Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

What is going on with Mother Mildreds make up?

I think she was a nurse @PerpetualStudent - Queen alexandria’s nursing corp. But was she in the war or a peace time nurse?

Did she not resign as well because it didn’t involve ‘caring’ - so with her service and nursing training and the fact she was in long enough to get weary of it, she must be in her 30s anyway.

She is wearing well as my gran used to say.

Cross post

In the first book Jennifer Worth said that the poor people of Poplar didn't work if they were married with kids as there wouldn't be time on top of the work involved in looking after children/running the home and it would be frowned on. Not sure about more middle class people. I think it was the norm in the 50s when the books began for middle class mothers to be at home. In fact they were saying on the radio the other day that there was pressure from the government on women to return to the home after the war and free up jobs for the men. Heidi Thomas may "modernise history" a bit to keep things interesting. I remember an example of an unmarried mum working in one of the books who ended up in the workhouse

My grandmother was a nurse and my dad was born 1959. I know she worked part time when her DC were young but not tiny, so would have been nursing in the late 60s.

Both my grans always worked it wasn't shameful for women to work it was necessary.

My MIL joined the Civil Service when she left school in her mid-teens and when she married (very late by the standard of the times) 20 years later she had to resign (1953). She got an office job in the City but gave that up when she was pregnant. (Later, in the 70s, the Civil Service encouraged women like her to come back, so she got a p-t job.)

My mum was a primary school teacher. She was able to carry on teaching when she married in 1960 but gave up when she was pregnant and had a few years out. She did a bit of supply teaching in the mid 60s and then got a p-t teaching job once my brother and I were both at school.

Jennifer Worth worked in Poplar in the 50s as a midwife and she was writing about the mothers she worked with who lived there at the time. I don't think she'd have had any reason to lie about it as she was a working woman herself. What childcare did your grandmothers use for her babies Mrsjayy?

Found it on my kindle. It's in the first few pages of Call the Midwife

Sorry wrong page. Hang on

This page

When I started out in local government work in my early twenties I briefly worked with a woman reaching retirement age. She told me how she had to give up work when she got married but returned when rules relaxed (and she’d had her dc). It wasn’t personal choice, she remained rather annoyed about it!
Maybe nursing was different, but childcare would be an issue as it wouldn’t be formalised or regulated as it is now.
Neither of my grandmothers worked after getting married but both had children quite soon and large families. They did a lot of voluntary community work, I remember. That was seen as acceptable.

‘Went out to work’ may be the key phrase there. My grandmother was extremely poor and took in washing for years, so worked for money throughout her life.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g my friends ex wife worked for the civil service in the 1960's. She did return to work after having her son. But it was very difficult to get back into it after maternity leave.

It really annoyed me in Downton, when Anna Bates was talking about coming back to work after having a baby. In 1924 It wouldn't have even crossed her mind that she would continue to work.

I agree, Toddlerteaplease. I'm surprised your friend got maternity leave. Was it actually unpaid leave? I didn't think there was any right in law to maternity leave until the 1970s. I had teachers at secondary school who left towards the end of their first pregnancy and never came back, and that was the norm. By the later 70s the odd one did return after maternity leave, as was their right by then.

My impression is that before the 1960s working class women were likely to have extended family around them who could look after their children and that always made it possible for them to work in factories, cleaning jobs and so on. Their families had pressing need of extra money so of course they worked when they could. I was really surprised to read that statement of Jennifer Worth's that the married women of Poplar didn't work, but I can't see why she would have got that wrong.

When it comes to office jobs or anything needing professional training, it was understood that some women with children would have to work - widows, divorced or separated women, women whose husbands were invalids or disabled. They could get jobs, but of course were paid less than men doing the same work. Many employers would otherwise have actively discriminated against women with children, or even just married women, to protect employment opportunities for men, who were seen as the breadwinners. And of course many men forbade their wives from working outside the home.

A tiny number of women were so talented that their employers, or if they were self-employed, their clients, would bend over backwards to make it possible for them to continue working. It would have helped a lot to be very well off as then the cost of decent wraparound childcare wouldn't have been an issue. I'm thinking of high profile journalists, actresses, designers and so on.

"The marriage bar had been introduced in selected occupations during the interwar years due to the economic depression and high male unemployment. It was justified in part by the belief that a woman would not be able to combine work and domestic life, even though historically working-class women had always had to do so to support their families. You can find out more about the marriage bar from Bronagh Hinds.

The marriage bar was gradually lifted in the UK from 1944 onwards. However, the idea that women would not be able to give a job their full attention because of demands in the home still prevailed, as did the exclusion of women from many trades and industries."

From www.bl.uk/sisterhood/articles/marriage-and-civil-partnership

Also from same page:

"Statutory maternity leave for all women was not introduced until the 1999 Employment Relations Act as a result of 25 years or more of persistent feminist lobbying. Prior to this, pregnant women were not legally protected against being made redundant on the grounds of their pregnancy.

These factors in combination meant that women in the 1960s and ‘70s were still largely financially dependent on their husbands. The 1964 Married Women’s Property Act allowed women to keep half of any savings they made from the allowance received by their husbands. This revision demonstrated that, despite more women working and earning their own money, many still received an allowance from their husbands and were therefore financially dependent on them."

Just remembered that Valerie was born during the blitz, Sr Monica mentions it when she meets her, as she delivered her.

The blitz? That makes her 24/25 then.

Quite impressive qualifying as a nurse and serving in the military and then joining the nuns by 21/22 -

I’m having a bit of a chinny reckons but I’m a suspicious auld trout. 🤔

ReckoN. Gah.

Back to Dr Turner... I predict that he comes a cropper with Eiffel Tower Syndrome.

Valerie was born in a blizzard not the blitz, that what I thought. Do you think there maybe confusion between the two?

Calling Dr Turner.

C’mon and mansplain the Val problem to us. We clearly need your insight!

You can keep at a 10ft distance though. We know where you’ve been

I thought Sr Monica said that she we born as the all clear sounded. Though I may well be mistaken.

– Valerie Dyer from Grundy Street. June Dyer’s middle daughter, born in the middle of a blizzard.
– How do you know that?
– Because I was the midwife who attended your mother. Myself and Sister Evangelina. I cut your cord.

Could this be right?

Wouldn't she have done her nursing training in the Army? Luke the nuns do theirs after joing the order (which is how Sister Frances is so young)