What is the appeal of the 50s housewife thing?

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Was thinking about this today. What is so appealing about the 1950s stereotype of a housewife? It seems like there is a return to old fashionedness and sort of twee stuff. Kirstie Allsopp and her craft bits and comments about putting husbands first and all that.

It just seems like you would be dependant totally on someone else and if they left you would be stuck!

I think it's a longing for a time when (as imagined looking back 60 years) things were simple, and people didn't have complicated decisions to make. You grew up and knew what your life would be like, and we have some notion that at the time, people were grateful. It was the day of "You've never had it so good"--after the depression and the war, with the welfare state and an expectation of progress, there was some truth to that. But if you think of a typical woman's prospects then, it really wasn't so cheerful.

It was the era of the availability of appliances and the invention of the "housewife". Propaganda after the war wanted women at home so that men could have jobs, so being a wife and mother (in the way we know it today) became a job in itself for maybe the first time.

Ignorance is bliss?

Plus the rose-tinted spectacles.

Definitely think there's an appeal in the idea that life was simple - you were fixed into your role in life and nothing could really change that. You had your job, your family, your friends who all lived in the same area - very limiting, but so different to life today that I can see the appeal in a rose-tinted way.

As a woman, your job was probably looking after your family. Given that these days most women seem to be stuck with the double burden of a job AND looking after a family, that could seem appealing.

In terms of simplicity, job roles were simpler too. I don't even understand what half of my friends really do. And I think that makes some people depressed in a way, because, honestly, a lot of jobs are pretty pointless and we could do without them.

Also, the styles were pretty nice.

I just think it's laziness. Why push yourself you be the best you can and gain a good job to earn money when a man can do it for you? I have friends, young women in their 20s, who ASPIRE to getting married and giving up work. If it works out for them, fine, but if it all goes down the shitter don;t come moaning to me when you've relinquished your financial independence. EVERYONE - man or woman, should aim to be the best person they can be.

But also you were much LESS likely to get divorced back then. You could probably rely on your dh's income going forward. But the downside is that if you got a bad'un, you were more stuck with him - less openess, less help to get away.

Not having to go out to work

It's a pose - Kirsty isn't really trapped in the kitchen, she's a meeja personality.

I think it's partly (along with other stuff mentioned above) the fact that being a SAHM had a status in itself and was respected as a useful role. Whereas now SAHMs get slagged off all the time for being parasites, yummy mummies, being lazy () etc. People used to take it for granted that homes and kids take looking after, food needed cooking, etc, whereas now you get the feeling you are meant to cram all those things in between your glittering social life and brilliant career and if you admit to spending more time on them than the minimum necessary you are seen by some as a bit of a saddo. (There was a thread a while back where someone insisted that the family's laundry only took her 5 minutes.) I think a lot of the women who go in a big way for the fifties stuff are partly doing it as a way of saying 'fuck you, I am a SAHM and I'm not ashamed of it.'

Plus the dresses are good if you are an hourglass, too....

The thing is though, the stereotype is a very middle class one. In most working class families both parents went out to work, very much like today. My grandad used to leave for work at 5am finish his first job at 3pm and go straight to his second job until 7pm. Then when he got home my nan would go out to her job until midnight (she was a cleaner). My grandad then did dinner dishes and putting kids to bed etc before going to bed early himself. They hardly ever saw each other, how they managed to have 7 kids I don't know.

So it's the media bombarding us with this unrealistic stereotype (as BeerTricksP0tter said up thread). The reality was a lot different for real people.

Make do and mend is appealing for the creativity and economy.
Craft as a hobby is more fun than wasting hours on the internet (must get back to my sewing machine!)
Putting a husband first is what a good wife should do, just as putting the wife first is what a good husband should do.
Allowing one person to be the sole earner while the other does household chores and childcare is a risky choice in the event of a split, but living your life assuming you're going to split up is no way to live.
Nowadays few parents have the choice of not having to earn outside of the home, if you want to stand by your principles and bring up your children as the sole carer you have to either be super rich, super poor or be seen as lazy by those who do not value the role of household manager/primary caregiver.
It is perfectly possible to be bright, intelligent, creative and ambitious and yet still opt to forgo a career for the time it takes to bring up a family.

People used to take it for granted that homes and kids take looking after, food needed cooking, etc, whereas now you get the feeling you are meant to cram all those things in between your glittering social life and brilliant career and if you admit to spending more time on them than the minimum necessary you are seen by some as a bit of a saddo.

Yet genuinely spending minimal time (buying processed food or take aways, using laundry services etc) is also seen as shameful. You are still expected to do the drudgery, while pretending to take it in your stride.

Only Kirstie Allsop can manage this, and only then because she has staff to do the home cooking, childcare, housekeeping etc.

Agree with feminists wife. my grandparents were similar (6 kids), my gran - well, her and her daughters - did all the domestic work in addition to her evening cleaning job, and was bitter that during the war (and pre marriage and children) she'd had a challenging job in london that of course she wasn't allowed to keep when the men returned.

Harecare the event of a split is only one way that having a sole earner is a risky choice - redundancy and ill health are not exactly rare.

There are plenty of bright, intelligent, creative and ambitious people on here who have realised that choosing to be a SAHP means forgoing a career full stop, not just for the time it takes to bring up a family.

Only Kirstie Allsop can manage this, and only then because she has staff to do the home cooking, childcare, housekeeping etc.

....Yes, and to finish her patchwork quilt for her if she can't be bothered!

I know it's an act to make money (or at least I think it to be an act), nevertheless, the whole Kirstie Allsopp/Nigella Lawson thing does my head in. Partly because I don't know why any multi-millionaire would want to spend time in a kitchen friggin' cooking! . Eat out every night for Chrissake and boost the economy!
I think some women want this as it takes the drudgery of work out of their lives, that said, looking after young children and housework is work.
The reason the divorce rate has shot up is, I think, twofold:
1, Women earn money-why should they put up with a rubbish relationship? There is no longer the fear of not being able to cope alone.

2, Less stigma about divorce.

I dislike them because they sell the myth that women should be able to do all this while obviously being rich enough to employ staff themselves.
I actually prefer my multi-millionaires to outsource the drudgery to others rather than prance around a friggin' kitchen giving a bj to a spoon.

Same mistaken appeal as pirates. Not the murdering, raping, pillaging criminals of the high seas they actually were/are... but the flamboyant, wisecracking, cutlass-swishing 'Disney Pixar' image they've since acquired.

Middle-class 50's housewives were often very miserable people resorting to alcohol or tranquilisers just to make it through the day. No matter how lovely your home or how many staff you've got to clean, cook and disappear the kids, if you have no other choice, it's just a pretty cage. It was because it was such an oppressive way to live that feminism took off in the first place. Allsopp and her ilk should step away from the Enid Blyton books and be grateful they don't actually have to live like that.

I agree with Cogito. The media sells us so many different lifestyles that we aspire to, be that 50s housewife, Sex in the City, self-sufficiency in the countryside, sell your house and move to rural France for a better standard of living etc etc.

It is mostly bollocks. I found it VERY hard to move to another country (the dream of many) - and I live in one where there are loads of expats and Mnetters! I can live with this. It took lots of effort - but I built a life.

Our "dream" though is to retire somewhere in France with a big garden and grow veg and keep chickens etc..... It has really started to dawn on me recently what this would MEAN though and I have learnt enough to know that the "dream" isn't enough.

'Same mistaken appeal as pirates'

I like that, v good.
The pirate thing is really weird.

We're knackered. A couple of generations of women have come of age trying to "have it all", with varying degrees of success, and most of us are exhausted by it. We are told to be successful career women, good mums and partners, devoted friends, maintain a social life, a beautiful home, a scintillating sex life, an interest in current affairs, an attractive, youthful appearance, and without much help - really, the traditional "wifely duties" haven't gone away and are still, in most cases, largely performed by women, and we've added to them the career pressure only felt by men in the 1950s ideal.

Small wonder that even knowing the reality was very different, the fantasy has a certain appeal, when it's 10pm and you are just finally sitting down after a busy day at work, followed by a mad dash to pick the kids up, whizz round the supermarket because there's nothing in for dinner, feed everyone, bath and bed the littlest DCs, help the older ones with their homework, shout at DH to load the dishwasher and take the bin out, because frankly thats the least he could do, stick a load of washing on because you actually are about to run out of clean knickers, should probably run the Hoover round too because god knows when it was last done, but first the kids toys need to be picked up off the floor, and then finally, finally, you can collapse - but best check the Blackberry first, because something's bound to have kicked off at work after you left (just) in time to pick the kids up....

Yes, I can understand the appeal of the fantasy!

Jenny - that is VERY true!

It's bollocks. An idealised fantasy of what in reality was the preserve of the middle classes for a couple of decades after WWII. And even then it was only cooking sherry and valium that got them through it.

My mother worked, both my grandmothers worked as did my aunts and great aunts. Nothing remarkable about that at all if you were working class.