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Were stay at home moms and wives in the 1950s actually depressed? I see pictures of how they look all happy and everything, but I hear how in the 1950s the pressure to marry and have babies by the time you were in your early 20s was so intense that women who chose not to do that were considered sick and neurotic. Many of the women wanted to go to college and have careers but because of the pressure, they just got married and had children anyway. And I can imagine they had to stay home all day long and cook and clean the house, thinking about how their life would have turned out to be like if only it weren't for the intense pressure. I know there is still some pressure today but it's not as intense as it was in the 1950s. I also read that many women had more than one babies in diapers at once and, I just picture a woman looking like a slob with a bunch of babies crying and having to feed them and running back forth to each baby. And in the 1950s, the average woman married when she was just 20 years old, and 47% of weddings for women were under the age of 20! And at one point in the 1950s, half of the women at age 19 were already married, this is like India or something, my gosh. Imagine being 19 and 20 years old and already married. WTF! It just seems depressing how their life had to turn out to be.
That does seem depressing, alot of the women I knew were getting married at age 18 or 19 and some were even engaged in high school, that was back in the mid 60s.
My mother was that housewife, only in the 60's not 50's. Yes, she was depressed. She has told me stories of telling the Dr. that I would not stop crying. I am sure it was colic. He gave her Valum. She continued to handle anything stressful with a pill for the next twenty years of her life. She did whatever my father told her to do until he finally left her 3 years ago for another woman. Now she has a life.
It was also very easy to get prescription diet drugs and "happy pils" back in those days. The diet pills were nothing more then speed. That is probably how alot of women were able to tolerate that mundane life.
Yes, how depressing. My parents were married when mom was 18 and dad was 25. They are still married because my mom is kinda religious and believes in the whole 'death til you part' thing - but they fight like cats and dogs and she's not happy because she's been mentally beat down by dad for the past 45 years. Oh, and dad? Well, he's been an angry SOB ever since I've known him and he makes everyone around him miserable.
I am not speaking from experience since I am a 22 year old male, but from what I've heard and read (which may be incorrect) alot of them were unsatisfied and unhappy which led to the stuff like Betty Friedan and the rise of feminism.
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