Mumsnet in the 1950s, what would it look like.

Mum wouldn't have followed gransnet either. She was used to women working (her mum worked all her life apart from a 6 week "lying in" period after each of her 11 children) as they were farm labourers. I remember her being really vociferous about the equal pay act in the 70's (equal pay for women) She totally opposed it. She really thought tractor driving, calving, being the gaffer of a gang (things that only the men did) were not things that women could do. Women were only good for hop-tying, fruit -picking (although this was piece-work, so you were paid for what you picked regardless of sex, but men rarely did it), potato picking-up, & she couldn't see how farms could survive if they had to pay these things on an equal basis. She was right to an extent, in that after that, there was a steep fall-off in the number of women who were prepared to do this work, & an abrupt decrease in the acreage in the UK given over to market gardening, potatoes, orchards & hops. Although mechanisation did take over from labour in some of the harvesting.

My mum would have considered gransnet as a total waste of time, that could have been spent darning socks or something.

My mum must have been pretty "modern" cos she took care of the house and children but also worked outside the house part-time. Dad helped in the house and did all the gardening, repairs and so on. He'd been in the Navy during WW2 and was a dab hand at cleaning shoes and sewing buttons. Although I was a girl I was brought up exactly as if I'd been a boy.

At primary school, girls were expected to help clear the dinner tables and put dishes away. I went to the Headmistress and said the boys should do it as well. We reached a compromise - she imagined uproar if she met my demands so instead she agreed to pay the girls 2 bob a week, which I put to my friends who agreed to that. The boys were green with envy.

I've spent a life time in active local politics - I reckon she'd have been proud of me!!!

Madmeg

My mum must have been pretty "modern" cos she took care of the house and children but also worked outside the house part-time. Dad helped in the house and did all the gardening, repairs and so on. He'd been in the Navy during WW2 and was a dab hand at cleaning shoes and sewing buttons. Although I was a girl I was brought up exactly as if I'd been a boy.

At primary school, girls were expected to help clear the dinner tables and put dishes away. I went to the Headmistress and said the boys should do it as well. We reached a compromise - she imagined uproar if she met my demands so instead she agreed to pay the girls 2 bob a week, which I put to my friends who agreed to that. The boys were green with envy.

I've spent a life time in active local politics - I reckon she'd have been proud of me!!!

That's a Royal Navy man for you!
Can turn his hand to most things and good at cleaning shoes too 🙂

grandtanteJE65

Wyllow3

My mum was a full time teacher by the end of the 1950's and politically interested.
But.....she hardly had any time for anything beyond home and work and 4 children.

Perhaps there would have been debates about whether mums should go out to work and how to manage? Whether Dad's should have to help out in the house and children?

Well, not in the 1950s in the Glasgow area where I was a child at that time.

The discussions as to whether mothers should go out to work did not start until the 1960s, and it would have been nearly 1970 before anyone dared hint that men should help out in the house.

I was flabbergasted when in a Glasgow corporation bus with my first ( so the year must have been 1967) when a man got on carrying an infant in his arms. I had never seen any man do so in public before. I wondered whether his wife was ill or dead, at the time, and if he had no mother or sister or mother-in-law to help with the baby.

Not the 1950’s but I can still clearly remember seeing a man pushing a pushchair down a street and feeling surprised. And when my nieces had babies I was surprised at how hands on their husbands were with them.

In the 50s, my mother would have been asking about twintub washing machines. Easy recipes for making jam. How to keep milk cool and stop butter going very soft without a fridge. Best formica for kitchen tops. Questionss about the best hair rollers to wear in bed. The 60s it would be about steam irons, again about fresh food storage, shopping 2 or 3 times a week. Not having a car she would be exvited about a bridge being built enabling a bus to travel from one county to another without using a ferry. I too would have been going on about that as I was always sick on the ferry. 70s decade parents were in their 70s and their life was pretty static with being able to manage money and health issues their main concerns.

Life has changed beyond recognition since the 1950s and thank God it has.
My mother and her sisters thought it a sin to have a baby before marriage and the fault was always with the girl, never the man. They probably knew nothing of gay men and women though their husbands (even the closet gay ones) did know and thought that a sin too.
They wouldn’t have expressed any adult opinion on a post-war Mumsnet because sex was a dirty secret and respectable people kept themselves to themselves, with stiff upper lips and no crying.
Without Mumsnet or Google most people were incredibly ignorant and insular.

I read a lot of the imaginary posts on Mumsnet and thought they were rather smug and cynical, I'm sure that women of the 50's would have posted the same concerns under anonymity as those of today. Sex problems, questions about breastfeeding and teething, angst about loveless marriages or abusive husbands, difficulties with your MIL and concern over teenagers. Just as now there would also have been recipes, crafting ideas, how to plan a children's party and what to wear to the Christmas party. Letters about scones and gloves were printed because, basically, they were printable at a time when the establishment was desperate to keep women in their place. I think Mumsnetters would find that la plus ca change.

flappergirl

I read a lot of the imaginary posts on Mumsnet and thought they were rather smug and cynical, I'm sure that women of the 50's would have posted the same concerns under anonymity as those of today. Sex problems, questions about breastfeeding and teething, angst about loveless marriages or abusive husbands, difficulties with your MIL and concern over teenagers. Just as now there would also have been recipes, crafting ideas, how to plan a children's party and what to wear to the Christmas party. Letters about scones and gloves were printed because, basically, they were printable at a time when the establishment was desperate to keep women in their place. I think Mumsnetters would find that la plus ca change.

I dread to think what my mother might have posted about the teenage me if Mumsnet had been around then 😯

My mother may have asked about sex , she had very limited knowledge and no experience before she married and I think it came as a shock to her. I don’t know how she managed to have me but she never mentioned it to me and insisted I came from under the gooseberry bush in the garden, it was a taboo subject so this site would have been handy in the 1960’s when she suddenly asked me what a lesbian was.