goes on about how it 'wasn't acceptable' to carry on working after getting married. She's not done too badly being a SAHM but does go on a bit about the sacrifices she made. She had a cleaner and a housekeeper to do the housework and she and my uncle had 2 children. My cousins often joke about how they had to wear their pyjamas for two weeks. My aunt came round on Sunday and she went on and on about the job she did just before she got married. It is a bit like she's been stuck in time - this was nearly 50 years ago now. Was it the case that women were frowned upon in the 1960s for working if they got married; and how come my mother and grandmother seemed to hold down jobs (my mum part time after I was born and before I started school)

Err yes, some employers refused to employ married women - and required women to quit on marriage - well into the 60s. The 70s in some cases.

This meant that in some circles, it was socially expected that women would stop working.

However, some jobs/employers did not, so it was entirely possible to continue working. However in certain circles, they would have been looked down on because if you were working it must mean that your husband wasn't a good enough breadwinner, so you must be a failure to have not bagged a good enough husband.

Let's be clear, some people still have that attitude! Some employers are more likely to employ a man because "he's a breadwinner" than a better-qualified woman, who's "only doing it for the pin money". That's an unofficial marriage bar...

You know you could have done your aunt the courtesy of believing her. And ask your mum when she first got her own bank account or loan without her dad or husband having to co-sign.

This stuff is very well known. Aren't you a bit embarrassed to enjoy the fruit of the hard work of previous generations of women and not know what they were up against?

Additionally, a woman needed her husband's permission to open a bank account. A single woman would have had to get her father's permission. Ditto mortgages.

A lot of companies wouldn't employ married women. Some companies would, but not once you became pregnant.

@Redwinestillfine

My mil had to give up work when she got married in the mid 1970's. Apparently it was a thing.

My mum got married in 1976/7 and it wasn't a thing where she worked then. She was either working in the NHS or for a university.

Maybe this was a bit later though. My grandma worked in various part time jobs she's 83 now married in the early 50s. But not sure if she left and went back later?

My late mum said that she was expected to leave U.K. civil service on her marriage in 1965. However she challenged that (ruling?) norm and retained her post - until she had her first child then had to leave as there was other child care. And I do remember hearing one of my quite young aunties (in the 1970s) say that unemployment was a result of married women taking all the jobs!

I am sure my mother had to give up work when she married in 1967 she was emplyed by Inland revenue tax office, as I was born 11 months later it wasn't much earlier.

Meant to say ‘no other childcare’!

My mother had to give up her job as a Librarian when she got married (this would have been around 1955). She got another job though, as a clerical worker in a factory. She took some time out, then went back to Librarianship when I was older.

Of the married women I knew, very few actually worked if they had children, even when the children were grown up.

Mum married in 1964 and had to leave her job - shop work in a small town. Husband was the breadwinner and therefore she had no need for a job.

and how come my mother and grandmother seemed to hold down jobs

Ask your Mother and grandmother? We can not possibly answer that.

Yes, my mother had to leave work when she married in 1971.

My Mum had to give up her job with the education office (now the LEA) when she had me in 1969 so yes in a lot of jobs mother's weren't allowed to be employed

I have a feeling it was only in the late 80's that women coukd be married in Army. They certainly couldn't be mothers then .

Yes it happened!

I was reading the biography of Dorothy Hodgkin (Nobel prize winning woman for X-ray crystallography) and it had a lot about how they faced this issue to keep her on doing research and essentially struggled to pay her officially when she got married and she was paid so much less etc

So much change has happened thankfully !

DMum was asked to leave during her first pg - early 1970s office job- apparently there was talk after her marriage of letting her go but they waited till first pg about year later. She wasn't pleased years later and I think felt p/t jobs she did get were all steps down -she worked in p/t jobs during our childhood mainly shop work.

Maternal DGM worked in factory when her kids were young - paternal DGM had few years off in war and then was back in very specialised skilled office job though Dads childhood - late 1940 and 50s which was unusal to be in office apparently.

MIL had few years off again 70s from factory work - left herself then found cleaning job she could take DH with - then few years after DH in school she was back in factory full time.

@TheKeatingFive

I’m in ROI and women were effectively forced out of civil service jobs when they got married, right into the 70s/80s. So yes, I’d believe it.

Yes, for public and semi-public sector jobs, it was only lifted in 1973, and in the private sector, when European law made it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of sex and marital status, in 1977.

And the lesser-known killer to the lifting of the marriage bar in the public sector is that the almost 3000 women who'd been forced to resign in the three years before the bar was lifted were given the right to get their jobs back, but only if they could prove their husbands were no longer supporting them on the grounds of desertion, separation or bad health! Aargh.

My parents married in 1953. My mum gave up work straight away as it is what was expected. I got married in 1988. I remember the priest asking me if I intended to carry on working when I was married. It was a question that took me by surprise because I didn't realise that anyone thought that was still the expectation.

My mum worked for the NHS in a managerial role, fairly senior, in the early and mid 70s. She was well paid too, about £6k a year, more than my dad for a while.

She did give up work for a number of years in the late 70s and 80s when DC arrived but went back in the late 80s and worked until retirement.

I think possibly there weren't any nurseries who could take young children as there are now? She didn't have any family help. So maybe working wasn't even an option?

My mum had to leave one job when she got married in 1964. But then found another one where she was "allowed" to be married, and always worked apart from when I was little.

It varied, both my Grandmother's worked, one was a doctor nd the other a cleaner but my mother and MIL both gave up work when they married in the late sixties as their husbands wanted them to, it was a matter of male pride (at least in the working class area that both my Dad and FIL came from) that their wives didn't need to. I think later on they would not have minded if they'd gone back, some of their friends did, but by then they were all used to the situation and made the best of it.

My mother married in 1960, with no interruption to her professional training, and took the minimum amount of maternity leave over that decade. There was never any question of her giving up work; she loved her job and both she and my DF were ambitious for the family.

But I know what your aunt says was also true for lots of women. It used to seem strange to me that every single teacher in the Chalet School series 'had to' leave once they married ...

My MIL was on a teacher training course when she got married in around 1960, or possibly in very early stages of teaching career, and when she told them she was getting married they tried to get her to leave - the assumption certainly was that she should not be working when married. But she challenged it and managed to win a “trial year or two” of carrying on, to prove it would be ok, and she just kept going. They needed both salaries and she loved teaching and refused to give it up. I think it was quite unusual then, though, certainly in some circles. My parents are 10 years younger than my PIL and the difference between getting married in 1960 and in 1970 was massive - very different times.

My mother in law talked of having to give up her job once she got married - because the jobs were needed by the men to support their families. She would have married in the late fifties.
My mother had to give up her job when her first child was born as there was no maternity leave etc. That was 1971. (Married in 1970 kept working then)

Depends on the job.