How life has changed

My elderly uncle was horrified with men changing the baby, pushing the pram and generally doing “women’s jobs”, while women were in work, “taking a man’s job”!

Young women today who have young children and careers are amazing.
I think there is a saying “to have it all you have to do it all” and they certainly do.

And yet... yesterday in supermarket I was asked by a man where he could find something. He preceded his question with 'I'm a man and I shouldn't be doing the shopping but...'
So maybe thinking hasn't changed all that much underneath it all.

TillyTrotter

Young women today who have young children and careers are amazing.
I think there is a saying “to have it all you have to do it all” and they certainly do.

I dunno. A lot of them are dropping children to creches at 7am and not getting home until 7pm and then having to face getting dinner and cranky children to bed. I think life can be very hard for young parents nowadays.

You cannot have it all - end of.

I go on Mumsnet now and again and feel unsure what women have gained. OK, education and careers opportunities are vastly increased - but at what cost?

Some of these women are driven into the ground by it all, and they work for a pittance because of the child care costs. And they are tired and irritable when they do get to spend time with their children.

There are even threads where mothers are guilty about staying home and looking after their children rather than pursuing a career. How things have changed.

The great gains for women have come at an equally great cost to their quality of life - and that of their children.

I have no answer.

My daughter has a full time job, partner and 2 children , she has just joined a scheme to have a 5 day menu sent each week.

I may not have worded my post well Vintage, I am agreeing with you. Young mums have to work very hard and must be frazzled. They are pretty amazing.

I don't think those old series were realistic. Most people didn't start wearing smart suits and high heels to work until the 80s and surely everyone would take off the heels and jacket when they got home. Ever Decreasing Circles was 80s and I didn't know anyone who was just a housewife then.

It is true that women return to full time work much sooner after children now than they did then but I don't think either of those examples really happened.

I feel for them. It’s really very hard times. Two salaries required to buy a home and to raise a family as well, it probably does help to have extended family assistance to take the strain. How many have this.

I agree most married women without children were working by the 80's but for my mum's group, living semi rurally, most of us were still at home, childcare except amongst ourselves was impossible and nurseries non existent. The first mum I knew went back to teaching one day a week and then somebody got a job in the local library and her children were left to get on with it, we were all self righteous about it at the time, oh dear.
Now both DD's have worked full time for years and DIL put the children into nursery part of the week when they were very small. I am in two minds about it all but they can't live on one salary.

I do feel sorry for the young couples today . I also think they set out with high expectations. No Grandma's spare carpet or aunties curtains everything has to be brand spanking new.
I always worked and my DH often had to work weekends for no extra pay, luckily I was a teacher so finished work quite early though I still had to pay a childminder to take the children to and from school. The one benefit I did have was the long school holidays.
I gave up promotion quite a few times and never moved to Headship because I knew it just would not let me have enough time with the children. The amount of record-keeping and new orders to read and implement just seem to grow by the month. '
I was burned out and took early retirement and have NEVER been near a school again.
Never been away for a weekend or week with a girlfriend which seems to keep a lot of my friends going.I also got little or no help from MIL and my parents helped when they could but lived hundreds of miles away.
Women's Lib that we all wanted in the late '60s and 70's never came my way.
Good luck to the women who are trying to implement it now.

I don't think women's lib intended to create a situation where many mothers who would prefer to stay at home with the children would be forced, through economic necessity, to remain working, with ever lengthening commutes and working hours.
But I know of several young women who absolutely hate having to leave their children with minders in order to spend all day doing a job which holds little interest for them.
Of course years ago there were women who struggled with being at home all day and would have been much happier remaining at work.
It seems impossible to get the right balance.

Let us hope that the pendulum will drift to the middle at some point.

A lot of the discussions on Mumsnet are based on the idea that if you want to climb the career ladder you need to get straight back to work; and also that you need to keep up career wise in order to have some financial independence, should your marriage go tits up. Often when posters are saying they want to stay at home and look after the children they are counselled against that as they would be vulnerable if they found themselves single. Seems a bit pessimistic.

Agree Vintage. There’s no choice nowadays whether you would like to stay home or be in paid work. As others have said, expectations were also much lower in the ‘70s, most people would rent, many had second hand furniture and white goods, not many had phones and two cars were the exception rather than the rule. I remember women saying they worked for ‘pin money’, now they need to, to manage.

Being the daughter of a working mother and a father, who in 1950, was perfectly happy to push a pram, change a nappy, shop, feed a baby. cook etc etc - a new man several generations ahead of the trend - I always found any tv programme I watched that based its premise on a home based or a working ditsy mother who did the housework while her idiot husband read the paper so alien, it probably contributed to my lack of interest in watching tv, which means i am also spared the reruns of those irritating series.

In the 1950s, when I was growing up I was quite clear that if I married and had children, I would want to get back to work as soon as possible and when that happened I was back to work when my DD was 4, that was in 1978, so I was a working mother throughout the 1980s My first job had hours that suited school times and DH and I portioned out our leave and signed the children up for sports classes to deal with holidays.

I am quite proud to look back over my family history on my mother's side and going back 3 generations to the 1870s, all the women, married or not, worked, often from necessity, but two generations, my mother and myself, from choice.

Luckygirl3

Let us hope that the pendulum will drift to the middle at some point.

A lot of the discussions on Mumsnet are based on the idea that if you want to climb the career ladder you need to get straight back to work; and also that you need to keep up career wise in order to have some financial independence, should your marriage go tits up. Often when posters are saying they want to stay at home and look after the children they are counselled against that as they would be vulnerable if they found themselves single. Seems a bit pessimistic.

Yes I find that advice quite bleak and sad. Of course marriages break down but pre empting that to the extent that you force yourself to leave your children and go out to work, even though you don't want to, seems pessimistic and depressing.

Vintagejazz It doesn't strike me as logical anyway.

Nowadays, when women have been in the workplace for years, even decades, before they have children, what ever their level of work, they will have many years of experience in their job and for some, climbed a long way up their career laddes before they have children, so getting back on the run, admittedly a rung or two down the ladder, but quickly caught up, really ought not be a problem, especially if you use the time at home wisely to keep up with developments in your profession, perhaps obtaining further qualifications.

Back in the late 1970s, when I was returning to work after 7 years out, I used the time out to get further professional qualifications, that advanced my career quite rapidly when I did return.

I started work in a local bank when I was 16, in 1969. Was told after 5 years, I would qualify for a ‘marriage gratuity’ of £200. (Women were not in the bank pension scheme back then).

Five years away seemed like an eternity, but £200 back then would have been a deposit on a house. The thought of me being 21 seemed incomprehensible.

If I thought of the future back then, I had visions of being married with a couple of children, after which I would never return to work, just be a housewife and mother.

It didn’t happen quite like that, but sometimes it seems to me that in many ways it was easier when the man was the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker.

I know this concept is unthinkable and unmentionable nowadays.

I agree with Luckygirl, VintageJazz and others

Some of my friends who have degrees and good qualifications never did go back to work after they had children.
Was their education wasted? Possibly although most, not all, contributed enthusiastically to society by doing voluntary work.
I went back after the youngest started school but it did take some juggling.

Back in the late 1970s, when I was returning to work after 7 years out, I used the time out to get further professional qualifications, that advanced my career quite rapidly when I did return
Some young parents (mothers) don't take any time out apart from the statutory maternity leave and they must find it stressful to juggle a career, childcare etc.
Perhaps they are wearing themselves to a frazzle for necessary financial reasons, if so I feel sorry for them.
If to advance their careers perhaps they could afford to pay for some more help which would benefit the whole family.

It seems impossible to get the right balance
I agree it is now, there is too much pressure on young women today.

Guardian 2001 - over 20 years ago!

Superwoman is a myth. Twenty-five years after author Shirley Conran made millions by telling us that life was 'too short to stuff a mushroom', new research shows women still believe they cannot have children and a career without feeling stressed, exhausted and guilty
Have things improved?
It wouldn't seem so.

Monica absolutely correct that both parents should have equal opportunities in career paths. I think the point is more the pressure and necessity to do it at the cost to family life. I also truly believe some have children when they really shouldn’t because they really don’t have time or make time for them.

‘Just a housewife’ - Elusivebutterfly??

Some of us in the 80’s (DD2 was born in ‘83) had no access to Nurseries or family help. Some, like me, whose DH worked away from home had the house to run and all the jobs associated with it, as well as looking after ageing parents and in-laws.
Despite having a good education and reasonable qualifications it was just impractical to find a job - no flexible hours in those days. I know employers around here weren’t happy with women of childbearing age anyway. It was a personal question often asked at interviews about having babies. However I enrolled DD2 into a private nursery when she was 2 and did voluntary work in those few hours.
Both my DDs work full-time now and juggle family life and my DGSs, who are both in nurseries. I help out whenever I’m asked, but both are able to pay for things they can’t manage - cleaners, decorators and garden maintenance.

Yes, OP how life has changed.

Thank goodness life has changed. Women who work, at least in professional jobs, are less likely to be left in poverty if the marriage breaks down.

My university educated mum was thrown into poverty that she never managed to get out of when she and my dad divorced in 1970.

I've always worked, thank god, and therefore divorce was only a blip for me, financially, and I was able to drag myself out of it again. It would have been a lot less possible if I hadn't been in work already. Friends who were housewives, were very vulnerable when their marriages broke down.

Childminders were around in the 1980s thankfully and although finding good childcare was hard, I have never regretted not working. I've been able to be financially independent and comfortable. Unlike my mum.

Even though I did not work for 7 years when my children were tiny. Having worked in my profession for 7 years before my break, I was confident that I had reached a level where I could return to it with relative ease. I also used the years at home to study for a further qualification and thanks to my pre-preparation, and an element of luck, I got back to work quickly and soon returned to my previous career level and then upwards.

I know I was always lucky to pick and choose my hours around the needs of the children.
I did use nursery, but never full time, and I took all the children to school and collected them everyday.
That’s not to say it was all plain sailing, I’ve often had to take sick children into work, and if I couldn’t arrange holiday clubs, I’d have to take them to work.
My friend and I often split our days, I would work all morning while she had the children, and I would take over at lunch time.
My husband was pretty hands on with them, but he always worked long hours.
We employed many women over the years, and their money was just a bit extra, they certainly could manage without it, I don’t think you’ll find that very often now.