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

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.

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 😯

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 🙂

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!!!

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

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.

I assume the problems would be 50s-70s versions of today problems.

Mum wouldn't have followed MN or GN. She was busy with us (I'm one of many siblings), the garden, cooking, cleaning, sewing, Church (daily mass).

Dad drove us to/from school (a long journey), helped with our care when he wasn't at work, gardened, cooked quite well. Much as OHs now.

Allira

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?

My mother went to work but part-time.

On Saturday mornings I was expected to make the beds from about age 11 and wash up breakfast dishes but my brother wasn't 🤔

Ps at least that's what my brother told me.
🤔

My father was good at household tasks such as cooking, oven cleaning!

My mother would be completely perplexed as to why I was on GN, she would feel I should have better things to do

Mine too although she might have enjoyed Ravelry.
Or the equivalent of Witzend's knitting threads 🙂

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?

My mother went to work but part-time.

On Saturday mornings I was expected to make the beds from about age 11 and wash up breakfast dishes but my brother wasn't 🤔

Esmay

Here's one which was laughed about in the eighties - I believe .
From a much earlier magazine :
Does one keep one's gloves on when eating scones with jam and cream ?
To which the reply was :
Unless one wants one's gloves to be soiled with jam and cream - they are best removed prior to eating .

😂
Should one remove one’s hat in a tearoom?

Times have changed so much. Women's roles were seen very differently back in the 50s and a lot stereo typical male and female roles of the have changed dramatically.
Maybe in the 60s Someone may ask if it was ok to be on the pill.
In the 70's more questions about package holidays abroad or about how to buy a house. In the 80's maybe questioning about what is shown on TV.

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.

That's a point - there was the snob factor then (sorry). With comments like "those type of people". I remember a documentary from the early 60s where two posh ladies were doing market research on all the women who came out of a hairdressers and saying oh yes she's a C2 definitely. C2 being skilled manual workers (or their husbands). C1, clerical and junior management, B intermediate management or a professional, A higher managerial etc. D semi and unskilled manual workers.

It went right through society I think - the whole class thing. So maybe Mumsnet in the 50s would have been seen as something the middle classes didn't do!

I expect my mum would have been looking for people to have non domestic conversations with, she was a reluctant housewife so she definitely would not have been interested in those threads - maybe cooking if there were recipes for ‘foreign’ food, Greek, Italian etc., as she liked experimenting. Books, abstract embroidery, News and politics would be her bag.

AGAA4

I remember reading one of mum's magazines in the 50s. Don't let your DH see you without your hair done and makeup on and the house looking tidy. My mum always put makeup on just before dad was due home and we had to tidy our toys up as dad wouldn't want to come home to a mess.

Yes, that was very typical of the 50s, though I don’t think ,my mother was like that. Mumsnet in the 50s would have mostly about pleasing the menfolk.

I was a teenager in the 50s, and ardently read women’s magazines like Woman’s Own. My mother disapproved -she thought they were unsuitably downmarket.

I would imagine the problem pages - "-My boyfriend wants us to go away on holiday, is this advisable, since we aren't engaged yet?"

I was born mid 50s. My sister was born in 1959 which was the start year to "Call the Midwife" mum never recognise anything social from it.

She had 3 younger brothers and a younger sister so nothing really fazed her, I had an Uncle only 10 yrs older than me, she was good with children, she always said never forget what it was like to be young.
I expect the only people she would ask advise from were her similar aged SiL's.
We always had a holiday away for a week from when I was 5 she was brilliant with money.
She definitely would not dress up for Dad coming home from work, he always cooked Saturday and years later our Sunday meals, I can't remember her doing them at weekends.
She was never a push over as far as Dad was concerned, always her rules, but he was a sweetheart and out numbered by femail at home, he never stood a chance.

My mum was a nurse. Between that and looking after us she’d have been too busy. Evenings as I remember were taken up with financial management.
Although she did like to chat with real people, so who knows whether she would have used Mumsnet as a substitute if it had been available.

It's an interesting thought. You would think it would be all recipes and childcare, but - with a platform like an internet forum maybe many would start opening up and sharing about bad marriages and feeling trapped as well .........Which people didn't talk about in those days.

littleflo

I would have liked it to help me realise how to deal with my mother. She was my tormentor for 70 years. I looked after her until she died at 94. It was like being let out of prison when she went.

I got a sort of revenge by giving away her house that she tried to use a weapon throughout my life.

I think this where Mumsnet and Gransnet excel. You can get support, other views and advice from people who may have the same problems.
It's sometimes good to share the rocky times we all go through with others and it's anonymous.