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)

My dsis was allowed to stay in her office job after marriage in 1966 in Australia. This was considered highly controversial and her mil cried ( really) for days. Soon as she got pregnant though-out she went.

My mum was in the Civil Service. She got married in the 60s and she had to leave when she did

At one time you could not continue be a teacher or a nurse if you were to marry.

It was definitely encourage in the 60s to the point that where my Mum worked (civil service) there was actually a bonus payment made if the woman left her job when she got married.

So my parents took the bonus to help them furnish their new house but my Mum simply got a job somewhere else immediately and then after waiting the required number of years joined the civil service again.

even when the contraceptive pill and other methods came in, a woman had to bring her husband to the doctor's to prove he gave permission for her to use contraception.
this may have been at the discretion of the doctor, but was widespread.

My Mother gave up work in the late 1970s /1980 until the children were 11. Then went back part time -in early 1970s or late 1960s yes absolutely you gave up work

Haven’t RTFT.
But working class women have always worked. My great grandmothers both worked, full time, one of them 2 jobs to raise 5 children on her own after she was widowed, relying on extended family and neighbours to mind the kids.
My Nanna gave up work to look after me so that my mum could go back to work - her own mother did the same for her. I always assumed that was commonplace until recent years but maybe I am wrong.

I started teaching in the early seventies. Married women kept on working but I can't think of any who stayed in their job after they had a child. They usually spent the early years at home then did supply work until their children started school.

There weren't nurseries and childminders like there are now so unless family could do the childcare the mother couldn't work. As far as I remember any state nurseries were for children from disadvantaged homes.

There were women who wanted to work but weren't allowed to by their controlling husbands. I remember a woman whose husband said she could get a job if she liked (she was middle-aged and the children were grown up) but he wouldn't be lifting a finger in the house and he expected his tea on the table when he came in from work as usual.
I don't know whether she went ahead.

From the comments on MN a lot of younger women seem to think life was like it is now but with cheaper housing. It was far from that.

The Natwest website says the then National Provincial bank was the first bank to remove the marriage bar (only unmarried women allowed to work in the bank) in 1950.

My late MIL married in 1946 when her fiancé returned from the war, she had to leave the bank she had worked at since leaving school. Her father was an accountant and gave her a bit of work helping him on audits but it was done discreetly, that had to stop when she fell pregnant with her eldest, as it wasn’t considered proper for her to carry on working. She said that people would have felt it reflected badly on FIL to not provide for his wife.

It was definitely an absolute rule at the bank where she worked that married women were not employed.

I got my first proper job at 21 in 1968 and worked until I was 66, so it must have varied in different professions.

Posters stating that all women HAD to give up work are wrong - unless they mean outside the U.K.
Maybe certain employers forced women to give up work, but none of my contemporaries from that era had to do so.
Maternity leave was available , maximum 18 weeks on half-pay & back to work when baby was 6 weeks old.

Women had to leave work after having a baby as there was no Maternity leave in the 70,s When did that Start? I had to leave

after having babies and later used to tell women going off on maternity leave that I'd been given the P45 form when in their situation. No certainty of getting re-employment in those days.

@cabingirl It was more than "encouraged" in the civil service it was an rigidly applied policy.

You had to leave teaching when you married up to 1944. This was changed only due to the shortage following the war.

@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)

Women staying at home and looking after the children was very much encouraged from the early 1950s. In a 1951 report for the World Health Organisation Bowlby contended that the mother is the child's psychic organiser, as observational studies of children worldwide showed that absence of mother love had disastrous consequences for children's emotional health. Bowlby's work was used by some to argue that a mothers place was in the home. The UK Government seized on these ideas to encourage women to stay at home, thereby freeing up more jobs for men after the war.

The trouble is, Bowlby was a fraud and his work was subsequently discredited. Unfortunately, the idea that a woman's place is in the home tended to stick. My own father believed that women shouldn't work, so that there would be more jobs for men. He also believed that women didn't even want to work.

My own mother never worked during her marriage. I was never encouraged to do well at school and I left without any qualifications. Subsequently, I went back into education and worked my way through GCSEs, A levels, a diploma, a degree and a post-grad. Interestingly, at this point my father declared he was very proud of me.

Well the further back you go the more difficult it was. However we will all know of astonishing women who worked full time when married and with children. Money for help with ‘the house and children’ often featured. My own family has women who worked when married from 1920s on my own mother worked full time 1950s -90s with children a husband and no money for extra childcare.
Lots depended on where (Perhaps your aunt was in a small minded kind of old fashioned community?) and who (perhaps her own family/husband’s family were instrumental in that thinking?)

Aside from the question in your post, why do you comment on your aunt having a cleaner and housekeeper and what is the significance of your cousins having to wear pyjamas for two weeks? She’s failed by not working and also because she hasn’t done her womanly duty of washing and cleaning to a certain level? It’s so tiring being female.

My mum had colleagues who hid the fact they had got married so they didn't lose their jobs. I am not sure what happened when they had their first child, I suppose they had to come clean ;) But my mum was married and working in the late 60s, it depended on the job you did and the attitude of your employer.

It's heartbreaking that it happened for so long to so many, and until so recently too.

My mum had to give up the place she had been offered in a School of Nursing as she got engaged to my dad.( She hadn't started her training but she wasn't allowed to start ) This was about 1950.
Sad thing is that she was offered support to train in the mid 1970s as she was working as an Auxillary and someone felt she had potential, but she had lost her confidence.
Her elder sister worked for "the Gas Board" and was a showroom manager which was " quite unusual for a woman" in the 1960s.

@Georgyporky For women in the civil service and in places like the clearing banks it was absolutely the case - there was no "do you want to carry on?", you had to leave. The civil service gave a special payment to women when they left to be married.

As pp’s say it’s about having children. Ever since the industrial revolution, for all its benefits, people’s lives have been second place to their economic value to our lords and masters. And in Britain it is women that have children, not women and men. Their problem. Especially just after ww2 when working women were pushed aside in favour of men.

Depends on the company. My aunt had to (secretarial), but couldn't afford to. The company took her back eventually but she had to return as "Miss Jones" instead of "Mrs Smith" to maintain the fiction that she was still unmarried

Another aunt, of a similar age, didn't have that problem but I have a vague idea that she and my uncle owned their own business during that time.

I just googled maternity leave. First legislation passed i 1975 and extended later, but for the first 15 years only about half of working women were eligible.