We're really the first generation where it's usual for mums to go out to work - required to, even, due to the cost of living these days. Even thinking back 30 years ago, our mums were expected to stay at home and there weren't many 'career mothers'. You could comfortably live on the man's salary as houses, food, bills were all much cheaper. Some women worked of course - either through choice or necessity - but they were the minority and regularly looked down upon. Now it's usual for kids to be at nursery while mums work, and to be a SAHM is considered a luxury few can 'afford' due to the rising cost of living. But it makes you realise how fragile the working mother concept is, being such a recent development. We think it's due to progress in equality of the sexes, but is it? Or are we just the 'blip' and future generations will be 'chained to the kitchen sink' as previous ones were, because equality is gradually being eroded away again (not so gradually in some places, and in others it never changed). In the western world, the internet has been instrumental in us gaining a voice and a presence that previous "feminist movements" never could. What would happen if the internet was taken away? How quickly would we lose heart in 'the fight' when we don't know who else is fighting it alongside us? The resilience of each individual woman would much depend on the people around them - how many men REALLY want equality for women, and how many are just towing the party line because this enlightened time requires them to, for fear of being publically "outed" otherwise - usually online? How easily they could form their own "movement' against women's freedoms, if the women have their voices silenced. Like ToeToToe, I know a lot of men who would happily join that movement. There will be husbands who truly respect their wives' choice to work and want them to be independent women, mother or not. But there are many, many more who would secretly enjoy their wives having to remain at home, barefoot and pregnant and cooking their dinner. Only it's not PC to say so these days. They're the ones who joke about 'a woman's place' in the pub and at family parties with a pat on the arse, while we roll our eyes and tut but ultimately shrug it off with a laugh. Because it's just a joke, right? But it has a ring of truth about it. And there are just as many men who don't care about making a secret of their opinion that a woman belongs at home. Many women think that way too - especially the older generations. Never mind the fact that many women would want to stay at home, given the choice. But that choice has been taken away from them by the econominic demands of this time (ironically, created after decades of male influence). And even if the cost of living suddenly decreased to the extent more mothers could stay at home, how many of us would continue to go out to work because we want to? And then no doubt we'd be back to 30 years ago, being considered less womanly somehow because we would rather work than stay at home with the children.
So as much as we hope we're changing things for future generations, it could so easily fall apart. I think that's why THT resonates with so many of us.