Do you remember when the man was the "head of the family"

I well remember my mother being absolutely incandescent with rage after she phoned HMRC about a tax rebate, and was told, ‘This isn’t your money - it’s your husband’s.’

This was probably in the late 60s - she’d gone back to work when I was 14 with siblings of 10 and 8, so it hadn’t been practical for her to return to work before - no relatives anywhere near to help and no such thing as ‘after school club’ then.

Should add that my father was never remotely a MCP - their finances were always shared, so her objection to the HMRC comment was on principle - it didn’t affect her in practice.

We had an old fashioned marriage, DH was the wage earner and I stayed at home and looked after the children. Only the females without children worked in our family.
Remember in the sixties there were fewer labour saving gadgets and housework really was a full time job.

My mother worked part time but my father was the main wage earner. Mum spent all her money on things like clothes, I don’t think she actually contributed to the household budget . She did all the cooking and cleaning though and Dad did the garden and any woodwork or painting . Mum wouldn’t let my Dad into the kitchen, it was her territory.

Not sure that ‘head of the family’ has much to do with it.
HIn the 1930s in times of unemployment there was a feeling that married women who worked were taking a job from someone who may have been sole earner. For our own generation the introduction of paid maternity leave and changes to income tax calculations made an enormous difference. Now the costs of child care may be swinging the pendulum back the other way.

Yes it does seem to one extreme to another biglouis
I do count myself lucky that I was able to live the life I chose.
My siblings had more high flying careers and are thus better off financially than me and are able to help their DC

I have looked at the lives of my ancestors and although the women had huge families they managed to make ends meet.

One pioneering GGM wrote in her memoirs that when first married, in NZ, the stores arrived once a year. She milked her goats and cooked in a colonial oven. (I think this is a hay box). How did she manage to bring up 9 children in those conditions!

biglouis It is interesting how much your experience is different from others posting here, although I have had several friends who came from households not dissimilar to yours.. Perhaps others with experiences like yours do not want to post.

No,
I don't remember a time in my family when the man was "head" of the family.
My experience is of "headless" households (!) where there was a partnership.

I worked on the census in the early 1970s and there was still the concept of the "head of the household" who was legally responsible to fill in the form. In a family it was taken for granted that was a man! Bearing in mind the amount of help I had to give them many "heads of families" did not have a clue how to fill it in or left it to their wives anyway.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I have a photo of my father pushing a pram and a favourite one of me on the back of his bicycle.
My DP both had university degrees in the 1930s and must have been a very modern couple.
She worked until they had children but then she stopped but my dad died and she had difficulty finding a job which would pay enough for childcare. She always worked and managed somehow.

I wanted to be a SAHM. It sounds odd but I felt I had missed out as a latchkey kid and wanted to be there for my kids.
I worked but always around the family's needs.
DH was the "breadwinner" as my earnings were never enough to provide for us all.
It worked for us though I am sure other women judged me.
I have a DD and 3 DDiL. They all have careers though 2 stopped work for several years when their DC were small.

My parents (or more particularly my father) believed that any young person with aspirations was disrespecting their forebears by wanting something different. The "what was good enough for us ought to be good enough for you" philosophy was very prevalent among some sections of the working class in the 1950s and early 1960s. As we know careers and higher education opened up more widely to young people from these kinds of backgrounds from the 1960s.

Still I had a real tussle when I wanted to qualify in my chosen career (Librarianship). My parents would not agree to my attending college for 2 years full time even though I was entitled to afull maintenance grant. Then my boss proposed me for a new sandwich style course with alternating periods of salaried work and study. I had to put aside half of my salary in order to give my mother as much for my keep as when I was working full time. Most of it went to buy my sister nice clothes. As soon as I qualified I left home and my mother had to go back to work. My fatherwas not happy about that.

I’m reminded of men in those far off days who being embarrassed, ‘pushed’ the pram with one hand and to one side, nonchalantly as if it had nothing to do with them 😁

Sadly, yes. My mother never worked after she married my dad - she firmly believed that the man should be the breadwinner and a woman's place was in the home. Even when I got married (in 1984!) she didn't really approve of me working, and you should have heard her when I went back to work after having my two children (both were three months old when I went back full time). Needless to say I didn't share her views one bit.

My parents married in 1943. My mother only had little part time jobs to pay for things like holidays, but she handled all the finances and made sure all the bills were paid. My father was 13 when his father died so I expect he was used to the house being run by a woman.

When we married in 1970 only DH's salary was used for the mortgage of course, although it was in both our names. When he applied for an account with John Collier and because he was only 22 he had to have his father as a guarantor!

Yikes Yammy - that’s just reminded me of being ‘chatted up’ by a couple of Daddies at DDs school, who both believed I was a single parent. They were both married and one was quite dishy as I remember!!

I well remember , when I told my Dad that a friend was getting married, he asked if she would stop working! I couldn’t believe it. I was married and working, why on earth shouldn’t she? This was in the mid- nineties.

M0nica

My father, in 1950, happily pushed prams and changed nappies

So did mine, in the 1940s. I can’t imagine why any man wouldn’t, but many didn’t at that date.

A single friend of my mother’s, university educated, who was head of modern languages in a good grammar school, had to have a male guarantor when she wanted to buy a house. How ridiculous and insulting that was.

henetha

My marriage was like this. My husband never wanted me to work as he considered it his duty to keep his family. Consequently I was a stay at home mother for 14 years. But we did take in foreign language students which helped our finances hugely.
In my late thirties I had a huge struggle to get back into work, but finally insisted and succeeded. And learned to drive which he resented.

In my late thirties I had a huge struggle to get back into work, but finally insisted and succeeded. And learned to drive which he resented.

Well done you - getting back into the workplace after so many years, with all the changes in technology, must've been quite daunting! And learning to drive, too. Wow!

I was talking to a young woman recently whose father resented her pursuing a career. She was single and wanted her father and mother to mind her wee child for a day whilst she took an exam. Mother agreed, but father flatly refused - he told her she should marry the child's father and stay at home. The child's father was an integral part of the child's life - and did most of the baby-minding whilst this lady studied but was unable to on this occasion. Neither of them wanted to get married to the other! But the young woman's father didn't "believe" in women having careers.

My mum worked. Didn’t retire til she was 75. Her mum worked also. Really couldn’t imagine not working!

My father, in 1950, happily pushed prams and changed nappies

My marriage was like this. My husband never wanted me to work as he considered it his duty to keep his family. Consequently I was a stay at home mother for 14 years. But we did take in foreign language students which helped our finances hugely.
In my late thirties I had a huge struggle to get back into work, but finally insisted and succeeded. And learned to drive which he resented.

In 1965 I wanted to buy an electrical item on hire-purchase from a shop in Richmond, Surrey.

I was given an agreement to sign, and then told that I would have to have a male guarantor.

I got my boyfriend to sign it. And when I took the form back to the electrical shop I told the assistant that I in fact earned more than my boyfriend (which was true).

A few years prior to that I attempted to go into the garden of a pub - somewhere along the route between Chessington and Richmond - I'd walked for miles on a hot sunny day and fancied a 'Shandy', only to be told that the pub did not serve 'unaccompanied women'. Apparently, if we didn't have a man with us we were likely to be prostitutes looking for a trick.

I'm bloody glad those days are long gone. Officially. But the 'mentality' remains, with some. There are still men - and women - who think men should be the head of the household and that women should be in the home, or only 'allowed' to earn pin-money when the children are in school.

I think working class women have always (generally) been expected to work, even if it was around other family commitments.

My Father didn't want my Mother to work but he was financially controlling and i don't think that is in anyone's best interests

Sorry but obviously wasn't keen on the pram pushing.

My mum worked,though her sister didn't. My grans had worked and had to leave on marriage as had one of DH the other worked until she was 60.My mother-in-law played at working and didn't like me returning to teaching after 6 years out.
I was the head of the household as DH worked very long hours and weekends. One DD came home from school asking us to fill in for free school dinners as they thought I was a one-parent family.
My father never resented my mum working, I remarked only yesterday I can never remember him pushing a buggy or pram. He took Dd's for walks and played with them just like he had me. He was all for female emancipation.