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Now why don't you reread the OP and stick to the 40's, 50's, and 60's.
She was...1640's, 1650's, 1660's
My Mom growing up in the 60's really had a good life as far as I can tell.....she stayed home and took care of he house and kids and Dad worked his ass off to provide the best he could. She often had the ladies over for coffee and they played cards, watched soap operas, her husband loved her and so did her kids.
We had less but it was probably a better life model than the one we have today.
My mom didn't graduate high school, back in her days, her parents came from Poland, the girls had to quit school to work and help the family.
We never went without but certainly no splendor but food was always good. Mom wanted to drive for years and dad would never "let her"...once she finally put her foot down and went for lessons and DL, he made the comment to bad she didn't drive earlier. She was probably in mid 50's when she got her DL. She passed at 91...she loved her children and lived with a man who drank too much.
I know my upbringing keeps me in the gratitude I live in today. My brother after me a little less gratitude and my sister 10 yrs later, less too.
Last edited by jaminhealth; 03-10-2018 at 05:46 PM..
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Originally Posted by Tall Traveler
She was...1640's, 1650's, 1660's
My Mom growing up in the 60's really had a good life as far as I can tell.....she stayed home and took care of he house and kids and Dad worked his ass off to provide the best he could. She often had the ladies over for coffee and they played cards, watched soap operas, her husband loved her and so did her kids.
We had less but it was probably a better life model than the one we have today.
I completely agree. THAT life, of a middle or upper middle class white stay at home mom, married, healthy kids, loving husband, that was a good life. I think most would agree.
It's the women - which is a significant portion of them - who fell outside of that description had a hard time with fewer choices. Like, affordable daycare.
So does anyone remember, from the 60's, that nice restaurants wouldn't allow "unescorted women" to dine there? So girls night out was out of the question at those places. Had to have at least one man in the party.
It depended upon the woman. Some were content to stay at home but many were bored at home.
My mother wasn't happy back in the 1950s. She had wanted to attend Smith College and she had the good grades but not the money. Her grandmother worked in a kitchen at Smith and was able to send her through secretarial school/business college. It was a two year course of study with shorthand, typing, book keeping. She landed a job as a legal secretary but that ended when she got married.
I was born in 1944 and I always knew I would go to college. However, as a girl, my only choices were teacher, nurse, secretary, or social worker. I ended up with teacher but that wasn't what I wanted to be. I never figured out what I really wanted to be but that didn't matter anyway.
I taught elementary school and the women teachers were subject to dress codes. We were working with little kids, often sitting on the floor or climbing up on stools, but we were required to wear high heels! And we were required to wear dresses. AND we were required to supervise the playground for 1/2 hour every day wearing these high heels and dresses. I can remember my legs feeling like they were burning from the freezing cold but I was not allowed to wear warm pants like the men and I was not allowed to go inside the building for a minute to get warm.
This was in the late 1960s. I would leave school at around 4:30, stopping at the grocery store, and going home to make supper, wash dishes, do laundry, ironing, cleaning, etc. Then a few hours of prep for teaching the next day, falling into bed at 11 pm. My husband, who was also a teacher, same town, same hours--did absolutely nothing at home.
During the summers when I tried to get a temporary job, I would get told that they wouldn't hire me because I was married. And the jobs in the paper were in two columns: Men. Women. The jobs under "women" were the boring jobs that no one wanted--cleaning houses, office work, filing, child care, store clerk. It was the same for full time jobs and temporary jobs.
I was so exhausted from working at two full time jobs (teacher and housewife) that I went to the doctor about the fatigue. He told me that if I had more to do I wouldn't have TIME to be tired! I was speechless. In retrospect, I guess he didn't know that people worked at home and at work also. But that's how we were treated.
A lot of women never found much of interest staying at home and were totally bored with it. The 1950s and onward were not like the days of yore when homemaking required a lot of specialized skills. It was the era of the "labor saving devices" --washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, frozen foods. There was still a lot to do but a robot could have done it! You didn't really have to know very much to be a housewife anymore, not like women did before. It didn't take much in the way of brains or skills anymore.
If you go back to my grandmother's era and before, a housewife needed to know how to make soap, candles, to sew, knit, crochet, hook a rug, stitch a quilt, can vegetables, etc. When you could buy it all in the store and the housework could have been done by a robot, staying home became less interesting, less valued and less respected.
Oh--the time I went to buy a car. They sold it out from under me because they didn't think I would come back the next day with the money! After all, I was only a woman. That was 1973.
Early feminism came a bit late for me but it was a relief to know that I wasn't the only person who was getting fed up with how we were treated. My main problems with feminism centered around them trying to make us more like men. We are very different from men, of course. But people in general didn't used to think women had brains. We were dummies. My issue with early feminism is that I never wanted to dress like a man or cut my hair like a man, or act like a man. Feminism lost me in that respect. I love and respect men--in general.
Many years later, a wonderful woman doctor told me of her experiences in medical school where she was treated as less than the male students. She was the first woman doctor I had even known of. A lot of fields were not open to women. Luckily I never wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor or anything else that women were not usually allowed to become.
Luckily I didn't have an interest in science because women who were interested in science weren't taken seriously. There were few jobs for them too.
And yes, women have always worked. In the lower classes, women have always had to work outside the home. They may have helped out on the farm or they may have worked in factories. Their lives were dismal. In the upper classes, some women worked too--if your father were a millionaire, you were free to become educated and take on some sort of a career. In my town in the 1950s, a few of the mothers had jobs teaching at the local college or they gave dance or piano lessons out of their homes. But this was an affluent town that I grew up in. Most of the women didn't do much except get the kids off to school and then sit around all day and watch tv. Maybe they met up and played bridge during the day. Some even had hired help for the childcare so that they could sit and do absolutely nothing all day. My mother liked to bake so she amused herself that way, but she was less than happy.
I don't think I did much of anything to further the cause of feminism but I was extremely grateful that it came along when it finally did. Any woman today who gets to chose what she wants to do for a living should be grateful too. My parents told me that I should always be able to support myself and never have to depend upon a man. To younger women, make sure you can support yourselves. Do not become trapped in a bad marriage from which you cannot escape simply because you don't know how to support yourself. And if anything happens to your husband, you will have to support the two of you and/or your kids. It's very important to know how.
Agree 100%. However, some young ladies (especially disadvantaged ones) do not know any better. An example is a young girl that worked at the Pentagon as a summer hire. She would show up in club attire, and act very provocatively towards the Marines. Someone must have gotten to her, because eventually she cleaned up her act, and dressed and acted professionally. She is on her way to a better life for it.
Club attire and provocative behavior is an extreme in the workplace. But there is a huge spectrum. Since my daughter and family live next door, I get to see in detail how the granddaughter is being raised. Virtually from birth, she has been dress in frilly stuff, has all the appropriate girly toys including lots of pink colors. Even at 6, the boys are smitten and she is well aware of her feminine powers. She is constantly being told to stay clean and be careful about even very minor situations where she might get hurt. She has become extremely timid and cautious. I don't think any of this is good or wise. She should be charging around, getting dirty, exploring the world and within reason taking some risks. I would like to she her doing some serious sports instead of OMG twirling.
Males get and maybe deserve lots of blame for difficulties women have in the workplace and being treated fairly. Nothing will change unless women do some changing including major changes in how we raise girls.
It seems so sad, but it is a lot easier to complain about being unfairly treated than decide what makes sense and what needs to change.
I think to some degree women had it worse back then in ways but with the progress we have made comes a whole new host of problems. Women have more protections and a wider range of options in life but the cost is very high. Women need to be supported as mothers if they choose to go in that direction.
It's a very tough subject when you consider all sides in this.
The primary reason that women were not on the front lines of war is because they are needed for reproduction. Kill all the women, the society is done. Kill all the men but one, and there is hope for a continued society.
If the state were truly interested in ensuring a strong military through reproduction, it would not have policies that are counter-intuitive to this. As an example, the reason why abortion is frequently chosen is that birth control is not widely available to the poor, children are very expensive to raise, and there is still a stigma about out of wedlock births. However, abortion should be the last resort.
Fine, you say, without abortion, these unplanned pregnancies mean that there are more babies that grow up to be soldiers. And, the mothers can give them up for adoption if they cannot care for them. A win-win situation.
Not so fast. We live in a very harsh society. Other governments offer incentives to bear and raise children. U.S. unplanned for babies are often born to mothers who generally are unable to care for them properly due to immaturity, dysfunctional family, financial difficulties, drugs, etc. Also, there is only a small window in which to decide to give up the baby after birth, if they are not wanted. Therefore, these babies may not receive proper nourishment, a good upbringing, or a decent education. They may be obese, illiterate, unhealthy, or have criminal records; all of the problems of a dysfunctional society.
The argument therefore does not hold (reproduction is not a sure ticket to the continuance of U.S. society). Since the U.S. does not incentivize birth and child raising, it should not expect these babies to be fit to serve in our dog eat dog world. Right now it is a crap shoot. It is even worse than you think, since upper class, upper middle class and middle class women all have low birth rates, and their educated, fit children do not join the military, having no draft as an impetus.
The government had been offering a fast track citizenship to immigrants who enlisted, but I believe that this avenue is now closed. The soldiers and marines that I met who fell into in this category were super.
I see a serious problem in the not too distant future, since the pipeline to the military is greatly narrowed. A soldier takes 17 or 18 years to grow, immigration is closed, and decent candidates from the available population have competition from industry and education. Who then will defend us?
Feminists always talk about how horrible it was for women in the past. Now I am talking say 40s, 50s, 60s or so. I know there is a history forum but I would like to hear some thoughts from women who have first-hand experience. Was it really as bad as feminists say it was for women? Would you say it was Afghanistan/Saudi Arabia bad?
They where just short of property seen as a commodity, you do the math. It was horrible.
Remember that when feminists say "birth control" they mean "abortion."
NO.
I'm a feminist, and when I say birth control, I mean contraception. Most feminists mean contraception.
"Pro-lifers" sometimes say that Pro-Choice just means abortion, but it doesn't; in fact, it's the last choice you should make. But if all the other choices fail (female contraception, male contraception, abstinence), it should be an available choice; motherhood should not be forced on anyone.
Neither should fatherhood; guys should practice contraception religiously.
In many ways it was not bad. It is nice to be taken care of and have the comfort of defined expectations. Some women were happy with the arrangement, but just like now, many of us couldn’t be happy living that way.
Some things I remember....
Women could not get birth control without their husbands permission. So sex before marriage was a risky proposition.
Women could not get credit.
I remember the catholic mother of one of my friends, sleeping on the couch so she wouldn’t have more children.
College was not an option for most women. The sons in the family were expected to go, but not the daughters. Even when women went to college there were only a few choices for them, like teacher, nurse, librarian, or secretary.
It wasn't like Afghanistan, but it was more like the insulting way that women were treated like simple minded children.
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