Resent that mum never worked/had a job - causing rifts between us

[Waferbiscuit]

My mother married right out of University and since then has been a SAHM/SAHW. She only ever held one job, over the summer, when she was 20 and and has never had a job since.

She has lived a very comfortable life - children at a young age, divorced but remarried quickly so no change in her financial circumstances, moderately successful husband and kids at home until they left when she was 48. Since then she has spent the last 40+ years travelling, pottering and quite frankly stretching out daily chores into the day. She is part of a weird generation of mc women who expected to be cared for and probably never expected to work.

By contrast I have worked FT since leaving University, now a single parent, still working and juggling everything.

The fact that mum has never worked means she's lived in a real bubble, and has very skewed views about public life and the world of work. This causes huge rifts between us and really affects our relationship.

• She has very little concept of what work is like and the pressures of modern work so when I explain that I am stressed she thinks that it's my fault and I need to manage it.
• She doesn't understand that people need to do work outside of 9-5
• She has no real sense of what it's like to have someone instructing you/telling you what to do; she has literally been 'self guided' her entire life
• She thinks it's easy to get a job and promotion so doesn't understand why they aren't forthcoming for me or my siblings.
• She is deeply unproductive so thinks juggling means trying to do the dishes and laundry in the same morning and considers that 'busy-ness' to be on par with mine
• She is very naive about money and assumes everyone is on a relatively good wage. She doesn't understand why I can't go part-time.
• She dresses in organic frocks and proudly doesn't wear makeup or do her hair but her 'hippyness' is a privilege - she doesn't clock that other people actually have to look and dress professionally for work.
• She doesn't help me in any way - financially or with DCs - because she's always too busy doing nothing at all, but she's 'very busy'.

I know I should be grateful that she's not working in a factory to scrape by, but her naiviety means there's an entire aspects of my life she doesn't understand and over the years it's caused real tensions. I partly resent that she doesn't get it and partly resent that she's had such an easy ride that she takes for granted or really considers her due.

Posting just to see if anyone else has the same problem and how they made peace with it.

[quote RosesAndHellebores]@callmeadoctor the ops mother is about the same age as mine. I am 61.

Contraception, sheaths and caps, was available from the 1920s - not as reliable as now but available nonetheless. Mother and I are only children

I recall my grannie and mother having twin tubs as a v v small girl although by then grannie used the copper in the old scullery, to boil pigs' heads for brawn.

My grandparents had a telephone in the late 30s; my mother always had one, even when I was born in 1960. My grandparents got a TV for the coronation and a colour TV for the silver jubilee. I think my parents had one by the time I was 8 or 9. Come to think of it we also had electric lights.

My grandparents had central heating installed after the war - oil fired and whilst my parents didn't have it in the early 60s there were gas fires in all the bedrooms and hot and cold running water.

My grandmother and mother both worked albeit not in professional salaried jobs but both earned quite a lot. My grandfather (forriner) also too grannie's name.

I think you are thinking about the Victorian and Edwardian times rather than post 1920s. I confess, however, grannie had much more help in the home pre automatic washing machines and dishwashers. Before that sheets and towels, etc., we're sent out.

Finally shopping deliveries aren't new, my grannie had shopping delivered into the early 70s. Oh and she drove a motor car in the early 30s and a bloody tractor.[/quote]
I am 60, so my mother 85. No central heating or telephone till she was 40, no tv till she was 35 (rented from tv company, black and white). Went to the laundrette couple of times a week as had no washer. Think she had a twin washer at one time but we moved and it broke!!! Outside loo till I was 15 (she was 40). She learned to drive at 37, but didnt get a car till a couple of years later. She didnt work till I was about 5 or 6 (but she did work part time then.)
Maybe your family were a bit better off. My mum indeed went on the pill when she was 35 (1970s) but came off it as it caused a blood clot on her lung.

Similar- ish story here. My mum left work age 27, after only 5 years of work, to have me. She was a SAHM from then until now. She worked as a TA but literally 15 hours a week. Things I have noticed:

• she takes ages doing anything and says I rush around. She thinks it's just me and my style. She doesn't realise I HAVE to cook tea in a rush because of work. There is no option to potter around for 2 hours because I work 10 hours a day!

• work emails. "You're not being paid for that" , "you shouldn't have work emails on your phone". Doesn't get its part of the job.

• work plans changing constantly because the client doesn't want to do such and such any more. When she has witnessed this she has said it's ridiculous, we should force them to go ahead. No mum, the client is paying us, we do what they say.

• money, she is always going on about how much she has. Give some to me- ills take it!

@bunnybuggs yours was an unusual experience for the time.
There have always been women who are outliers and have high flying careers or businesses when most women do not,
Your average woman in the 70s was either a housewife, secretary, nurse, teacher or worked in a low-paid job.

Divorce in those times was almost unheard of with great stigma attached. A woman with no means of supporting her children would likely have had them taken away and put into care.

What are you on about @GinnyWren? Divorce was not uncommon in 1974 and social workers weren't rounding up the children of divorced moms and sending them to care. Where are you getting this intel from?

@GinnyWren

@bunnybuggs

But you were doubting the experiences of other women, women like my Mum.
My Mum wasn't married to my Dad whilst carrying me (although they were together, and are married now), she was treated shamefully as a single Mum, her treatment by midwives whilst giving birth to me was shocking and she was scared to ask for any help later as she feared I'd be taken away, despite the fact that my Dad was supporting her. This was 1970.

I think in middle-class communities in 1974 divorce was okay. In the working-class community, I lived in, divorce was still shameful. I knew one divorced woman and lots of people socially avoided her.

But I loved her, and she loved me, fiercely. We couldn't actually give each other much apart from that, yet it was more than enough. I miss her unfaltering love very much.

This. Actually tearing up reading these words. It just says it all to me.

@Ticksallboxes

But I loved her, and she loved me, fiercely. We couldn't actually give each other much apart from that, yet it was more than enough. I miss her unfaltering love very much.

This. Actually tearing up reading these words. It just says it all to me.

It’s very moving. It resonates with me too.

@SarahAndQuack

Your granny was lucky to be able to go.
Were all her female school mates as lucky?

I suppose my point is that it truly was rare. Between 1940 and 1950 only an average of 3.5% of women went to uni.

TBF my parents divorced in 1972. It was still quite unusual in my middle class world. The fact that they were both divorced again before I was 18 was horrendous.

In 1960 mother married in an empire line gown and my grandparents rented my parents a house many miles away to break the association with the wedding and the baby.

One of my mum's friend's daughters has never worked properly since leaving school, she just flitted around odd things like selling second hand clothes, met her husband & just plays golf every day, she must be nearly 60 now.

Every generation of women face their own challenges. The world is a very different place than it was 80, 70, even 60 years ago. it's blinkered and pretty disrespectful imho to judge a previous generation of women by the standards and circumstances of today. Some things were easier back then in terms of the sense of community and pace of life but others a lot, lot harder. Rationing didn't end until the early 1950s for example. Its hard to imagine now how bleak and lacking in material comfort life was in a Midlands or Northern town in the 60s and 70s as compared to today. (If you don't believe me have a look on Netflix and watch the series about The Yorkshire Ripper; it took me right back!)

When I think of my own mother, I remember her telling us the delight they all felt at receiving their first orange post war and it being a real treat. Her family had an outside lav until she was fifteen. She raised five children and it never occurred to my father to be present at the births or change one single nappy. Even when she was more comfortably off latterly, she still saved bits of soap, string, foil and wrapping paper, as that is what she has been used to all of her life.

I am bloody happy for her that she received the pension she did and I think she deserved every penny after a lifetime of domestic drudgery and make do and mend. She didn't have the educational choices I had, or the chance to travel, but she was happy for me that I had those opportunitie. She was not resentful in the slightest, despite being a highly intelligent, hard working and capable woman, who would have thrived in a career.

I am not saying that the life of a working woman today is at all easy, because it isn't, but that's because many men, as evidenced by many threads on here, have still not "got it" and have not stepped up to take on an equal share of the "wife work". So women today are under enormous pressure to try and do it all. But to take out very understandable resentment about that on a previous generation of mothers is aiming at conpletely the wrong target.

She is part of a weird generation of mc women who expected to be cared for and probably never expected to work

A whole generation of women? Give over. Many many women over the last 60 years have worked full or part time while bringing up children, often without access to the sort of transport availability or domestic aids that are commonplace now. I did and all my friends did. I hardly knew any SAHMs. Plenty of women don’t work now.
It’s a person thing, a circumstances thing, not a generational thing.

@Waferbiscuit I absolutely understand your frustration.

My mum Is very very similar. I don't begrudge her life but I do find her judgey and know-it-all attitude very wearing.

She has no concept of how hard life can be for so many working (or non working) people: that it is entirely possible for people to have a full time job which they are dedicated to and not be able to afford their own home, that some people can not eat organic and consider food miles if they can barely make ends meet, that work can be exhausting, colleagues tricky, customers demanding etc etc

She is always horrendously busy but has no job, a cleaner, a gardener, her ironing done and a husband that both works and runs around doing everything else from the food shopping to walking the dog. Yet she is full of opinions at my shortcomings wrt time management (I work FT), my lack of efficiency, the fact that I'm tired, that I can't meet her for lunch when she wants to, the state of our home etc etc etc..

I'd love to grin and bear it but TBH I find her very hard work and frustrating. Of course she is entitled to her opinions but she has no concept of the fact that I am too!

Each generation's experience is different and there will be things we can't relate to. I for one would have hated being born that generation. They had little freedom, weren't allowed to get a mortgage and were very constrained.

So what if she found happiness and made the most of the opportunities available to her?

I do think it's a generational thing. Even a woman working in a good job 30 + years ago, can not appreciate how much has changed in the workplace. How a woman's load has become mad, even with a supportive Dh.

I'm typing from my bed, on holiday with 2 mum friends who I go on a long weekend break every year. This year we've done less, had a siesta every day because we are completely shattered.

Just such different times really. I remember a very elderly great aunt I had who I saw after I'd graduated from uni...who asked if I'd be doing shop or office work. Let's be clear when she said the latter, she meant strictly typing and making tea for the boss!

Every generation of women face their own challenges

This.

This is mid 60s, the midwifes are 20+ I guess:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w0gk/call-the-midwife-series-10-episode-4?seriesId=m000vbzf

The young midwife losing her child because she was a single mum. (Although in her case, child was put in a home)

It's sad that you have a poor relationship with your mother. The lack of empathy is more of an issue than the different circumstances.

There's a similar gap between me and my mother, but I think we can both see the pros and cons of each other's lives.

Maybe one day a better balance will be struck between opportunities and responsibilities. We've not got it right yet.

It sounds as though you want to feel that your mother is interested in your life, and has compassion and understanding for your struggles. That she supports you in your decisions.

I think most of us want the same, and it's hard when we don't get it.

There also seems to be a lack of understanding and compassion from you about your mother's life though. As others have said, times for women were difficult in different ways. Many women had very limited choices, I recently found that my own mother was coerced into marriage and fired from her job at a bank once pregnant (standard practice).

I'm sure there are aspects of each of your lives that seem harder or easier to the other.

Time is running out for you with your mother. Maybe your communication can improve but as you can only change yourself, I would say that it is for you to try to develop more compassion and understanding for your mother and my hope would be that some of that will be returned to you.

I feel for you as my mother was not the mother I needed as a child and not the mother I wanted as an adult. I have found this very hard.

@Areyouhappy

Every generation of women face their own challenges. The world is a very different place than it was 80, 70, even 60 years ago. it's blinkered and pretty disrespectful imho to judge a previous generation of women by the standards and circumstances of today. Some things were easier back then in terms of the sense of community and pace of life but others a lot, lot harder. Rationing didn't end until the early 1950s for example. Its hard to imagine now how bleak and lacking in material comfort life was in a Midlands or Northern town in the 60s and 70s as compared to today. (If you don't believe me have a look on Netflix and watch the series about The Yorkshire Ripper; it took me right back!)

When I think of my own mother, I remember her telling us the delight they all felt at receiving their first orange post war and it being a real treat. Her family had an outside lav until she was fifteen. She raised five children and it never occurred to my father to be present at the births or change one single nappy. Even when she was more comfortably off latterly, she still saved bits of soap, string, foil and wrapping paper, as that is what she has been used to all of her life.

I am bloody happy for her that she received the pension she did and I think she deserved every penny after a lifetime of domestic drudgery and make do and mend. She didn't have the educational choices I had, or the chance to travel, but she was happy for me that I had those opportunitie. She was not resentful in the slightest, despite being a highly intelligent, hard working and capable woman, who would have thrived in a career.

I am not saying that the life of a working woman today is at all easy, because it isn't, but that's because many men, as evidenced by many threads on here, have still not "got it" and have not stepped up to take on an equal share of the "wife work". So women today are under enormous pressure to try and do it all. But to take out very understandable resentment about that on a previous generation of mothers is aiming at conpletely the wrong target.

Very good post

@Snog

It sounds as though you want to feel that your mother is interested in your life, and has compassion and understanding for your struggles. That she supports you in your decisions.

I think most of us want the same, and it's hard when we don't get it.

There also seems to be a lack of understanding and compassion from you about your mother's life though. As others have said, times for women were difficult in different ways. Many women had very limited choices, I recently found that my own mother was coerced into marriage and fired from her job at a bank once pregnant (standard practice).

I'm sure there are aspects of each of your lives that seem harder or easier to the other.

Time is running out for you with your mother. Maybe your communication can improve but as you can only change yourself, I would say that it is for you to try to develop more compassion and understanding for your mother and my hope would be that some of that will be returned to you.

I feel for you as my mother was not the mother I needed as a child and not the mother I wanted as an adult. I have found this very hard.

Excellent comment.