Ever want to be an 80s mum?

[Sheerdetermination]

I feel nostalgic for my childhood in the 80s and find myself fantasising about having the kind of motherhood my own mum enjoyed - being at home until I was 6, when she went back to work as a teacher. I just fancy pottering to the shops/post office/library/playgroup with my dc, rather than working 5 days a week (albeit fairly flexibly, so I can ‘live my dream’ from time to time).
Just curious, does anyone else feel like this?

I've noticed a slow shift towards more women becoming SAHM this last couple of years.

I guess, if you have to work until you're 67 now, having 4 or 5 years out of the workplace isn't the disaster it was once thought to be. I was always suspicious of the "it will ruin your career if you take time out" line anyway. I think we've been lied to there - probably to keep us in the workplace.

I was born in the 80s. My dad had a shit job and spent a vast amount of his salary on beer and cigarettes so my mum had to work 8-5 from the time I was 18 months. The experience you describe was not universal in the 80s.

I loved having my mum home growing up, We also had grandparents and aunties living nearby as well as mums childhood friends so we were at peoples houses every day. I think thats what I miss. I wish I had a village. Instead we pay a pretty penny for private nursery,
I do recall my mum was incredibly miserable and trapped once we were older. On paper we had the idyllic village life but mum was bored shitless and started drinking in the day to pass the time.

You’re describing being a SAHM not a mum in the 80s. Loads of mums stay at home until at least their youngest is settled at primary school. Working mums of young children are way more common now than they were in the 80s but it isn’t some kind of new norm,any women do not do that.

her personal spending money was £80/week out of which she had to buy all the household shopping and anything the children needed.

According to the BOE; £80 in 1985 is the equivalent of £236 today - as a weekly amount that sounds very reasonable.

Nope. Being a SAHM wouldn't suit me.

Mainly due to the rise in costs of childcare.

I don't know if parenting without the internet would have been brilliant (no anxiety spikes constantly about getting it wrong) or terrible (I have got so much support and so much brilliant info - it just eats up time to sift through it.)

I would definitely have been more bored!

I think there was probably a bit of a golden time to be a SAHM when the labour saving devices and modern conveniences had been invented but parenting expectations weren't as high as they are today. I too remember that it was totally acceptable to have very little interaction with your children and virtually no involvement in their education. Kids could play out without adult supervision for hours and hours and it was rare to go to an organised extra curricular club. SAHMs also weren't looked down on in the same way they are now by some factions of society and there was a wider acknowledgement that families should be supported. Of course, it was much harder for women that wanted a career and for those that didn't want children at all so it definitely wasn't a universal utopia.

Now though, I think a more traditional setup is almost actively discouraged and there are incentives for parents to work as long as possible and to use childcare. There is also a huge pressure on parents to be perfect and involved in all aspects of their children's lives whilst working such long hours. Lots of women are stuck in a middle place where they still shoulder the majority of domestic/childcare work but are also expected to work FT and earn the same as a man. It is very difficult for women to be SAHMs and they are now stigmatised.

I think it's such a shame that we can't accept that women want different things and support choice. You don't need to dismantle the traditional family setup or abolish SAHMs in order to support women who want to work and don't want families.

I'm a SAHM, I wouldn't have it any other way but it's certainly not a walk in the park! Literally and metaphorically lol.

I'm not much of a career person and I feel like my family is my life's work.

I wish there was more choice for Mum's, it seems like those who would like to stay at home often can't afford to and those that would like to either struggle with cost of childcare or inflexible working. Why can't we get it right in the UK!

I am glad for choice. I would have been utterly miserable as a SAHM (was miserable by the end of maternity leave). My DM was FT as a highly educated professional in the 80s and would have been unbearable as a SAHM. She and I both laugh at how awful it would have been compared to my fairly idyllic childhood with a nanny.

My mum was an 80s mum.

Being a single parent in thatchers Britain was grim.

My mum worked FT in the 80's, although I was a teen by then.

She gave up her teaching job when I was born in the early 70's and looked after me until I went to school.

She never again got permanent work and for years survived as a supply teacher until she retired.

Would I swap my life for hers? No!

I worked part time when the DC were small and now they are teens have moved forward in my career and get paid well enough to work 30 hours a week, without needing to go back full time. That would not have happened if I had taken a long career break

That was my mum

She never went back to her career and worked in jobs she was far too over qualified for when my siblings and I went to school. She is happy to say she regrets it now we are adults. She left herself so financially vulnerable as well.

You forgot about the tupperware parties. Wasn't that an 80's staple?

I was an 80's mum and it was nothing like you decribe. I was working full time, 2 bus rides away and struggled to juggle very sparse childcare. No before or after school clubs,no family and only one childminder in the village who was always having sick days and holidays. I have no idea how I kept my job.
Most other mum's that I knew were in the same position but most still had family nearby

Also an 80s mum, single parent, worked weekends when the kids were at their dad’s, permanently knackered, skint and stressed, with a poxy Tory government telling everyone that people like me were ruining society. Finally went to uni at 32, which was bloody hard work with two under-10s, and started a semi-decent career by 40. Fucked my pension royally, tbh - I’m now retired and paying the price for the mostly stay-at-home years.

I thought by "80s mum" you meant smacking the DCs when they annoy you and not bothering to take them to loads of clubs/activities! But you just mean SAHM... lots of women still live like this!

I was a nineties mum and very happy to be so. As a private music teacher, l had very few pupils when my three children were small but gradually built up the numbers after the youngest started school. I don’t think our material expectations were as high as they are today and children did one or two after school activities but not the plethora that so many seem to do today.

My dm was an 80s mum and it was no walk in the park, sky high interest rates, oil crisis, that effectively made the whole world poorer. Winters were bitter and colder. She sta8ted home until I was 4 and then retrained as an engineer. But im sure if I ask her , she would say life was hard.

My MIL was a proper Yuppie in the gogo 80s - working a million hours a week in a power suit with giant shoulders, splurging on allll the designer baby gear which was a new thing then. DH and I were watching Baby Boom a few years back and he said it was basically a documentary of his childhood. I could get on board with being that kind of 80s mum TBH, I think I'd look great with a perm and some mega shoulder pads.

My mum went back to work as a teacher when I was 2 in 1988, so I went to a childminder and my parents were always running about a bit frazzled. The clothes were great though. One of my earliest memories is watching her get dressed in the 1989 'mum uniform" of a white jumpsuit tucked into beige slouch boots with a t-shirt from Dash underneath. She had the same haircut and color as Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface.

I was an 80's Mum late 80's to be fair. I was working two jobs before Ds was born and went back to work when he was 8 weeks old after a c-section (I'm a nurse) I stayed as part time and give up the other job. Money was very tight. It wasn't all roses. Ended up when he was 1 having to stop work as my child care became so unreliable. Went back when he was 2 and he could go to a nursery near my work.
Back then all work in the house was mine to do as well as all the shopping and cooking baby and pet care. Dh worked long hours and did 6 days a week often to make up for my not working. He did all the car and garden care. It seemed to work well.
The interest rate on out little two bed house was 10%.

I remember my mother having a lovely time in the 70s when DB and I were at primary school. She'd do the housework/meal prep in the morning and was usually reading a novel with her feet up by the time we came home for lunch. In the afternoon she'd usually go to a social event having tea with other mothers - often we'd all go there after school or we'd go to the park and she'd meet us there.
No need to collect your children from school - we were walking home by ourselves at 5&7 - there was a lollipop lady to cross us over the busy road though.
No homework/spellings or reading to do with us after school and although music practice was not negotiable it wasn't supervised. If we weren't playing out (unsupervised) with friends we'd be sat watching children's tv on the BBC until dinnertime - then it was bath and bed with a book.

No
My mum lived a destitute love with a husband who drank her wages because of the stigma associated with being a single parent. With the support of some very caring people who are still in her life now she got the courage to leave
She married my dad in the mid80s but due to skyrocketing interest rates and cost of living she went back to work when I was 12 weeks and my sister 5 weeks.
My dad worked until 4 pulled up on the drive at 4.30 and they left the engine running as my parent jumped in so she could go to her nursing job in the evening. My dad worked Saturday and Sundays repairing cars and electrical stuff for friends and acquaintances. In the early 90s my dad moved to outside staff and spent weeks-months working on countries in the middle and far east.

I'm not sure I would go back to the 80s at all. Me and my siblings have had 15% interest rates burned into the very centre of our beings. Things like making a stack of bread and butter for every meal not realising that it was to pad out the meal are also a big part of my memories

Thanks for all your comments everyone. Very interesting to hear people’s different experiences and opinions. Perhaps I should be happy with my lot.