Is it time to stop calling the midwife?

I do enjoy it but like some of you say I find Sheila especially so saintly. She’s an expert on everything.
Last nights episode was grim and looking at the the poor woman who tried to abort her baby made DH and I comment on when people say about people living in poverty these days. There’s no comparison after watching that as I’m sure many lives in much worse conditions as was shown in screen.
We are so lucky today.

I enjoy it, and watching last night's episode with those dreadful men in the radio studio debating the proposed abortion law reforms made me angry! Sitting there pontificating about people's lives of which they had no experience, smoking their heads off too! The 'let them eat cake' attitude of the man who said if their lives are hard then women must just do something to change them. The hysteria and controversy about abortion but the ignoring of domestic violence. The statement about no hospital would employ a single mother. Lots to be thankful for today methinks.

The storylines are fine. What about the child with pku? What about the girl whose mother forced her to have her baby adopted? As for the skeleton, things were different in those days. I could accept that happening 100%. I love the background music too.

I had a junior who was refused a legal abortion because she had left it too late. She was about 16/17 weeks and ended up at a back street abortionist and sadly died.

The film "Vera Drake" shows abortion in pre-legal times in all its desperation.

Last night’s episode was excellent. Sister Julienne’s attitude towards the young unmarried mother was shocking to me but that was the way it was even in the 60s. Not a golden age for women at all.

I’ve stopped watching it now because it has become a bit irritating. I used to love it at first.

In the late 60s I was at a very posh Anglican school and a girl in the year above me was pregnant, attended school until almost the birth, and was treated with the utmost compassion.

That was completely different to what happened at my (state grammar) school, Grannycool52. The one or two girls I know of who became pregnant were hustled out quicker than their feet could touch the floor. One of my best friends was in this position in 1970 and was out of the door the day the school heard about it.

I do find some of these questions odd. Surely, if you don't like it you just stop watching it? If enough do it will be taken off; if they don't then just march to the beat of your own drum and do what you want to do.

Maggiemaybe, I am very sorry to read that. Those grammar school girls, including your friend, obviously had bright futures ahead and I hope they managed to achieve those later.
I was being naive in what I wrote. I apologize.

It was actually very heartening to hear that not all schoolgirls who became pregnant were treated the way they were at my school, Grannycool52. If only they could all have been as supportive.

I still love it...have watched since the beginning. My parents and maternal grandparents were brought up in the area so find it really interesting. I don't watch any of the soaps...stopped doing that 14 years ago.

no. next question.

Only watched the first series and found that so soppy and to me unrealistic. In the 40/50s just like other medical professionals, midwives were seen as "those who must be obeyed" not kind, tolerant of all and probably more so in a deprived area of a city such as depicted in the series.

I agree. It has run its course. It should now be part of our social history.

ginny

Leave the midwives alone.
Lovely on a Sunday evening go just sit and enjoy. Nice people being nice to other nice people.
Get rid of Eastenders, Corrie and the like. Those characters wouldn’t know nice if it got them in the face.
Yep, you can take Mrs Brown too.

Agree wholeheartedly. Love this wholesome series, and even better love the absence of swearing.
Antiques Roadshow and Midwife are perfect Sunday evening viewing for me.

grumppa

It certainly wouldn’t have been centimetres back then. I think it would have been extraordinary for Sister Julienne, given her character as a devout Roman Catholic and a nun, to have reacted other than as she did.

I don’t think this order if nuns are catholic are they?

Don't look at Call The Midwife for a realistic portrayal of the 50s and 60s. CTM is set in a parallel universe! My great grandmother and great aunts were midwives working into the 1960s (one was a matron of a maternity hospital in a shipbuilding area). It is totally unrealistic! Even my own memory of the 60s is completely at variance with what is shown. On an entertainment level, it is a combination of comedy and sickly sentimentalism, brushed over with lashings of 2020s wokery. Time to pull the series, but of course, this is the BBC, and this is the way they wish to portray working class people. They don't actually like working class people, and this is their fantasy of the plucky ignorant put-upon masses of the past. YUK!

Ooh snappy, geekesse, surely we’re allowed an opinion. Yes, there is an on/off button, and other channels, but if we’ve enjoyed a programme for many years it is disappointing when it goes stale.

I LOVE Call the Midwife, it is so well done, taking up important subjects each week,its a "gentle series" ie. no violence, its very heartwarming the way the Nuns and Midwives look after the community, in some dreadful circumstances, a true picture of how it was in the sixties.
There are two more series to be made according to an announcement yesterday, so if peope dont like the programme I am sure there are many other channels available at the same time.

I love Call the Midwife - social history and just right for Sunday evening.

I had such an awful time having my one child I STILL have almost nightmares about the birth after 41 years! I cannot watch or hear about birth without recalling my own giving birth experience
So, no, I cannot comment on the series which I miss deliberately.

I too love Call The Midwife! It is easy watching, no swearing & gives an idea of how life was back then, and how much it has changed.

Glad that there may be 2 more seasons

I love it and want more

I certainly lived through these times and could put faces to these characters.
The corner shop owners. Taking ‘tic’
The sisters changing to modernise their habits post Vatican 2 (although Nunatis House is CofE.
The non white faces arriving.
Midwives on bicycles.
Alcohol addiction. Vermin and extreme poverty.
Home births and kitchen sink abortions.
Boys in balaclavas. Orange juice and vitamins.
Then thalidomide.
The NHS arriving by the Labour Party.
I enjoy watching - lest we forget.
My irritation is when Dr Turner puts today’s moral code on life then. These were very different times and we didn’t have today’s head directing us then. So please Dr Turner let it be without your present day Political Correctness. This is not how we thought or acted then. My favourite character is the medical secretary. Yes that’s how people were then.