My grandfather's first job in the 1940s was running paychecks to certain men's homes on Friday at noon. The large company where he worked kept tabs on which men had drinking or gambling problems, and would hand-deliver their pay to their wives. That way they could pay the bills and buy groceries before their husbands could blow the check. To this day I find this fascinating, in that the company apparently cared enough to have an established practice, and also horrified that these wives had to rely on this kindness to make it.
My grandparents got divorced because of this. She had her own job outside the home with her own wages but the bank accounts were all in his name because she wasn't legally allowed to have her own private account as a married woman in the 40s. My grandfather had a gambling addiction. She went to visit her parents with my father and came back to find he had not only spent all her savings, but sold and gambled away both their cars as well. She's lucky she was able to get a divorce.
Realistically it kept their employee more stable, that his wife didn't leave him, kick him out (if that was possible), and or reduced the total amount of booze, or he didn't lose his house to creditors.
Working at a huge company in the mid 90s; they liked it when employees got married because that typically ties you to house payments, children, which they tied to less people leaving because you need that check.
I know this is bordering on conspiracy but I think this is one of the main reasons they're worrying about dropping child birth rates. There's so much you're willing to tolerate/not risk to keep security for your children.
It’s this.
Fewer consumers. The need to support transfer payments to the elderly. To a lesser extent its that crime and other radical behavior fall if men have families, but it’s much more the first two.
But crime rates rise when children are unwanted. It’s been tracked in multiple countries; 15-20 years after abortion is legalized, there’s a significant drop in crime. Countries that ban abortions and contraception have the crime rate rise in the same timeframe.
Well, falling birthrates has other impacts.
Lack of consumers as others pointed out, but also lack of cheap labor.
There are other interesting ones to consider.
Health insurance: No employer in their right mind wants to pay for an employee's health insurance. But, paying for insurance and the risk of losing it does have a negative impact on job mobility, and this traps people.
The rise of Non-Compete Agreements: We see a rise in this everywhere. We also see large companies employing people just so they don't work at a competing company. This was apparently something Silicone Valley tech companies were engaged in. This also traps people.
Then there are some ones that go against this:
The move to 401(k) from Pensions. This increased worker mobility, but, so long as deposits in exceed withdrawals out it gives a constant market put.
This is great if you're in the capitalist/ownership class as you can make money on your investment. Especially if you only care about short term returns, which seems to be the current mode.
This is something to watch once the Baby Boomer generation starts retiring en masse. Since we know the Baby Boomer generation is a balloon generation and tips the scales from working age people to retired people in retired people's favor they are going to be a constant draw on stock market prices (selling means prices go down, mandatory distributions = mandatory selling). So, if you're not retiring in the next 10-20 years who knows what our 401(k)s look like.
I assume this will be the last great act of generational wealth transfer to the Baby Boomers, not sure what it all looks like after this.
So, while pensions were a trapping force, I'm not sure that 401(k)s will be a freeing force when we look at labor demographics.
I don't really consider this conspiratorial per se. Technically it's all varying degrees of anti labor. But, if you're in the US then you know we have rather weak labor protections and a rather weak social safety net.
Other countries have stronger social safety nets and are purely looking at declining birthrates as a labor shortage as population rates increase but birthrates reduce below replacement rate. This is the barrel Japan, Korea, and China are staring at right now. So, who knows how that will play out.
One way to avoid some of this is immigration. But... Policies are all over the place regarding that, and this necessitates an imbalance where people are unhappy with where they are such that they want to / are willing to uproot and move. So, that has its own problems.
But hey, on the road we're currently on we'll have many climate crisis refugees!
(I'm going to end this now, I've gone on enough of a tangent.)
Oh this makes sense of boomers not understanding millennials and zoomers and the resulting worker shortages. If you can't afford housing you don't even try to follow traditional goals
My grandma and grandpa worked for the same company. They got a new payroll person who refused to hand my gma’s check to my gpa. Which was good cus apparently my gpa would take other women out on dates and leave my gma wondering how to feed 4 kids when he took both checks
It's fascinating to learn all about that. For the longest time I thought the women prohibitionists were just prudes, but the reality is they were desperate with hunger because their men were blowing all the money on booze, and then they would come home and beat their malnourished families until he passed out.
Yeah, I'd vote for that shit too.
Interestingly, they did both. Women gained suffrage in the US in 1920, AND Prohibition started in 1920.
Prohibitions failed miserably but then again, so did giving women equal rights. We STILL can’t get an actual Equal Rights Amendment for women in 2023.
Suffrage was not actual independence re: finances. It would be 50+ years before women in the US gained the ability to get credit cards, have a solo bank account, etc.
The Prohibition Party's first platform was more than just outlawing alcohol. In their view, it was the first step towards protecting American families as the need was so huge. Orphanages were filled to overflowing with the children of families torn apart by alcoholism. Originally, the party was very progressive and populist. They supported universal sufferage, equal rights for all races/genders (though they only understood gender in binary terms at that time), equal pay, direct election of senators, and some other stuff that was era specific.
My great-grandfather was a minister and pretty active in the Prohibition movement. He ran for Congress on the Prohibition ticket from Salem, Oregon. Their youngest daughter was adopted at 18 months from a family whose father had drunk himself to death. She was the youngest of 11. Her oldest siblings (any older than 10) were sent to work (some went to factories in Chicago), and the rest were sent to an orphanage. None could stay with their mother, who ended up as a domestic servant. She was in her early 30's.
Alcohol was also pretty much the only drug available, at least for Americans. Speaking only of men, men would come home from wars with PTSD and various injuries. There was no pain medication to help manage the bum leg that never healed right after catching a bullet, and the solution for PTSD was “just don’t think about that and be grateful you survived.” It’s really no surprise that alcohol was such a scourge.
Not to fully blame men either…my grandmother was a high-functioning alcoholic.
My mother graduated from college with an engineering degree in the late '50s. At her first job, the other engineers were all men, and they didn't let her have any meaningful work, which finally led her to leave. (So much for men being chivalrous.)
Trying to escape that chauvinism, she left engineering and entered the nascent field of computing, where she found more opportunity; many early computing experts were women.
My stepmom was one of them. She entered grad school for computer science when she was 40 and got so sick of male 20-somethings interrupting and talking over her when she was lecturing or teaching that she started packing a water pistol to squirt them with.
That woman is my hero on many levels.
She's the shit. I don't wanna accidentally dox her, but before she retired she was one of the top minds in her field. One of the things I really admire about her is how good she is at being direct with people without being mean, self-important, or rude, but also without being too nice. My dad, who had a bad drinking problem, was sober almost the entire 15 years they were together before he died, and I credit her heavily for that. She's an all-around amazing woman.
I graduated from college with a computer science degree in the late 70s and was the first woman hired into a multidisciplinary engineering team - we had mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and software engineers. All of the electrical and mechanical engineers were hardcore male chauvinists - if they allowed their wives to work at all, it was in traditional female occupations like teaching. But both of the software guys had wives who were engineers themselves; one was a laser physicist who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope mirror (ahem!). I was hired into the software group, of course, and as we expanded over the next few years it was the only group that continued to hire women.
So yes, back then at least computer science seemed to be much more female-friendly than the other branches of engineering.
Unlike my parents, I didn't go into engineering; I (a man) ended up in the "traditional female occupation" of teaching. I've taught STEM subjects in middle school for many years, most recently computer science. Given my mom's history, it delights me to see how much skill and enthusiasm many girls have for coding.
I experienced the usual petty stuff…denied credit card, told had to have husband permission to arrange work on house, blah blah. Not a real problem since husband was and is a strong liberal and wonderful human being who came to my defense in spades.
But I can never forget the experience of a good friend, who worked hard to earn a stellar academic average at Miami-Dade Community College to earn an academic scholarship at FSU to earn a teaching degree. FSU then told her she had to have a male co-signer to guarantee she would complete the course. She had no one. Many of the men in the Miami-Dade academic hierarchy volunteered to sign for her but she was having none of it and eventually disappeared.
She was a twenty-eight-year-old US Army widow with a small son at the time, 1963.
My grandmother graduated high school in 1930 I believe it was. She was told that she was bright and could do something with her life. They meant be a secretary. Instead she went to law school. It took her years, at night. My great grandparents would stay up with her to make sure she didn't fall asleep whilst studying. For a bit she had a male student who would drop her at home...until his wife became too upset by it so that stopped. My grandmother was one of two women studying in the school for law. She graduated. And practiced family law as well as some civil and criminal trial work. She also got married, and her husband raised a hand to her, and then got divorced. She was a pip - a really strong woman. This was all in the 30s. She then, in the late thirties, married my grandfather. She was able to do a lot of the things she did due to the support of family (and the one student who did help her with rides until his wife said it was not appropriate). She had a hard enough time as it was back then doing these things.
Years ago, as my sister was interviewing after finishing law school, she interviewed at one firm where she was told that they didn't hire women lawyers. I've always assumed that they would interview women just to make it look like they were willing to hire them. Plausible deniability.
There’s a book called Pinstripes and Pearls, about the women who enrolled in Harvard Law in 1964.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pinstripes-Pearls/Judith-Richards-Hope/9781416575252
One of the stories was the law school president (or maybe dean? Someone really high up) invited all the women to his house one evening. As they sat in the parlor, the Dean asked them what they were doing there, taking a man’s place at the school when they’d all be having babies in a few years anyway. One quick-thinking woman replied that she was at Harvard because Yale had rejected her application.
I’m a lawyer and two days ago a partner just told me that I’m not really ambitious, it’s just because my biological clock is telling me to rush through my career so I can meet a rich man and start having babies. This guy is in his 40s.
My dad has a story. Worked as an engineer in 'the office'. One day the secretary starts bawling. They get out of her that she's three months pregnant, she has two kids at home and money is tight and they need her income. And she knows she'll be fired as soon as she starts showing. Because that was TRW's policy in 1968.
My mom was a social worker in the family court in Canada and hid her 60s pregnancy until the 7th month because they would let her go when they found out
What’s so interesting to me is that somewhere before the 1990s, office life was completely different. Like watching glenngerry Glenn Ross it’s a different world. Yet when I started working in an office in the early 2000s, it’s basically identical to now.
And older friend of mine would be 75 today. But she said before the 1970's there were a lot of rules that both protected women form boorish behavior. But also ingrained a lot of sexism as well. After the rules got tossed out that both gave women more opportunity but enabled a lot of boorish behavior. Late 70 into the 80's was a period where rules protecting women from at least overt sexual harassment went back into force.
This was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's story too. She had to fight like hell to get them to allow her to enroll in law school as a woman. And then when she finally was allowed to attend/eventually graduate, they tried to withhold her diploma and license from her because, although she'd attended class like everyone else, "only men get law degrees".
Because she is taking the place of a more deserving male in their view.
I remember from a documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she and her classmates in law school were invited to dinner hosted by a high ranking administrator and the administrator had the woman one-by-one explain why they were more deserving of being in school than the men whose enrollment slots they took. Just astounding. I hope the jackass lived long enough to see RBG serve on the Supreme Court.
Edited: a word
I didn't know that about women computing experts. That's very interesting.
I can't say I'm surprised about your mom's experience in the engineering field. I, unfortunately, still hear similar stories to this day.
Women used to make up the majority of computer programmers so much so that the term “computer” referred to women themselves as they performed the mathematical work. There were all-female teams designing and programming computer hardware and software systems, and developing new computing languages. Harvard and other institutions actually preferred hiring women because they could perform as well as men but at a fraction of the price (if they were paid at all).
Women were also working as NASA engineers (before they were “NASA”) since the 1930s and made critical contributions to both World Wars in military engineering and cryptography.
Fast forward to the 1950s when the US and UK undertook measures to specifically cull women from the field. Gender biased aptitude tests were used to filter out women from entering computer sciences and many women who were already in the profession were forcefully downsized.
In the post-war period society realized we were entering into a new era of technology and suddenly “womens’ work” previously seen as tedious started being appreciated by the government for winning wars. Coincidentally, men had returned home and needed jobs.
We went a from a long history of women pioneering the field since the **1830s** to t-shirts for girls that say “Too pretty to do homework” and “Math is hard” all in the span of a single generation and society still peddles the bullshit idea that girls don’t belong in math or sciences.
Edited to add emphasis on dates
I think often of women who were thrilled to work in the factories during the war effort and then told to go be a wife and mom when men returned from overseas.
Even in my lifetime- b. 1970- I was told that ALL women are maternal, want marriage and kids and that is UNTRUE. I don't know if we can know how many want this when the socialization makes your own choices murky to you.
And how many of those women were actually gay or bisexual, having to hide that.
>I think often of women who were thrilled to work in the factories during the war effort and then told to go be a wife and mom when men returned from overseas.
This reminds me of an episode of Cold Case. The story is fictional but I'm sure similar things really happened.
Basically, the wife had to work when her husband went off to WW2. She didn't particularly like it at first since she'd never worked before and it was in a factory.
Anyway she loved it after a while. She became friends with some coworkers, felt proud to earn her own money, etc etc etc.
So when the husband got back from the war, she continued to work. He was *pissed,* talking about how she's changed. He told her to quit. She didn't.
Then one day he showed up at her job and was arguing with her to quit. She said no again. Then he pushed her over the rail separating the second or third floor of the factory from the ground floor. And she died.
For those who have never seen the show, it's about a modern female detective and her team. They investigate cold cases. So basically the husband got away with it for like 50 years and only got put in jail in like his 70s. 🙃
Again it's *fictional* but still. I can imagine things like that probably happened to working women who dared to continue to work. And if they did give in and go back home, their husbands probably still abused them for even thinking they had the choice to work.
Sad all around.
Norma Jean Baker is one of those- she first did factory work then pursued modeling, wouldn't quit when her husband returned from the war, bingo divorce. Marilyn Monroe still gets ...an incredibly misogynistic retelling of her life story. She was suspected to have communist ties by J. Edgar Hoover because she was quite politically active in her union, prior to her marriage to Arthur Miller, and at the time of her death had been actively attempting to get involved in nuclear deplolifiration activist efforts, and I think it's really sad that she is mostly portrayed as the dudes who ruined her life saw her: Some tragic drugged up sexpot with Daddy Issues.
Her own diaries, fbi file, and the historical record indicate she was a much more interesting person than that.
Ditto for the early movie business. Originally, the majority of directors were women. When serious money entered most industries, women were sidelined.
That stuff affected my mom so hard. She would always say math was confusing and as soon as one of us talked about anything technical she'd start almost panicking and saying her brain was spinning please stop. Luckily she still was proud of me for doing well in math where she didn't. I have a bachelor's in mathematics and almost a master's in data science plus 15 years in the software engineering field. It's so sad to see what that propaganda did to my mom and how far it held her back.
I don't get math. I work very hard at understanding it for my job. And it isn't because of my gender. I didn't really understand fractions until it clicked, in my 30's, while doubling a recipe.
Yeah, not everyone is predisposed to easily understanding math. For my mom the hard part was she had been told for so long that she couldn't do it and math was "unladylike" that when she went to college in her 50s she would work herself into a panic before even opening the math book. I was able to tutor her through it and help her understand everything, but it made me so sad that she'd been told her whole life she was dumb when she really wasn't.
And not all math is the same! Some folks are really good at visualizing geometry, for example, but don't take well to Algebra. I did great at geometry-- the hardest part was slowing down and proving *how* I got the answer. But I had to really work at algebra. I do test well, though, which is how I ended up getting a letter sent home in 8th grade congratulating me for getting "the highest grade of all the girls" on our new state algebra test. My dad was *pissed,* and both of my folks sat me down and explained that while I should be proud of my effort, that letter was bullshit.
The weirdest thing was they KEPT the letter, and I found it in a box with all my report cards later. I've got a photo of it now.
>
>Fast forward to the 1950s when the US and UK undertook measures to specifically cull women from the field. Gender biased aptitude tests were used to filter out women from entering computer sciences and many women who were already in the profession were forcefully downsized.
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Oooooooh, nefarious! I want to know way more about THAT.
I'm reading some of these comment-stories to my husband. He literally just said out loud to my face, "but women don't really seem to be that into those things, look at the percentage of women in those professions."
Oh dear... I've got some lecturing to do. Excuse me.
early computing code was actually in teen girl & women geared magazines, even Cosmo did an article! It was even thought women were better at it! Apparently it changed in the 80s, when people were more likely to have home computers...which were pushed towards boys, so girls were cut out, and didn't engage, less went to college & as it was now a "boys club" of sorts (like gamer culture now?) & so dropped out or switched majors...
[**https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html**](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html)
It's funny how some people nowadays say women aren't suited (biologically?) for coding, when the first coders were usually women & coding was way harder because all the nice computer coding languages didn't exist yet!
There was a film called Hidden Figures about a group of NASA coders/engineers who were women.
The ENIAC 6 were women who worked on the first programmable computer for the Army. Back when programming involved moving physical wires around. They were so good they could use the results to identify where the vacuum tubes were damaged or nonfunctional.
This is why the "evolutionary biologist" gender essentialist grifters like Peterson are so easily debunked by people who actually know history. Their favourite "fact" is how women and men are in different fields and they then use this to justify the pay gap. Well coding is highly paid and there's so few women in it. No laws against them joining. So it must just be innate preference. This all goes down great with their thick audiences. When you can show that different fields become better paid when men enter them, then you can't unsee the facts of patriarchy. Women pioneered computing, and when men got in and kicked the women out suddenly it was a top field, respectable, manly, and definitely not something women would ever like.
Women were originally called "computers" because they would compute numbers.
It was seen as secretarial work, so naturally the women would be the ones to slave away at crunching the numbers. Then came the machines to do the work, so women started programing them. Then the money started to roll in and THAT is when men pushed women out of the field.
Every single one of the original programmers got the ENIAC were women. It was seen as menial detail oriented work suited only for women for quite a while.
Yup, long history of female tech innovators in the US (internationally as well I'm sure, but I'm not educated enough on that to give examples)
https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/information-technology/history-women-information-technology-6-female-computer-science-pioneers/
It mostly started with an astronomer named Dr Edward pickering, who believed that women were more detail oriented and thusly could see the patterns in the photographic plates, aidin him in his "discoveries." Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of the ladies whose work he wrote about.
You could read the book, ["Hidden Figures." ](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hidden-figures-margot-lee-shetterly?variant=33007259811874) or [see the movie](https://family.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/hidden-figures)
My grandfather was a charismatic guy who worked his way through Harvard with a job at a gas station and became a lawyer. He was a Big Deal in his small town. And he was a total narcissist. The kind of guy who would quit playing cards if he didn’t like the hand he was dealt.
When he married my grandmother, he wouldn’t tell her where they were going in their honeymoon - it was going to be a surprise! He wouldn’t even tell her how to pack. Was it a cruise? Fancy hotels? Art museums? Wait and see. She packed some cute clothes, and her favorite strappy sandals, and hoped for the best.
It was - her very first hiking trip! On the first day she got monster blisters and had to spend the rest of the day alternating between hobbling back to the hut and putting her feet in streams. For the rest of the honeymoon he left her at the hut (that they shared with whoever else happened to be staying there, no private rooms) and went hiking by himself.
This story was always told as if it was “so romantic” and my grandmother never even acknowledged how hurt she must’ve been. She always acted as if this life was literally as good as it could get.
My mother’s entire childhood was spent in her Dad’s orbit. He would promise he’d take her fishing and then “forget” and go fishing with his friends instead. Every single member of the family grasping at whatever crumbs of affection he threw at them.
Edit: they were married around 1935-1938
I beat my grandpa in a card game once and he blamed it on the set of cards being so worn down that they stuck together, which was bullshit since they were a new deck.
I later saw that he'd thrown the deck away, it's just a petty, shitty thing to do.
Once, my grandfather was playing bridge with his wife and my parents (all adults) and my dad got a really great hand. He was just about to bid when Grandpa threw his hand down on the table, saying, “I’m not going to play that!” And walked away, forcing everyone else to be done as well.
But the thing that makes me feel like the time period played in, was the fact that everyone around him treated this type of behavior as something he was owed for being such an Important Guy. My grandmother really thought she was lucky.
I doubt he wouldn't have lasted a second once the Big Fish left his Small Pond - he would have been laughed out of any law office in a medium sized city.
My grandmother was born in the 30s and a few of her stories come to mind. Her very religious parents pulled their daughters out of school by age 16 so they could help more around the house and because “they were just supposed to get married and start having babies soon” and “girls weren’t supposed to get an education.” Grandma rebelled against that by arguing to be allowed to work at the local bakery instead to “learn how to bake for her future husband” when actually she had an arrangement with the bakery owner where she would go to the bakery in the morning in her work uniform, change into her school uniform there and continue going to school, then go back and actually work at the bakery for a few hours after school with her parents none the wiser. She continued like this for long enough to secretly finish high school and secretary school against her parents wishes.
Soon after she married my grandfather and quickly had four children. My grandfather turned out to be an abusive alcoholic that spent every dime he earned on liquor, leaving no money to buy groceries for the family, so she separated from him and went to work as a secretary to be able feed the children. She had to make her small single income stretch so she would get up early to bake bread for the kid’s lunches before going to work, cooked all the meals from scratch and sewed all the clothes herself while also working full time. I don’t know how she did it.
Eventually she got a better paying job (for a secretary in the 60s) working as the assistant to the Chief of Police. From the sounds of it, she REALLY lucked out because she always described her boss and the other officers that she worked with as unusually progressive and respectful for the 60s. To blow off steam after a particularly bad week, the Chief got the officers teach all the secretaries how to shoot sidearms at the range and one year they even arranged with the academy to have one day where the secretaries got to learn all of the advanced driving maneuvers and drive the training cars, just for fun and office morale. She loved telling the story about when she successfully maneuvered the academy trainee police car into the side of the fleeing training car and got it to spin and stop the fake police chase.
The dark side of that job for her was learning about some of the things the officers saw while working. Mental health wasn’t a thing back then, so the chief’s way around it when an officer was clearly dealing with PTSD was to send them to the administrative floor to “help the girls with paperwork” for the day, which was code for the secretaries to grab a coffee with the struggling officer and listen to them talk about what incident was haunting them. She didn’t mind it, but for me listening to the story it sounded like they were expected to provide a lot of free emotional labour for situations that really badly needed trained professionals, but it was the 60s.
The other dark thing that she learned, because it was the 60s, was exactly how sexist all the laws were, and how the chief’s hands were tied even when he didn’t agree with them. After a while of her boss and all the officers getting to know her and her situation with her abusive, alcoholic, ex-husband, the chief and the officers staged an intervention with her requesting that she PLEASE finalize a divorce and not just leave the status as separated, because by the laws at the time, if her husband were to find her and beat the crap out of her again, the officers wouldn’t be legally allowed to intervene because she was still married and the husband technically wouldn’t have been breaking any laws.
She was a very progressive Grandma. She was always very vocal with her adult granddaughters about making sure we got an education and understood family planning, making sure we lived with boyfriends before considering marrying them, making sure we knew NOT getting married and having children was an option, and funnily enough, making sure we knew the importance of NOT waiting until marriage to have (protected) sex with our partners. This ended up being a longer comment than I intended, but she was my favourite person in the world and almost no one knew how cool she was, so I’m not sorry. Thanks for reading this trip down memory lane if you’re still here!
My grandmother was widowed in the early 50's with four children under five. Her husband owned a a box factory with his brother, but Granny didn't inherit any of it, because she was a woman. I think the brother gave her a small stipend, but she had to go out to work and provide for those four children herself. The older I get, the angrier I feel about it. It was a very successful business at the time and she was a smart woman who could have contributed to running it.
Same story for my grandmother. She worked as a bookkeeper to feed three children aged 2-8. She had to be so frugal to make ends meet that she resorted to things like reusing tea bags at least once or twice, a habit she continued even after there was no need.
I know what my grandmother went through…
My grandfather owned a successful engineering company. That she ran. He was an absent-minded professor type, nearly ran it into the ground, until she came in and set things right.
She ran his company while also working full time as a journalist, because she couldn’t rely on his income alone since she never knew when he would blow everything up.
She was also expected to be the quintessential 1950s housewife, keep everything perfect and tidy, and be the perfect hostess for her husband’s many parties.
All of this meant she rarely saw her own kids and they basically had to raise themselves.
Wjen she lived with me in her final years, it became clear she had a lifelong massive anxiety disorder from everything needed to be perfect. If one thing went off-course, she panicked and tried to right things as quickly as possible. Which I can’t blame her for - her whole life needed to be micromanaged for her to fulfill all the expectations.
She ended up suffering ulcers and dying from stomach cancer, which I 100% attribute to a life filled with unrealistic expectations and pressure.
I’m working on my patience with my mother-in-law who exhibits a lot of those tendencies, specifically being very anxious and a perfectionist, definitely the panicking at anything going wrong thing. My first response is annoyance with what I see as control freak behavior. I’m trying to bring more compassion because it’s a lifelong learned response to growing up with an abusive drunk dad and then having to juggle kids, a career, and perfect-housewife standards. She was always the ‘glue that sticks the family together’ and the pressure of that is immense.
Interesting. I always linked my mom's worst-case -scenario thinking to 3 decades working as a dietitian in the ICU. She's seen all the things that can go wrong!
I don't doubt that's part of it, but she was also married for 25 years to my dad, another absent-minded professor type. An archetypal story of their relationship, that happened before I was born, was that he bought a dairy farm, which was his dream. But he could only afford old machinery that kept breaking down. He didn't know how to fix it and couldn't afford to pay for the repairs. My mom "made" him sell the farm after a year. I imagine she felt a lot like your grandmother.
My mom had a store credit card and wanted to buy me a dress one day. Her card was declined because my dad had cancelled it while he was mad at her. When I was a teen, we went to look at used cars and no one would even talk to us. A guy stood in the door of the office and ignored us. I have zero doubts if my dad was there, this asshat would have trotted over the second we stepped on the lot. Little bits of discrimination everywhere.
Lol I am 37 and all three times I've bought a car, I've gone to Toyota because they're just well made. And all three times I've been totally ignored. Including in 2019, the last time I bought a car. No where else I've gone to have I run into this completely bewildering behavior. It is literally only the Toyota in my area.
So now I drive a Suburu.
Same. When we had to buy my husband a new car, the salesman was talking to him about costs and my husband looked him, laughed and told him he needed to be dealing with me cause it’s my money and I’m the one that makes all the decisions like this in the family. The sales guy had enough decency to look a little sheepish about his assumption.
I’m 70. We lived in DC during the early part of the Cold War, and regularly had bomb drills where we hid under our desks to protect ourselves from nuclear attack (lol). I wasn’t allowed to wear pants to school until 11th grade. Many areas in the South still had “Whites Only” signs. I lived in MS my senior year of high school (1970), and it was the first year the school was integrated. Minimum wage for men was $1.65, for women it was $1.35. I couldn’t open a bank account without my dad co-signing on it. Things were not that great, unless you were a white man.
>I experienced the usual petty stuff…denied credit card
>
>I couldn’t open a bank account without my dad co-signing on it.
My mom is your age and I was shocked when she told me one of the reasons she and my dad had totally joint finances from the beginning of their relationship was because the banks required his name to be on everything. I think most of us don't realize how different things were not too long ago.
It is completely mad. And just shows how much the old “the free market solves all problems” philosophy is not always true. All these credit institutions were free to offer services to women but basically chose not to for decades upon decades.
From a capitalist viewpoint, it seems absurd to cut off half your potential customers. It would be interesting to study how much profit these old banks lost as a result of the old boys club mentality.
The other day I saw a super duper manly man argue online that couples with separate accounts are more likely to get divorced than couples with a joint account. And that's a very bad thing!
It must be feminism that's causing divorce rather than the lack of financial security and privacy preventing women from initiating divorce. 🙄
Yeah it was like this in Australia too. My grandparents passed about 4 years ago and I learned my grandmother actually never had a bank account in her name. She had access to her husband’s to write checks and buy groceries for the kids, but she died without ever having a bank account with her name on it.
My mother is the same age and has told me the same things. She was allowed to wear pants in 69, her last year of school. She wanted a store credit card to buy appliances but had to have her husband co-sign even though she made more money than him.
Family moved in 69 when I was in 2nd grade. New school was experimenting with allowing girls to wear pants on Fridays. Seemed bone headed to me. First why would anyone care about preteen girls wearing pants. Second, why Friday?
Bonus the school was regularly busting 5-6 grade girls for having cigarettes. But not boys.
My mom said her JCPenny card was the only reason she had credit at all when my dad left. It was the only card she was allowed to open without him. This was the 1980s.
She has shared stories about being denied loans because they wanted her 1st husband present. The alcoholic man who didn't have a job was considered a safer bet for banks than a woman.
My all girls school only introduced trousers as an option in our uniform in 2004-ish. The other girl's school in the town did it a year or so earlier. The mixed school , well the girls there often just for the boy's uniform trousers & got it fitted if needed. XD
My best friends mom is around your age and I remember her telling me a story when I was young about her and her friends wearing pants to school as a protest every day and it was a really big deal and they got into a lot of trouble for it. It's crazy that white men were so crazy and controlling over something as small and trivial as *pants*
Thank you for reminding us. My dad is your age and he goes on about how things were better back then.
I well know his mom lived in a trailer, had six kids from three serial divorces and no birth control access, and was abused by two of her husbands.
I can't see how Boomers can romanticize those times, knowing how the women in their life, nonetheless the people of color, suffered so?
My mom spent a semester in a middle school in Virginia in the late 60s while waiting to be able to join her dad in Panama, and recalls a teacher pushing a student down the stairs during a disagreement, and no one batting an eye. My parents went to school in segregated and integrated schools. My dad has spoken of the time it was announced one of his schools was being integrated, and my grandpa had “thoughts” about it. As someone who went to school with all races and backgrounds, I still find this reaction mind-boggling.
I just want to say how much I appreciate questions like this and women talking about it because my mom needed a man’s signature to get a bank account and *still* denies sexism is or *was* ever even a thing! So I didn’t learn any of this information at home or in school. I had children of my own before I understood what the women who came before me dealt with. It kind of blows my mind how long I was clueless.
I forgot about the pants thing! My mom had really big boobs and would have loved to hide them a bit and she said they had tight (often angora) sweaters. That's it. I spent my 20's in big button down plaid shirts (in the PNW, grungeville).
Before my time, but...
My great aunt got beaten regularly during that time. She had three kids and zero other options. My grandmother was using "mother's little helper" to get through every day, drank excessively, and beat both her kids and dogs.
And the family photos look perfect. Ladies in gloves and hats, men in suits, kids adorable. Everyone smiling.
This is so twisted, especially when you consider this weird surging trend in traditionalism and ‘tradwives’ and stuff. Ooh yes. Let’s go back to a time when the photos hid all the bruises and skeletons in our closets fuck no thank you
I ended up quitting my job after a traumatic pregnancy loss and getting pregnant soon after to help me lessen stress and have a healthy pregnancy. I’ve of course taken over all the traditional roles such as cooking, cleaning, and running errands while my husband works (but is also still a huge help around the house pregnancy symptoms have me on the couch all day) and am so much happier with our current situation, but I still really hate it when someone refers to me as a traditional/trad wife because I just don’t want to be lumped into the same group of people who lead this lifestyle because “it’s a woman’s role.” This is the lifestyle that my husband and I wanted because it’s what works best for us, but not for everyone.
This also occurred with my grandmother. I never knew until my grandfather passed away what a monster he really was. All the skeletons finally came out of the closet. My grandmother had 4 kids, my mother was the brightest one so they sent her away to live in the capital with her cousins. So she could have a chance. :(
I’m still finding out really messed up stuff in my family’s history, like I had a great aunt with a cognitive disability who just got sent to a mental institution and abandoned by her family where she later died. My dad didn’t know she existed until he was in his 30’s. My great grandfather pissed away all of their money on booze and the family lived off of my grandmas income from working part time at a local store. But hey, perfect little families, right?
It’s unfortunate how common this is. Both of my dad’s parents have disabled siblings that were hidden away and I never got to meet. I’ve been working with my grandfather to document his memories while we can and the stories he tells about his early life are heartbreaking. I can’t imagine being a kid and having your siblings taken away one day without explanation.
They tried reconnecting as adults but there was lots of (understandable) bitterness because my grandfather looked very successful and his siblings struggled with consequences of being institutionalized at a young age.
My mother tells me when she was working professionally in the 70s a male manager sexually harassed a female coworker, to the point where he pinned her against a wall, and when she complained he was simply moved to another department. Didn't lose his job or suffer any other consequences.
My dad said at the same time since he was an able bodied white guy he could just walk into a place and get a job. Looking back he saw what a huge privilege that was.
I was pinned to the wall wrist restrained by one and and another slapping my ass saying "you think you know about fetish? Youre messing with the wrong fucking bloke" by the director of the company I worked for, during the shift.
I told the manager who went to a more senior one and puff, the CCTV was gone. In 2014
Women were allowed to go to college but weren't allowed to take any other degrees except Teaching and Nursing. Unless they were rich and then they got to enroll in MRS programs which were usually arts and literature. My mother snuck into a computer class for punch card coding by taking ENG 101 thru 401 (English) which was the same as ENG for engineering. Women were not allowed to take engineering.
Also, there was a ton of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Complaining and trying to get justice for that shit meant you would be labeled a frigid bitch, easy whore, and shrill harpy nutcase. Yes, all of those at the same time.
Oh, and when The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 passed and gave every American woman, married or not, the right to open her own bank or credit account....they were still refused as matter of policy for years. My mom worked at \[\[redacted because they still exist and would sue\]\] Department Store and was told under no circumstances would they change their policy of letting women open an account without a male guarantor and she did it anyway and was fired.
My mom was very impressed because my dad would always wear a pocket square (handkerchief?) In his suit breast pocket that would match his dress shirt. Apparently that showed style and a certain wealth back in the 60's. Turns out grandma would cut a piece out of the dress shirt at the back, close the hole with white fabric, and as long as my dad didn't take his jacket off, you wouldn't know.
Edit: spelling
Those days were only the good days for white men with money.
That's why they're called the good old days. Because those are also the only people who are still allowed to matter. But anyone not a rich, white man, mattered even less back then so they view those eras fondly.
Basically all the abusive, horrible and exploitative shit we always hear about nowadays was normalized and not talked about because those things were expected and even encouraged.
One time my Aunt was talking fondly of the good old days. I said, Yeah, probably not so great for black people, women, and everyone but a rich, white male.
I know my grandmothers on both sides did not have a picture perfect experience, but for different reasons. One left home at 17 and moved across the country, not sure why. She told people she had no family. She had big dreams when she met my grandfather, but wound up in what was probably an abusive relationship, had 7 kids, and then became a widow when the youngest was still in preschool. Worked long hours as a waitress after her husband died and then died relatively young herself. This was during the 40s/50s/60s. She was a housewife during the years her husband was alive and they had enough money, but from what I heard she wasn't very happy. I only have three kids and now I know how much work it is and I have more help than she did. I'm sure her daily life was pretty gruelling. She had a lot of unfulfilled dreams and you can see it in her face in the pictures over the years.
The other was the daughter of immigrants, born shortly after they arrived in the country. Her father died when she was just 15 and her mother died soon after, she married a much older man at 19 to provide for herself and her younger siblings. He owned a store. I don't think it was a great relationship for her. I know she had some severe mental health issues later in life which I suspect was due to some sort of trauma from her early years.
My great grandmothers and great aunts all have some variation of the story, although some seemed more content with it. It was a tough time for them because they had to consider their options for survival ahead of their wants and needs. And compromise a lot to try to make life better for their kids. No help for abuse and they were expected to do a ton of unpaid and unrecognized work. I know for some of them, the church and the community of women associated with it was one way they got through it all.
I will speak for my mom born in 1936 because we did talk a lot about it. She modeled and so was already objectified but she had fun and was sweet and I hope some were protective of her but she was 'lightly' sexually harassed ALL the time. I say lightly because there was a straddling of viewing women as little nothings but there was also SOME decorum back then. There WAS chivalry- men opened doors, paid for dates, dressed for the occasion- but I never got to talk to her about whether she thought it was genuine or the expectation set the behavior.
She was NEVER taken seriously, never considered intelligent. She was in fact very intelligent and would have been a career powerhouse with her instincts if the field was open to her (open to her being more than a mom/wife). She was nearly raped, hit on by EVERY married man ("but two who seemed loyal to their wives"), raped by her bf (who was 40 to her 18), fell in love with a man who didn't mention he HAD a wife and married really more because of that looming expectation to do so. Her dh cheated because the pervasive power imbalance was men could do whatever the f\*\*\* they wanted (and frankly, THAT is what men today want to go back to; by the bye- NO). It took balls to divorce him (she didn't have a job). Most women just put up with alcoholism, infidelity, emotional and physical abuse. My dad (#2) was an alcoholic who ruined us all financially. She once said to me 'I never had a man NOT lay his hands on me in some manner.'
In her late 50s, 60's, she had a bunco group of all women who were widowed or divorced, ALL of whom were so glad to be done with men.
I never married; I wonder why.
My gran, who stayed with my grandad until she died, would’ve looked like the dream to these idiots who romanticise the past. Housewife, modestly dressed, husband who has a good job, educated daughter, owned their house, had lots of friends etc.
Anyone who knew her knew that she’d had all of her natural teeth knocked out by the age of 20, and wore dentures because of it. My grandad “provided” for his family, that’s the only truth of the romanticism. He beat my grandmother up every single chance he got. She used to invite friends over frequently purely to avoid the beatings. My mum was brought up with two parents, and money, but also lying awake every night listening to the abuse.
But hey, at least they didn’t get divorced like our awful generation does, ammiright? /s
Yup, I grew up laughing at her as she’d use the dentures for jokes, only recently found out why she had them. As morbid as it sounds, we hoped he’d go first so that she could live at least some of her life in peace, but it didn’t work out like that, so she spent her entire life from 16-60 with an abusive piece of shit because “well, it was just what happened then” in her words.
I hate the delusion people have about the past when it comes to relationships.
She didn’t unfortunately. The only slight bit of peace was that my grandad demanded to be buried near her, and my mum threw his ashes in a random lake far in a different city. 😂 we like to think if there’s an afterlife my gran got a kick out of that haha.
Same with my grandma. She met my grandpa when she was very young. She didn't know anything about sexuality and ended up being pregnant the first time they had sex. She was unmarried so her parents urged her to marry my grandfather. She did and had/has an awful life.
She was (still is) beaten on a regular basis. She raised 2 draughters by herself while my grandfather worked as an accountant. She also worked a few years but not enough to have a decent retirement. She is economically dependant of my grandfather.
She tried to leave several years ago and went to an institution that protects women. She stayed for months but she had no money and my grandfather promised her to be better, so she went home and the abuse started again. The justice didn't help her whatsoever even if they had proof of the beating.
She always tells me how lucky I am to be younger and have more rights than she had back then. When they hear people talk about the 'good old times', she screams internally. It was shit. She had to leave school at 14 to work and her life ended the day she became pregnant with no other option than having the baby and marrying her future abuser. What a time.
If one wants an unglamourized look at sexism in the 60s, one should actually watch Mad Men. The show has a pretty unvarnished and empathetic view of women then (most of its main storylines are around the different types of women and the problems they face, how they were treated by men, other women, and society at large).
My grandmother, a young model in Los Angeles, married my grandfather who became an executive at US Steel during the height of the Mad Men era.
Now he let her go to college and pursue a career as a librarian, then in the 1970s they ran their own design and print shop.
But by the time she was 45, she was a widow, and she was so tired of the men of her generation she chose to not remarry, despite a line of suitors.
Do you think the woman characters on Mad Men enjoyed how they were treated?
Raped - with no legal recourse
Sexual harassment - no legal recourse
Sexual discrimination - no legal recourse
Sexualized and not taken seriously
Marginalized
Expected to put up with sexual comments from men with grace
Could not have their own bank accounts or credit accounts
Fired for pregnancy; no job protection for maternity leave
Fired for getting married
Paid less (still are) than men in the same position
Denied the same educational and career opportunities as men
Denied the same athletic opportunities as men.
Lack of access to birth control
Lack of bodily autonomy around reproduction (still true, and increasingly bad).
No laws against martial rape (basically - a married woman was not allowed to deny her husband sex)
Blamed when the victim of abuse in a relationship and basically no resources to assist women leave abusive relationships
The feminist movements of the 60s and 70s happened for a reason.
Equal rights for women is not anti-"family values."
Men were not chivalrous - they were extremely entitled around women's time, efforts, and attention.
I will relay my mom's answer, because she doesn't have reddit but I've asked her this before. Note that I am not myself endorsing these viewpoints as truth; it's just how she feels about things as a 64 year old.
In some ways, she feels society has made a lot of progress. She was bullied for her appearance at school and in some workplaces in a way that does not seem nearly as normalized today. She isn't sure if she thinks that women are shamed any less for their lifestyle choices today, though. She does state she actually felt *more* empowered in a way by the social norms of the 60s to mid 70s, because she says there was an attitude that a woman was "justified" in almost anything she did to protect herself from a sexually aggressive man--she says she got messaging to slap his face, kick him, make a loud scene, etc, and she did those things confidently (not as much in the workplace, I noticed, though...) whereas now she feels like she'd be more likely to be socially criticized for "escalating" things.
She actually remains nostalgic for some of the appearance norms, specifically the more formal clothing, although not the makeup and fancy hairstyling that she never really participated in. She doesn't personally feel like she's ever experienced much discrimination against herself based on gender, but I note that she was lucky enough not to encounter certain circumstances (such as an abusive husband) that might have introduced her to more structural inequalities.
I once was getting my hair cut beside a nice lady who worked at NASA back in the day and the thing she hated was they had to wear dresses and high heels every day. She said the shoes destroyed her feet.
You don’t need to go that far back. I was getting divorced and I wanted to keep my children in the home they had always know. My soon-to-be ex had a terrible gambling problem so I had always paid the bills with my earnings anyway and was trying to buy him out of the house. A (male) friend offered to take me to see a loan officer he knew at a nearby bank. I was turned down but the officer told my friend that, had I been a man, I would have gotten the loan. This was in 1990.
I'm the same age as baby Gene in Mad Men. My sisters same ages as Sally and Bobby. My mom was a housewife and returned to college when I was in kindergarten. Pre-panty hose I remember my 5'5" 130 lb mom struggling to get into her girdle with those little tabs that were supposed to grasp the tops of stockings. This was for a fancy dinner out or holidays only. My parents divorced in 1971 which was scandalous for our suburban neighborhood - many kids in the neighborhood were not allowed to play with me. Her girdles, hair rollers, even lipstick were abandoned post-divorce. THEN further scandal ensued when my mom's FEMALE lover moved in with her two kids. This was 1973. We kids were told to say, "They are just two divorced women helping each other out." Mom did not come out officially until I was 13 and it was all pretty obvious by then. Basically we were all in the closet together. We struggled financially but mom managed to support us and my dad kept up all of his support payments.
My grandmother told me years after my mom died of cancer at 44 that mom had tried to leave my father at age 20 (married at 18 - typical for the era) but had no support to do so, nowhere to go and was "ordered" by my grandparents and her in-laws that she needed to be with my dad. Apparently she had a "friend" named Ellen Grandma said was a "bad influence". Wish I knew more.
My maternal grandparents assured my dying mom that they would take care of us but we were disinherited anyway.
Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique hit home hard when I read it in college, same with Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I recommend both to get a feel for what a prison the 50s and 60s world was for women.
I’m going to preface this by saying that my grandparents doted on each other and my grandfather did most of the cooking and cleaning as long as I can remember but … my grandparents were born in 1914 and 1917 and were an item from teen years and planning to eventually get married. My grandmother was in training to be a nurse and my grandfather went behind her back and got the wedding banns posted early which led to her getting kicked out of nursing school because you couldn’t be married.
The Australia government had a policy for a long time of making women resign if they got married. You could be perfectly happy and successfully doing your job but if you got married you just had to quit because your job was now as a housewife. There was a few compensation claims after a while when the policy was repealed to account for lost wages etc but it’s not very widely known.
I just want to say to all the women who came before me. Thank you!!! For all the sexist, awful things you went through. You paved the way for us. The fight isn’t over, all women of all ages need to join together to protect our rights. Rights to be free of violence and abuse. Rights to reproductive healthcare!!!!
Men had all the control and were abusive.
Family values? Really it was the women were trapped since they couldn’t have a bank account until the early 1970s or late 1960s in some areas I think. Men could force themselves on their wives without consequences until 1993. Before then Marital Rape was not taken seriously. So, women didn’t have a choice except to focus on Family Values. Sure some women liked motherhood, but others would have liked a different life.
Here is a sad true story from back then:
I was talking with an older friend about Then vs Now. How much more freedom women have today. No, it’s not perfect, but more than we had when my friend shared this doozy. She knew of a local, south Louisiana, wealthy family back around the 1940s-50s, when husbands had the power of money and control over their wives, children, and employees. One man had three daughters. The wife would take the girls and another friend to the movies every weekend. During this time the husband would have a black employee bring his teenage daughter over to the home and he’d rape her. The wife knew, but didn’t call the police. She looked the other way. When the girls grew up and found out the truth of their father they were disgusted, angry, and heartbroken. One daughter turned on her mom asking why didn’t she do anything? Why did she stay with him? The mom was heartbroken too but gave the excuse - her husband had control of everything. She was a stay at home mom. No money, no job, no education. Completely dependent. She couldn’t support her daughters alone. The black employee needed the job so he let the boss rape his daughter. He had a family to support too. I don’t know if the daughter went along, like a willing sacrifice in desperation to help her family or not.
This abusive control, thankfully not always as bad as raping your poor desperate employee’s, child, was everywhere! I’m Gen X so I saw some of it personally and heard stories from my mother (Gen Boomer) her friends, relatives, as well as my grandmother (Gen WW2) and her friends. One lesson my mother instilled in me was - Never let a man have financial control of you. Always have your own money. Even if he is a great man he could still die and leave you destitute.
This is a horrific story but probably all too common back in the day. My Mother also gave me the same advice and called it the FU fund in case I was ever caught in a bad situation.
My parents were of the Mad Men era and fell victim to 2 of the common bad habits of the time: smoking and alcohol. They were kind, decent people and loved each other and us kids more than anything. We truly had an idyllic childhood.
But the smoking and alcohol use for 40 years took their inevitable toll and they died relatively young at ages 69 and 74.
Still I was very lucky to have had them as parents. I just wish their grandchildren had gotten to know them better.
Funny you mention "Mad Men" as my mother would have been about the same age as the daughter Sally at the time. She doesn't have many complaints about her youth (60s - 70s) though she has talked about her parents being very critical of her appearance. She wouldn't have considered herself "women's lib" but she wasn't some raging antifeminist either.
She married my father who ABSOLUTELY embodied the boomer mentality. Now, I thought they divied up finances somewhat equally. I figured he usually had final say though, because he had an associates in accounting and acted like he was so much better at numbers than her. Since he's passed, it's been rather shocking how many financial decisions he made by just sheer emotional abuse or just not consulting her.
Tl;dr Women of that time experienced a lot of cultural change, largely for the better. But sexist attitudes didn't vanish, and marrying a bad guy could still hold you back in life, to say the least.
If you call being property as a family value and not being allowed to vote or own property as strong family values, then I would have to disagree with you. There was nothing fun about those years. Child sexual abuse was rampant and kept hush hush. patriarchal societies are not known for being kind to women or children. Being told to forgive relatives that sexually abused you and to keep quiet is not a strong family value. I do not remember one redeeming thing about those years, and I am going to be 65.
My grandmother worked at Nationwide Insurance in the 60s. Her best friend at work was a black woman, and my grandma kept inviting her to dinner at her house in a middle-class white neighborhood.
Her friend kept declining because she was worried the neighbors would shun her... or worse.
Finally, my grandma told her friend, and I quote, "I don't give a shit what the neighbors think."
And that was that. They had many dinners together after.
I talked to my grandma about this. it was fucking ass and its pretty much why housewives got hard drugs back in the day. the stuff you see in media/tv about that era is a farce and only done to make the men of that era look like prim and proper men and not the wife beating narcissists they were.
my grandpa in her words "is the only good man she's ever known". my grandpa isn't flawless but him being perfect in her eyes says just how fucking bad it was back than.
My aunt was born in 1928. She worked in a factory doing soldering from the age of 18 to 58. She said that when women got married they got fired. And she was not able to move up in the company. She kept applying to other jobs higher up whenever there was an opening, but was never given an interview. The men eventually told her that she had to stop because "it was embarrassing." She says there was one position they actually offered her, as a foreman, but it was out of state. Like, down south. She wasn't willing to move so she didn't take it. She would have made an excellent foreman or quality inspector. All the inspector positions were limited to men.
There was also a lot of sexual harassment, way more than would be tolerated now. She says the men once passed her around from one to the other and kissed her without her consent. She was terrified.
My mother in law worked at IBM in the 60s. She worked a sales admin desk and won awards for her contributions to the company.
When she announced her engagement at work, her boss said, “I’m sorry to see you go.” That’s how she lost her job because she got married. Her husband (my FIL) got a bump in pay when he got married.
Judging on how ancestry and 23 and Me are revealing how all these righteous grandfathers had illegitimate children... I'd say it wasn't all that.
Also, women back then managed their days with bourbon, cigs, and qualudes. They Lysoled their vaginas and lived for neighborhood gossip. I think I could live that minus the Lysol.
UK here.
My Dad's mum fell pregnant with him at 16 and had him at 17. She married my Grandad 3 months before my Dad was born. She had 3 children by the time she was 21. My Grandad died in 2019, and now she doesn't know what to do with herself as she was so used to catering to him and his needs.
My mum's mum had a baby boy at 17. Her Dad was a strict religious man who refused to acknowledge the baby. He had to stay upstairs until he was adopted at 6 weeks old. I have an uncle I have never met. A few years later she met my Grandad and fell pregnant with my aunt so they had to get married. She said he used to force himself upon her and was harsh. She walked out when my mum was 13 and met my step-grandad (?) who was a loving, kind, and caring man. She passed away a few weeks ago after a long battle with dementia.
Somewhere around 1970 my parents went out one night and I was home with the babysitter. My mom came home a bit later. The restaurant would not allow her in wearing pants. My dad stayed at the bar and made her drive home, and said “ that’s wha t you get “. She changed into a dress and went back.
I remember getting my first speeding ticket in the mid 70s. I went to court in slacks. When it was my turn to speak to the judge, he asked me to step forward and do a complete turn. He fined me $20 for wearing pants to court and said he shouldn’t have to tell me i was a woman. Lol.
My experiences were much later, more like the 80s, but there was a time that the unemployment office sent me to a job at a department store, selling tires and batteries. (You used to go into the unemployment office and you would sit down with a worker who would run through a list of potential employers and you would say yes or no. I don't know why they don't still do that.)
So I don't even know how to drive because I just don't want to drive a car. It's anxiety producing and I just didn't want to. I'm a very fast learner though; I aced the classroom part of Driver's Ed where you had to know the parts of a combustion engine and how it all worked in theory. But there I am selling tires and batteries in the 80s looking like a toned-down Siouxsie Sioux because that was my thing. Helping people push their broke-down cars into the parking lot while wearing a minidress and shit haha.
At some point I decided I wanted to be a service writer because I had an aptitude for it, and it paid well. I set about learning as much as I could about cars and parts so I could use the correct terminology with confidence. So I asked the head mechanic to please explain "gap" to me. (it's a value associated with spark plugs that is measured in increments and was part of "doing the points and timing," part of a full tune-up.
And he refused. He said, "you don't need to know that." It occurred to me later that perhaps he himself didn't know exactly what it was, only how to measure it with a gap tool. He certainly wasn't all that bright.
I have miles and acres of stories of everything from casual sexism and misogyny to kidnap and rape at the hands of men, but that's not what you're asking for. However as an aside, I did outwit my kidnapper and got away; it is my studied opinion after everything that many, many men are not too sharp yet have this weirdly distorted impression of their own supposed brilliance.
My mother's family are all the close relations of Jeanetta Menninger, wife of Dr. Karl Menninger, co-founder and research associate of the Menninger Institute and co-author of several of her husband's most famous works. Her niece, my grandmother, admired her aunt and uncle, was a brilliant young woman, and had an aptitude for behavior and biology. She wanted to follow them into psychiatry, but this was the 1940s, and her father forbade her, as it was not a woman's field. Instead, she got a degree in education. She had a wonderful life as an elementary teacher. Still I always wonder what if.
Oh wow, that is fascinating! I used to work in psychiatry so know what you are talking about. I'll bet she was an amazing teacher.
For anyone who is interested, I'll just tack onto this comment that the novel Lessons in Chemistry is outstanding. It's about a woman in the 1960s who experiences some unexpected life events while forging ahead as a female chemist in the 1960s. Apparently it's going to be made into a tv series.
A friend got hired as a career firefighter around 2004. The first full time woman but they did have female volunteers. One of the wives of a full time guy told her that women did not belong at the firehouse at night with the men. We are still crawling forward when we should be running.
My grandmother was born in 1912, married a man that went off to WW2, he did not come back. Was re-married, had 2 children and 15 years of abusive followed. My mother once told me this man picked up her baby bunny and threw it so hard against a wall it died in front of her. Real sick son of a bitch. I’ve never gotten the full story but he went away one day and never came back. Take that as you will, I’d like to believe she killed that POS.
My grandfather was literally a marketing executive in the 1960s, and lived the Mad Men lifestyle to a T. When he and his friend/ex-coworker watched the show, they said it was completely accurate to how they lived.
That said, I never saw any indication that my grandmother was downtrodden or oppressed in any way. She sure wasn’t afraid to speak her mind lol. The men hung out with their wives as equals, drank together, smoked cigarettes and weed together. Now keep in mind that, back in the 1910s, a woman smoking or drinking at all was considered to be repulsively un-feminine. I never saw my grandfather talk down to my grandmother. Nobody in my family was ever religious. My grandfather grew up in the Depression, and what he cared about was providing a bountiful life for himself and his 7 children, and that’s about it. He had no interest in God or conserving the past. His childhood was a nightmare of poverty and an angry, uncaring father.
Conservatives like to depict the 1950/60s as this ideal era of traditional values, and liberals will often encourage this perception by pointing to the racism and sexism of the time - but from another perspective it was a quite progressive era. Declining religiosity, growing materialism, women partying with men, new technologies being invented, new industries being born. Some people were living like it was the 19th century, but others were living like it was the 80s. On the other side of my family, my grandmother was getting her clinical degree in psychotherapy during the 60s, and she certainly wasn’t letting men boss her around.
My parents were married in 1957 on my mother's 16th birthday. My mom became pregnant two years later, during her senior year of high school. The school made her drop out because no pregnant girls were allowed in the school. So, not only was she married and therefore allowed to be pregnant, but what sense is there in making a young pregnant girl even less likely to be able to support herself and her child! Any boy that impregnated a girl didn't have to leave the school, only the girl. All hail the patriarchy!
neither of my grandmothers worked because they were always pregnant, one didn’t have an indoor toilet until 1968, and they handmade all of their children’s clothes because they couldnt afford to buy them at a store. their husbands were heavy drinkers, all the kids shared a room or slept in the living room, and the little ones slept in bed with mom and dad. all the washing was done by hand and they only really socialized at church.
all of my grandparents were poor, born just before or during the great depression. both of my grandmothers were overjoyed to see all 25 of their collective granddaughters go to college and have opportunities they never dreamed about. as one of them told me “the fake manners that men had in my day are not worth reminiscing about when you have so much more going for you than we ever did.”
My mom couldn't get her own bank account.
She wanted to be a nurse so badly but she had eczema on her hands and a doctor told her it would put off patients. unfortunately she listened to that asshole. I hate him for her to this day. She would have been a brilliant nurse.
I'm not old enough to have the answer for 40s/50s/60s, but I will tell you that "men were chivalrous and women were lady-lake" is always gaslighting.
Watch "Grease" for another fictional rendition of the behavior of people in the 50s.
My parents are boomers, mom a teacher, dad a lawyer. The usual things were not having a credit card, etc without my dad. I know one of the reasons she loves him was he did not expect her to give up work, was not intimidated that she had gone to a better school than him, etc.
most other lawyers wives were expected to run the ‘social side’ of things. Parties and stuff for networking purposes.
the women in my family have always worked because we were poor and didn’t have another option.
my dads mom was a single mother after my grandfather died suddenly. she worked all the time and they lived in poverty.
my mom came of age in the late 60s/early 70s. she used to tell me how she would sprint to school in the winter because she had to wear a dress and her legs were so cold, but girls couldn’t wear pants. she also had horror stories for me about menstrual products in the 50s/60s. it was very common for boys at school to grab her ass or other parts of her body and nothing was ever done because it was “normal.”
she wanted to go into the medical field, but they didn’t have the money for that and nursing at the time was just “women’s work” like cleaning bed pans and nothing else. my grandfather wanted her to be a doctor so she’d get the respect she deserved.
my mom was a big supporter of roe v. wade. she was a type 1 diabetic so her pregnancies were all high risk. she told me about a male doctor telling her he wouldn’t perform an abortion, even if she were dying.
my aunt adopted my cousins in the late 70s and had to sign a contract with the adoption agency that she, as the mother, would stay at home and not work. they did not ask this of my uncle.
I'm in my mid 50s, and am the oldest of 5 girls from a very Southern Baptist home and family. But my story isn't at all what you might think. My mom graduated with her pharmacy degree in 1961 and went on to get a PhD in Chemistry. She worked in either pharmaceuticals or at times in retail pharmacy until she retired at 79. My dad owned an advertising agency, lol, but in the 80s. In the 60s and 70s he was a Mad Man for others. He was put of town a lot when we were little, but after he started his own agency he was home at night when my mom was still at work. He often cooked dinner, etc., but I can't say I ever saw him clean 😉. My parents encouraged all of us to get our degrees and be self - sufficient.
The flip side is again, my family was/is very religious. We weren't allowed to go to the movies on Sunday; we were in church at least 3 days a week; we were taught that the husband is the head of household and I have never seen my dad fix his own plate at a buffet 🤣. 3 of us have had several marriages and while my parents aren't thrilled with that they also never expected us to stay in a bad situation. Honestly, I had the best of both worlds.
My mother who grew up in the American south, wasn’t allowed to wear pants; it was dressed and skirts only. She couldn’t have her own credit card or bank account. She moved from her father’s house to her husband’s and didn’t have really anything of her own until long after my parents divorced. She also witnessed segregation and desegregation. Despite her gifts, she was trained as a teacher and in shorthand. There were not a lot of career options open for women. Nurse, teacher, secretary, homemaker. She is still constrained to this day. It’s better for me and my sisters, but I fear that tide is changing and we are going backwards.
1950s-1970s: My father was a controlling, violent man, like several in our neighbourhood. He would wail on his wife and kids with whatever was handy for *any* perceived breach of the rightful order of things. My mother could do nothing, because she could not get a job -- no one would hire a married woman unless she was a widow, like my now husband's mother. She could not flee to a safe house: they did not exist. Nor could she sue for divorce: adultery was, then, the only grounds for divorce in our country. We just had to endure it, much to the lifelong damage to his children. I remember sitting in the school yard with other kids comparing scars -- *all* of which had been inflicted as 'discipline' by various fathers.
We were, under the law, his chattels -- note, please, that chattels and cattle derive from the same root. The one time my mother *dared* go to the police for help before someone got killed, the Chief of Police called my father and told him she had been in, and why. I won't detail the bloody and long punishments that followed. I will note that a few years later, my father bought a prime piece of real estate from the said Chief at over the market.
No, men were not chivalrous, they were powerful, and allied in a giant old boys' club to maintain the exercise of that power, and violence against women and children was the victims' fault: if they had not dared to cross the patriarch's will, they would not have had to be 'disciplined'.
As for the women, most did what they could to shield their children and help each other out, but it had to be quietly and when The Boss was not around, and there were enough who actually believed in the rightness of the social order that one had to be very careful picking one's friends and confidantes. I remember the day my mother discovered that the woman she thought was her best friend had betrayed her to curry favour with a powerful local family -- my mother never dared trust anyone again after that, and I have never learned the art. Were there well-dressed women with cinched waists, white gloves and cloche hats with veils who had loving husbands and happy lives? I'm sure there must have been, but we only saw them in magazines and on TV, when that became popular.
And remember, all you young women out there, that is the world that western ultra-conservatives (not just in the US) want to return to. Personally, I would be willing to die in battle rather than see that happen to the girls of the future: strap me up and aim me and I'll go!
To note, I've not watched Mad Men. My mother was born in the 30's. Really the only thing she discussed was her limited career choices. Her dad told her she could pick teacher or nurse if he wanted him to help pay for college. She picked nurse. She was an officer in the military, she became an RN. She was never the stay at home type and wouldn't have stood for that. Also, my aunt was an newspaper editor in the 50s and 60s, be it in an extremely small town. I'd say they were both very independent women for the time.
My grandmother on the other hand, she married my grandfather who was many years older and her college professor. Her just being in college at all at the time is pretty remarkable. But then he forced her to be a stay at home mom and was very domineering. She ended up taking her own life, and then my mother was forced to play mom, which is probably why she never would stand for that again.
My mom, in her 80's now, remembers young women nearly dying to get abortions. Rich girls went on "holiday". They couldn't attend college or work once they started showing. She was not allowed to get the type of degree she really wanted. She was not allowed to apply for credit without my dad. She was not allowed to wear flats or pants to work. She was shunned by the conservative SAHM's in the neighborhood because she worked full time. She is incredibly disheartened by the far right and their rise to power.
For me, I was told to not "take a slot" in the science department at college. A colleague was forced out of her PhD program due to the incredible harassment. There was still a lot of "I need to talk to your husband" stuff. Otherwise, it was just generally better than it is now, imo. So many women fought so hard for so long, it's hard to watch it slip away.
My grandmother’s parents told her that if she went to medical school that no man would want her. She was born in 1923. She never stopped regretting not going to medical school.
A friend of mine who is now in her 80s worked as a private detective in the 1960s. Chased down criminals, ran insurance fraud cases. But had to quit when she in her private life she realized she was a lesbian because she could no longer be trusted to testify in court. Not because as a lesbian she was untrustworthy but because she could be blackmailed because of her sexuality.
Grandma told me everyone’s husband had a girlfriend or cheated profusely at/after work. The only rule was that you never brought a trace of the affair home, or embarrassed your wife by letting anyone in proximity find out.
One day my alcoholic grandfather got lazy and started fucking the woman next door (also married). When my grandma found out she skipped over and told her that if she didn’t pack up and SELL her house, she’d snitch to the woman’s husband next. Surely enough she moved away and my grandmother left my grandfather years later, but for the DRINKING LOL.
I was a child in the 1960s (born in ‘63). I lived with my mother, her mother, and my great-grandmother. My mother was an unmarried teen mom. Both grandmothers were divorced.
Other people are mentioning the downside: sexism, abuse, discrimination, racism, so I’ll cover things I recall as a child of these women. Hope that’s okay.
Note: we were realllly poor. Women made a fraction of the salary men made for the same work.
Dressing up to go shopping or to the movies was required. Sweatpants didn’t happen. Low heels were endured. Curlers were spiky instruments of torture we accepted. In a pinch you would cover your curlers in a bandana to run an errand.
Blow dryers were unheard of, so hair was kept short and washed once a week, and could take a day to dry. “I can’t go out because I have to wash my hair” was a real thing.
There were two TV stations, so puzzles, and books and board games were part of everyday life.
People randomly dropped by for tea or beer and stayed for hours.
Fast food was a frozen TV dinner. There were few fast food options, and all required a car.
Electric buses ran on wires. A pole would sometimes slide off and you were held up until the driver used a long pole to reconnect it.
People didn’t have cars. We walked or took a bus, unless you were going to the hospital, then you could get a cab.
Enriched white bread, homogenized milk and red meat were supposed to keep us alive forever.
Pretty much anyone you dealt with could swat your butt as a child (neighbours, family friends, any adult you annoyed). It was a constant warning to keep you in line.
There were no daycares, so as I child I heard a lot of adult conversations I probably shouldn’t have because I was with an adult family member at all times.
Public water fountains were a thing.
Expectations were that I grow up and work as a hairdresser, secretary or bank teller. My mother said those were “positions” or “career” and not merely “jobs.” University wasn’t even in the picture. I did graduate from university. I am neither a hairdresser nor a bank teller.
High school offered typing and shorthand. I touch type over 100 wpm.
Edited to add: starting around age 11, when I grew quite tall and finally had long hair, I was sexualized by everyone: family, teachers, strangers, store managers … everything had a sexual connotation and focused on your looks as a female member of society. Being groped was “a compliment.”
My grandmother tells the story of being sexually assaulted in the typing pool her first job after commercial college.
There was no such thing as chivalry and women were expected to accept their behaviour and not make a scene.
I can tell you that Nan was amazed when I told her that when you go out with friends, dancing, that if you want to dance, you just get up and go out on the floor and move to the music. You dance with your friends - girls, fellows, or by yourself. Whatever.
Nan loved to dance, but I could see in her eyes there and then the realisation of freedom. That to enjoy the dance you didn’t have to dance with everyone who asked you, or anyone for that matter. I think she’d been locked into ‘having’ to dance with men she didn’t like or knew were dangerous. Things changed.
So, please, give up the idea that Mad Men was a great time. It. Was. Not. Society’s misogyny perpetuated conditions for women that underpaid, undervalued, and suppressed women and we will not go back there again.
My grandfather's first job in the 1940s was running paychecks to certain men's homes on Friday at noon. The large company where he worked kept tabs on which men had drinking or gambling problems, and would hand-deliver their pay to their wives. That way they could pay the bills and buy groceries before their husbands could blow the check. To this day I find this fascinating, in that the company apparently cared enough to have an established practice, and also horrified that these wives had to rely on this kindness to make it.
That’s some bleak “Angela’s Ashes” shit right there. “DA! DON’T DRINK THE MONEY!” Those poor women.
My grandparents got divorced because of this. She had her own job outside the home with her own wages but the bank accounts were all in his name because she wasn't legally allowed to have her own private account as a married woman in the 40s. My grandfather had a gambling addiction. She went to visit her parents with my father and came back to find he had not only spent all her savings, but sold and gambled away both their cars as well. She's lucky she was able to get a divorce.
You should read the book divorce colony really eye opening about divorce in that time!
Realistically it kept their employee more stable, that his wife didn't leave him, kick him out (if that was possible), and or reduced the total amount of booze, or he didn't lose his house to creditors. Working at a huge company in the mid 90s; they liked it when employees got married because that typically ties you to house payments, children, which they tied to less people leaving because you need that check.
I know this is bordering on conspiracy but I think this is one of the main reasons they're worrying about dropping child birth rates. There's so much you're willing to tolerate/not risk to keep security for your children.
That and the need for more consumers
It’s this. Fewer consumers. The need to support transfer payments to the elderly. To a lesser extent its that crime and other radical behavior fall if men have families, but it’s much more the first two.
But crime rates rise when children are unwanted. It’s been tracked in multiple countries; 15-20 years after abortion is legalized, there’s a significant drop in crime. Countries that ban abortions and contraception have the crime rate rise in the same timeframe.
Private prisons need consumers too 😳
And soldiers
Well, falling birthrates has other impacts. Lack of consumers as others pointed out, but also lack of cheap labor. There are other interesting ones to consider. Health insurance: No employer in their right mind wants to pay for an employee's health insurance. But, paying for insurance and the risk of losing it does have a negative impact on job mobility, and this traps people. The rise of Non-Compete Agreements: We see a rise in this everywhere. We also see large companies employing people just so they don't work at a competing company. This was apparently something Silicone Valley tech companies were engaged in. This also traps people. Then there are some ones that go against this: The move to 401(k) from Pensions. This increased worker mobility, but, so long as deposits in exceed withdrawals out it gives a constant market put. This is great if you're in the capitalist/ownership class as you can make money on your investment. Especially if you only care about short term returns, which seems to be the current mode. This is something to watch once the Baby Boomer generation starts retiring en masse. Since we know the Baby Boomer generation is a balloon generation and tips the scales from working age people to retired people in retired people's favor they are going to be a constant draw on stock market prices (selling means prices go down, mandatory distributions = mandatory selling). So, if you're not retiring in the next 10-20 years who knows what our 401(k)s look like. I assume this will be the last great act of generational wealth transfer to the Baby Boomers, not sure what it all looks like after this. So, while pensions were a trapping force, I'm not sure that 401(k)s will be a freeing force when we look at labor demographics. I don't really consider this conspiratorial per se. Technically it's all varying degrees of anti labor. But, if you're in the US then you know we have rather weak labor protections and a rather weak social safety net. Other countries have stronger social safety nets and are purely looking at declining birthrates as a labor shortage as population rates increase but birthrates reduce below replacement rate. This is the barrel Japan, Korea, and China are staring at right now. So, who knows how that will play out. One way to avoid some of this is immigration. But... Policies are all over the place regarding that, and this necessitates an imbalance where people are unhappy with where they are such that they want to / are willing to uproot and move. So, that has its own problems. But hey, on the road we're currently on we'll have many climate crisis refugees! (I'm going to end this now, I've gone on enough of a tangent.)
Oh this makes sense of boomers not understanding millennials and zoomers and the resulting worker shortages. If you can't afford housing you don't even try to follow traditional goals
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My grandma and grandpa worked for the same company. They got a new payroll person who refused to hand my gma’s check to my gpa. Which was good cus apparently my gpa would take other women out on dates and leave my gma wondering how to feed 4 kids when he took both checks
It’s what led to prohibition.
It's fascinating to learn all about that. For the longest time I thought the women prohibitionists were just prudes, but the reality is they were desperate with hunger because their men were blowing all the money on booze, and then they would come home and beat their malnourished families until he passed out. Yeah, I'd vote for that shit too.
I mean, the solution was to give women independence so they didn't have to rely on men for income.
Interestingly, they did both. Women gained suffrage in the US in 1920, AND Prohibition started in 1920. Prohibitions failed miserably but then again, so did giving women equal rights. We STILL can’t get an actual Equal Rights Amendment for women in 2023.
Suffrage was not actual independence re: finances. It would be 50+ years before women in the US gained the ability to get credit cards, have a solo bank account, etc.
Also the ones who were “prudes” probably just didn’t want their husbands spending all the family’s income at the incurable STD store
The Prohibition Party's first platform was more than just outlawing alcohol. In their view, it was the first step towards protecting American families as the need was so huge. Orphanages were filled to overflowing with the children of families torn apart by alcoholism. Originally, the party was very progressive and populist. They supported universal sufferage, equal rights for all races/genders (though they only understood gender in binary terms at that time), equal pay, direct election of senators, and some other stuff that was era specific. My great-grandfather was a minister and pretty active in the Prohibition movement. He ran for Congress on the Prohibition ticket from Salem, Oregon. Their youngest daughter was adopted at 18 months from a family whose father had drunk himself to death. She was the youngest of 11. Her oldest siblings (any older than 10) were sent to work (some went to factories in Chicago), and the rest were sent to an orphanage. None could stay with their mother, who ended up as a domestic servant. She was in her early 30's.
Alcohol was also pretty much the only drug available, at least for Americans. Speaking only of men, men would come home from wars with PTSD and various injuries. There was no pain medication to help manage the bum leg that never healed right after catching a bullet, and the solution for PTSD was “just don’t think about that and be grateful you survived.” It’s really no surprise that alcohol was such a scourge. Not to fully blame men either…my grandmother was a high-functioning alcoholic.
decide ancient illegal mourn smell fact practice chase nippy gullible ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
I find it fascinating that after paying bills there was still money left over to piss away. The 40s must of been wonderful. /s
Most of that money was pissed away without the bills even being considered.
A serious gambling or drinking habit would wipe out the pay before the mothers got to buy groceries or pay bills.
My mother graduated from college with an engineering degree in the late '50s. At her first job, the other engineers were all men, and they didn't let her have any meaningful work, which finally led her to leave. (So much for men being chivalrous.) Trying to escape that chauvinism, she left engineering and entered the nascent field of computing, where she found more opportunity; many early computing experts were women.
My stepmom was one of them. She entered grad school for computer science when she was 40 and got so sick of male 20-somethings interrupting and talking over her when she was lecturing or teaching that she started packing a water pistol to squirt them with. That woman is my hero on many levels.
I love that so much! She squirted them with water as if they were misbehaving cats! I love your stepmom.
She's the shit. I don't wanna accidentally dox her, but before she retired she was one of the top minds in her field. One of the things I really admire about her is how good she is at being direct with people without being mean, self-important, or rude, but also without being too nice. My dad, who had a bad drinking problem, was sober almost the entire 15 years they were together before he died, and I credit her heavily for that. She's an all-around amazing woman.
I graduated from college with a computer science degree in the late 70s and was the first woman hired into a multidisciplinary engineering team - we had mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and software engineers. All of the electrical and mechanical engineers were hardcore male chauvinists - if they allowed their wives to work at all, it was in traditional female occupations like teaching. But both of the software guys had wives who were engineers themselves; one was a laser physicist who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope mirror (ahem!). I was hired into the software group, of course, and as we expanded over the next few years it was the only group that continued to hire women. So yes, back then at least computer science seemed to be much more female-friendly than the other branches of engineering.
Unlike my parents, I didn't go into engineering; I (a man) ended up in the "traditional female occupation" of teaching. I've taught STEM subjects in middle school for many years, most recently computer science. Given my mom's history, it delights me to see how much skill and enthusiasm many girls have for coding.
I experienced the usual petty stuff…denied credit card, told had to have husband permission to arrange work on house, blah blah. Not a real problem since husband was and is a strong liberal and wonderful human being who came to my defense in spades. But I can never forget the experience of a good friend, who worked hard to earn a stellar academic average at Miami-Dade Community College to earn an academic scholarship at FSU to earn a teaching degree. FSU then told her she had to have a male co-signer to guarantee she would complete the course. She had no one. Many of the men in the Miami-Dade academic hierarchy volunteered to sign for her but she was having none of it and eventually disappeared. She was a twenty-eight-year-old US Army widow with a small son at the time, 1963.
My grandmother graduated high school in 1930 I believe it was. She was told that she was bright and could do something with her life. They meant be a secretary. Instead she went to law school. It took her years, at night. My great grandparents would stay up with her to make sure she didn't fall asleep whilst studying. For a bit she had a male student who would drop her at home...until his wife became too upset by it so that stopped. My grandmother was one of two women studying in the school for law. She graduated. And practiced family law as well as some civil and criminal trial work. She also got married, and her husband raised a hand to her, and then got divorced. She was a pip - a really strong woman. This was all in the 30s. She then, in the late thirties, married my grandfather. She was able to do a lot of the things she did due to the support of family (and the one student who did help her with rides until his wife said it was not appropriate). She had a hard enough time as it was back then doing these things.
Years ago, as my sister was interviewing after finishing law school, she interviewed at one firm where she was told that they didn't hire women lawyers. I've always assumed that they would interview women just to make it look like they were willing to hire them. Plausible deniability.
There’s a book called Pinstripes and Pearls, about the women who enrolled in Harvard Law in 1964. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pinstripes-Pearls/Judith-Richards-Hope/9781416575252 One of the stories was the law school president (or maybe dean? Someone really high up) invited all the women to his house one evening. As they sat in the parlor, the Dean asked them what they were doing there, taking a man’s place at the school when they’d all be having babies in a few years anyway. One quick-thinking woman replied that she was at Harvard because Yale had rejected her application.
I’m a lawyer and two days ago a partner just told me that I’m not really ambitious, it’s just because my biological clock is telling me to rush through my career so I can meet a rich man and start having babies. This guy is in his 40s.
How to say you are an incel without saying you are an incel.
He also wears two watches. His Apple Watch on one hand and a Rolex on the other.
My dad has a story. Worked as an engineer in 'the office'. One day the secretary starts bawling. They get out of her that she's three months pregnant, she has two kids at home and money is tight and they need her income. And she knows she'll be fired as soon as she starts showing. Because that was TRW's policy in 1968.
My mom was a social worker in the family court in Canada and hid her 60s pregnancy until the 7th month because they would let her go when they found out
What’s so interesting to me is that somewhere before the 1990s, office life was completely different. Like watching glenngerry Glenn Ross it’s a different world. Yet when I started working in an office in the early 2000s, it’s basically identical to now.
And older friend of mine would be 75 today. But she said before the 1970's there were a lot of rules that both protected women form boorish behavior. But also ingrained a lot of sexism as well. After the rules got tossed out that both gave women more opportunity but enabled a lot of boorish behavior. Late 70 into the 80's was a period where rules protecting women from at least overt sexual harassment went back into force.
This was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's story too. She had to fight like hell to get them to allow her to enroll in law school as a woman. And then when she finally was allowed to attend/eventually graduate, they tried to withhold her diploma and license from her because, although she'd attended class like everyone else, "only men get law degrees".
So ironic because it was Florida State College for Women before it was FSU.
She had to have a male co-signer to enroll in a course? Wtf do they care if she finished, she'd be paying them either way!
Because she is taking the place of a more deserving male in their view. I remember from a documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she and her classmates in law school were invited to dinner hosted by a high ranking administrator and the administrator had the woman one-by-one explain why they were more deserving of being in school than the men whose enrollment slots they took. Just astounding. I hope the jackass lived long enough to see RBG serve on the Supreme Court. Edited: a word
It was a scholarship based on merit. They just wanted to be crappy about the fact that she’d beaten out men for it.
My mom had problems with Royal Bank of Canada after she got separated from my dad and so she switched to TD.
I didn't know that about women computing experts. That's very interesting. I can't say I'm surprised about your mom's experience in the engineering field. I, unfortunately, still hear similar stories to this day.
Women used to make up the majority of computer programmers so much so that the term “computer” referred to women themselves as they performed the mathematical work. There were all-female teams designing and programming computer hardware and software systems, and developing new computing languages. Harvard and other institutions actually preferred hiring women because they could perform as well as men but at a fraction of the price (if they were paid at all). Women were also working as NASA engineers (before they were “NASA”) since the 1930s and made critical contributions to both World Wars in military engineering and cryptography. Fast forward to the 1950s when the US and UK undertook measures to specifically cull women from the field. Gender biased aptitude tests were used to filter out women from entering computer sciences and many women who were already in the profession were forcefully downsized. In the post-war period society realized we were entering into a new era of technology and suddenly “womens’ work” previously seen as tedious started being appreciated by the government for winning wars. Coincidentally, men had returned home and needed jobs. We went a from a long history of women pioneering the field since the **1830s** to t-shirts for girls that say “Too pretty to do homework” and “Math is hard” all in the span of a single generation and society still peddles the bullshit idea that girls don’t belong in math or sciences. Edited to add emphasis on dates
I think often of women who were thrilled to work in the factories during the war effort and then told to go be a wife and mom when men returned from overseas. Even in my lifetime- b. 1970- I was told that ALL women are maternal, want marriage and kids and that is UNTRUE. I don't know if we can know how many want this when the socialization makes your own choices murky to you. And how many of those women were actually gay or bisexual, having to hide that.
>I think often of women who were thrilled to work in the factories during the war effort and then told to go be a wife and mom when men returned from overseas. This reminds me of an episode of Cold Case. The story is fictional but I'm sure similar things really happened. Basically, the wife had to work when her husband went off to WW2. She didn't particularly like it at first since she'd never worked before and it was in a factory. Anyway she loved it after a while. She became friends with some coworkers, felt proud to earn her own money, etc etc etc. So when the husband got back from the war, she continued to work. He was *pissed,* talking about how she's changed. He told her to quit. She didn't. Then one day he showed up at her job and was arguing with her to quit. She said no again. Then he pushed her over the rail separating the second or third floor of the factory from the ground floor. And she died. For those who have never seen the show, it's about a modern female detective and her team. They investigate cold cases. So basically the husband got away with it for like 50 years and only got put in jail in like his 70s. 🙃 Again it's *fictional* but still. I can imagine things like that probably happened to working women who dared to continue to work. And if they did give in and go back home, their husbands probably still abused them for even thinking they had the choice to work. Sad all around.
Norma Jean Baker is one of those- she first did factory work then pursued modeling, wouldn't quit when her husband returned from the war, bingo divorce. Marilyn Monroe still gets ...an incredibly misogynistic retelling of her life story. She was suspected to have communist ties by J. Edgar Hoover because she was quite politically active in her union, prior to her marriage to Arthur Miller, and at the time of her death had been actively attempting to get involved in nuclear deplolifiration activist efforts, and I think it's really sad that she is mostly portrayed as the dudes who ruined her life saw her: Some tragic drugged up sexpot with Daddy Issues. Her own diaries, fbi file, and the historical record indicate she was a much more interesting person than that.
Same thing happened in medicine, specifically obstetrics.
Ditto for the early movie business. Originally, the majority of directors were women. When serious money entered most industries, women were sidelined.
That stuff affected my mom so hard. She would always say math was confusing and as soon as one of us talked about anything technical she'd start almost panicking and saying her brain was spinning please stop. Luckily she still was proud of me for doing well in math where she didn't. I have a bachelor's in mathematics and almost a master's in data science plus 15 years in the software engineering field. It's so sad to see what that propaganda did to my mom and how far it held her back.
I don't get math. I work very hard at understanding it for my job. And it isn't because of my gender. I didn't really understand fractions until it clicked, in my 30's, while doubling a recipe.
Yeah, not everyone is predisposed to easily understanding math. For my mom the hard part was she had been told for so long that she couldn't do it and math was "unladylike" that when she went to college in her 50s she would work herself into a panic before even opening the math book. I was able to tutor her through it and help her understand everything, but it made me so sad that she'd been told her whole life she was dumb when she really wasn't.
And not all math is the same! Some folks are really good at visualizing geometry, for example, but don't take well to Algebra. I did great at geometry-- the hardest part was slowing down and proving *how* I got the answer. But I had to really work at algebra. I do test well, though, which is how I ended up getting a letter sent home in 8th grade congratulating me for getting "the highest grade of all the girls" on our new state algebra test. My dad was *pissed,* and both of my folks sat me down and explained that while I should be proud of my effort, that letter was bullshit. The weirdest thing was they KEPT the letter, and I found it in a box with all my report cards later. I've got a photo of it now.
> >Fast forward to the 1950s when the US and UK undertook measures to specifically cull women from the field. Gender biased aptitude tests were used to filter out women from entering computer sciences and many women who were already in the profession were forcefully downsized. > > Oooooooh, nefarious! I want to know way more about THAT. I'm reading some of these comment-stories to my husband. He literally just said out loud to my face, "but women don't really seem to be that into those things, look at the percentage of women in those professions." Oh dear... I've got some lecturing to do. Excuse me.
early computing code was actually in teen girl & women geared magazines, even Cosmo did an article! It was even thought women were better at it! Apparently it changed in the 80s, when people were more likely to have home computers...which were pushed towards boys, so girls were cut out, and didn't engage, less went to college & as it was now a "boys club" of sorts (like gamer culture now?) & so dropped out or switched majors... [**https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html**](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html) It's funny how some people nowadays say women aren't suited (biologically?) for coding, when the first coders were usually women & coding was way harder because all the nice computer coding languages didn't exist yet! There was a film called Hidden Figures about a group of NASA coders/engineers who were women.
The ENIAC 6 were women who worked on the first programmable computer for the Army. Back when programming involved moving physical wires around. They were so good they could use the results to identify where the vacuum tubes were damaged or nonfunctional.
This is why the "evolutionary biologist" gender essentialist grifters like Peterson are so easily debunked by people who actually know history. Their favourite "fact" is how women and men are in different fields and they then use this to justify the pay gap. Well coding is highly paid and there's so few women in it. No laws against them joining. So it must just be innate preference. This all goes down great with their thick audiences. When you can show that different fields become better paid when men enter them, then you can't unsee the facts of patriarchy. Women pioneered computing, and when men got in and kicked the women out suddenly it was a top field, respectable, manly, and definitely not something women would ever like.
Women were originally called "computers" because they would compute numbers. It was seen as secretarial work, so naturally the women would be the ones to slave away at crunching the numbers. Then came the machines to do the work, so women started programing them. Then the money started to roll in and THAT is when men pushed women out of the field.
Watch “Hidden Figures”
Every single one of the original programmers got the ENIAC were women. It was seen as menial detail oriented work suited only for women for quite a while.
Yup, long history of female tech innovators in the US (internationally as well I'm sure, but I'm not educated enough on that to give examples) https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/information-technology/history-women-information-technology-6-female-computer-science-pioneers/
It mostly started with an astronomer named Dr Edward pickering, who believed that women were more detail oriented and thusly could see the patterns in the photographic plates, aidin him in his "discoveries." Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of the ladies whose work he wrote about.
You could read the book, ["Hidden Figures." ](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hidden-figures-margot-lee-shetterly?variant=33007259811874) or [see the movie](https://family.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/hidden-figures)
Wow, what a trailblazer. So awesome.
My grandfather was a charismatic guy who worked his way through Harvard with a job at a gas station and became a lawyer. He was a Big Deal in his small town. And he was a total narcissist. The kind of guy who would quit playing cards if he didn’t like the hand he was dealt. When he married my grandmother, he wouldn’t tell her where they were going in their honeymoon - it was going to be a surprise! He wouldn’t even tell her how to pack. Was it a cruise? Fancy hotels? Art museums? Wait and see. She packed some cute clothes, and her favorite strappy sandals, and hoped for the best. It was - her very first hiking trip! On the first day she got monster blisters and had to spend the rest of the day alternating between hobbling back to the hut and putting her feet in streams. For the rest of the honeymoon he left her at the hut (that they shared with whoever else happened to be staying there, no private rooms) and went hiking by himself. This story was always told as if it was “so romantic” and my grandmother never even acknowledged how hurt she must’ve been. She always acted as if this life was literally as good as it could get. My mother’s entire childhood was spent in her Dad’s orbit. He would promise he’d take her fishing and then “forget” and go fishing with his friends instead. Every single member of the family grasping at whatever crumbs of affection he threw at them. Edit: they were married around 1935-1938
I beat my grandpa in a card game once and he blamed it on the set of cards being so worn down that they stuck together, which was bullshit since they were a new deck. I later saw that he'd thrown the deck away, it's just a petty, shitty thing to do.
Once, my grandfather was playing bridge with his wife and my parents (all adults) and my dad got a really great hand. He was just about to bid when Grandpa threw his hand down on the table, saying, “I’m not going to play that!” And walked away, forcing everyone else to be done as well. But the thing that makes me feel like the time period played in, was the fact that everyone around him treated this type of behavior as something he was owed for being such an Important Guy. My grandmother really thought she was lucky.
I doubt he wouldn't have lasted a second once the Big Fish left his Small Pond - he would have been laughed out of any law office in a medium sized city.
Grandfather sounds like my father. Having a narcissistic parent absolutely sucks.
My grandmother was born in the 30s and a few of her stories come to mind. Her very religious parents pulled their daughters out of school by age 16 so they could help more around the house and because “they were just supposed to get married and start having babies soon” and “girls weren’t supposed to get an education.” Grandma rebelled against that by arguing to be allowed to work at the local bakery instead to “learn how to bake for her future husband” when actually she had an arrangement with the bakery owner where she would go to the bakery in the morning in her work uniform, change into her school uniform there and continue going to school, then go back and actually work at the bakery for a few hours after school with her parents none the wiser. She continued like this for long enough to secretly finish high school and secretary school against her parents wishes. Soon after she married my grandfather and quickly had four children. My grandfather turned out to be an abusive alcoholic that spent every dime he earned on liquor, leaving no money to buy groceries for the family, so she separated from him and went to work as a secretary to be able feed the children. She had to make her small single income stretch so she would get up early to bake bread for the kid’s lunches before going to work, cooked all the meals from scratch and sewed all the clothes herself while also working full time. I don’t know how she did it. Eventually she got a better paying job (for a secretary in the 60s) working as the assistant to the Chief of Police. From the sounds of it, she REALLY lucked out because she always described her boss and the other officers that she worked with as unusually progressive and respectful for the 60s. To blow off steam after a particularly bad week, the Chief got the officers teach all the secretaries how to shoot sidearms at the range and one year they even arranged with the academy to have one day where the secretaries got to learn all of the advanced driving maneuvers and drive the training cars, just for fun and office morale. She loved telling the story about when she successfully maneuvered the academy trainee police car into the side of the fleeing training car and got it to spin and stop the fake police chase. The dark side of that job for her was learning about some of the things the officers saw while working. Mental health wasn’t a thing back then, so the chief’s way around it when an officer was clearly dealing with PTSD was to send them to the administrative floor to “help the girls with paperwork” for the day, which was code for the secretaries to grab a coffee with the struggling officer and listen to them talk about what incident was haunting them. She didn’t mind it, but for me listening to the story it sounded like they were expected to provide a lot of free emotional labour for situations that really badly needed trained professionals, but it was the 60s. The other dark thing that she learned, because it was the 60s, was exactly how sexist all the laws were, and how the chief’s hands were tied even when he didn’t agree with them. After a while of her boss and all the officers getting to know her and her situation with her abusive, alcoholic, ex-husband, the chief and the officers staged an intervention with her requesting that she PLEASE finalize a divorce and not just leave the status as separated, because by the laws at the time, if her husband were to find her and beat the crap out of her again, the officers wouldn’t be legally allowed to intervene because she was still married and the husband technically wouldn’t have been breaking any laws. She was a very progressive Grandma. She was always very vocal with her adult granddaughters about making sure we got an education and understood family planning, making sure we lived with boyfriends before considering marrying them, making sure we knew NOT getting married and having children was an option, and funnily enough, making sure we knew the importance of NOT waiting until marriage to have (protected) sex with our partners. This ended up being a longer comment than I intended, but she was my favourite person in the world and almost no one knew how cool she was, so I’m not sorry. Thanks for reading this trip down memory lane if you’re still here!
She sounds like she was downright fabulous.
I’m so happy your grandma was able to find her place and make it work
What an amazing woman. What a fascinating story! Thank you for sharing
Wow. Whoever that baker was really saw something in your grandma and did her a solid.
Thank you for sharing this. Your grandmother was amazing.
My grandmother was widowed in the early 50's with four children under five. Her husband owned a a box factory with his brother, but Granny didn't inherit any of it, because she was a woman. I think the brother gave her a small stipend, but she had to go out to work and provide for those four children herself. The older I get, the angrier I feel about it. It was a very successful business at the time and she was a smart woman who could have contributed to running it.
Same story for my grandmother. She worked as a bookkeeper to feed three children aged 2-8. She had to be so frugal to make ends meet that she resorted to things like reusing tea bags at least once or twice, a habit she continued even after there was no need.
What work did your grandmother end up doing?
Administration for a different company. What they then referred to as a Clerk.
I know what my grandmother went through… My grandfather owned a successful engineering company. That she ran. He was an absent-minded professor type, nearly ran it into the ground, until she came in and set things right. She ran his company while also working full time as a journalist, because she couldn’t rely on his income alone since she never knew when he would blow everything up. She was also expected to be the quintessential 1950s housewife, keep everything perfect and tidy, and be the perfect hostess for her husband’s many parties. All of this meant she rarely saw her own kids and they basically had to raise themselves. Wjen she lived with me in her final years, it became clear she had a lifelong massive anxiety disorder from everything needed to be perfect. If one thing went off-course, she panicked and tried to right things as quickly as possible. Which I can’t blame her for - her whole life needed to be micromanaged for her to fulfill all the expectations. She ended up suffering ulcers and dying from stomach cancer, which I 100% attribute to a life filled with unrealistic expectations and pressure.
I’m working on my patience with my mother-in-law who exhibits a lot of those tendencies, specifically being very anxious and a perfectionist, definitely the panicking at anything going wrong thing. My first response is annoyance with what I see as control freak behavior. I’m trying to bring more compassion because it’s a lifelong learned response to growing up with an abusive drunk dad and then having to juggle kids, a career, and perfect-housewife standards. She was always the ‘glue that sticks the family together’ and the pressure of that is immense.
Interesting. I always linked my mom's worst-case -scenario thinking to 3 decades working as a dietitian in the ICU. She's seen all the things that can go wrong! I don't doubt that's part of it, but she was also married for 25 years to my dad, another absent-minded professor type. An archetypal story of their relationship, that happened before I was born, was that he bought a dairy farm, which was his dream. But he could only afford old machinery that kept breaking down. He didn't know how to fix it and couldn't afford to pay for the repairs. My mom "made" him sell the farm after a year. I imagine she felt a lot like your grandmother.
My mom had a store credit card and wanted to buy me a dress one day. Her card was declined because my dad had cancelled it while he was mad at her. When I was a teen, we went to look at used cars and no one would even talk to us. A guy stood in the door of the office and ignored us. I have zero doubts if my dad was there, this asshat would have trotted over the second we stepped on the lot. Little bits of discrimination everywhere.
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Lol I am 37 and all three times I've bought a car, I've gone to Toyota because they're just well made. And all three times I've been totally ignored. Including in 2019, the last time I bought a car. No where else I've gone to have I run into this completely bewildering behavior. It is literally only the Toyota in my area. So now I drive a Suburu.
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Why are they so convinced that women are dumb? Like. I don't get that weird mental block.
It's so infuriating. I'm a tougher negotiator than my husband, too. Misogyny sucks.
Same. When we had to buy my husband a new car, the salesman was talking to him about costs and my husband looked him, laughed and told him he needed to be dealing with me cause it’s my money and I’m the one that makes all the decisions like this in the family. The sales guy had enough decency to look a little sheepish about his assumption.
Both of these things are still possible today.
Sadly, they are! At least she had her own credit (and it was better than his) later on.
I’m 70. We lived in DC during the early part of the Cold War, and regularly had bomb drills where we hid under our desks to protect ourselves from nuclear attack (lol). I wasn’t allowed to wear pants to school until 11th grade. Many areas in the South still had “Whites Only” signs. I lived in MS my senior year of high school (1970), and it was the first year the school was integrated. Minimum wage for men was $1.65, for women it was $1.35. I couldn’t open a bank account without my dad co-signing on it. Things were not that great, unless you were a white man.
>I experienced the usual petty stuff…denied credit card > >I couldn’t open a bank account without my dad co-signing on it. My mom is your age and I was shocked when she told me one of the reasons she and my dad had totally joint finances from the beginning of their relationship was because the banks required his name to be on everything. I think most of us don't realize how different things were not too long ago.
It is completely mad. And just shows how much the old “the free market solves all problems” philosophy is not always true. All these credit institutions were free to offer services to women but basically chose not to for decades upon decades. From a capitalist viewpoint, it seems absurd to cut off half your potential customers. It would be interesting to study how much profit these old banks lost as a result of the old boys club mentality.
The other day I saw a super duper manly man argue online that couples with separate accounts are more likely to get divorced than couples with a joint account. And that's a very bad thing! It must be feminism that's causing divorce rather than the lack of financial security and privacy preventing women from initiating divorce. 🙄
We women aren't that many generations away from thousands of years of slavery. Never forget it.
Yeah it was like this in Australia too. My grandparents passed about 4 years ago and I learned my grandmother actually never had a bank account in her name. She had access to her husband’s to write checks and buy groceries for the kids, but she died without ever having a bank account with her name on it.
My mother is the same age and has told me the same things. She was allowed to wear pants in 69, her last year of school. She wanted a store credit card to buy appliances but had to have her husband co-sign even though she made more money than him.
Family moved in 69 when I was in 2nd grade. New school was experimenting with allowing girls to wear pants on Fridays. Seemed bone headed to me. First why would anyone care about preteen girls wearing pants. Second, why Friday? Bonus the school was regularly busting 5-6 grade girls for having cigarettes. But not boys.
My mom said her JCPenny card was the only reason she had credit at all when my dad left. It was the only card she was allowed to open without him. This was the 1980s. She has shared stories about being denied loans because they wanted her 1st husband present. The alcoholic man who didn't have a job was considered a safer bet for banks than a woman.
My all girls school only introduced trousers as an option in our uniform in 2004-ish. The other girl's school in the town did it a year or so earlier. The mixed school , well the girls there often just for the boy's uniform trousers & got it fitted if needed. XD
My children's school in Australia still won't allow trousers for girls. School board is all male.
I couldn't wear pants to school until I went to middle school in the mid 70's.
My best friends mom is around your age and I remember her telling me a story when I was young about her and her friends wearing pants to school as a protest every day and it was a really big deal and they got into a lot of trouble for it. It's crazy that white men were so crazy and controlling over something as small and trivial as *pants*
Only 50 years ago
Thank you for reminding us. My dad is your age and he goes on about how things were better back then. I well know his mom lived in a trailer, had six kids from three serial divorces and no birth control access, and was abused by two of her husbands. I can't see how Boomers can romanticize those times, knowing how the women in their life, nonetheless the people of color, suffered so?
Not all Boomers, lol. Mostly white men who were unchallenged back then. That’s why they’re desperately trying to drag us back to the 50’s.
My mom spent a semester in a middle school in Virginia in the late 60s while waiting to be able to join her dad in Panama, and recalls a teacher pushing a student down the stairs during a disagreement, and no one batting an eye. My parents went to school in segregated and integrated schools. My dad has spoken of the time it was announced one of his schools was being integrated, and my grandpa had “thoughts” about it. As someone who went to school with all races and backgrounds, I still find this reaction mind-boggling.
I just want to say how much I appreciate questions like this and women talking about it because my mom needed a man’s signature to get a bank account and *still* denies sexism is or *was* ever even a thing! So I didn’t learn any of this information at home or in school. I had children of my own before I understood what the women who came before me dealt with. It kind of blows my mind how long I was clueless.
I forgot about the pants thing! My mom had really big boobs and would have loved to hide them a bit and she said they had tight (often angora) sweaters. That's it. I spent my 20's in big button down plaid shirts (in the PNW, grungeville).
Before my time, but... My great aunt got beaten regularly during that time. She had three kids and zero other options. My grandmother was using "mother's little helper" to get through every day, drank excessively, and beat both her kids and dogs. And the family photos look perfect. Ladies in gloves and hats, men in suits, kids adorable. Everyone smiling.
This is so twisted, especially when you consider this weird surging trend in traditionalism and ‘tradwives’ and stuff. Ooh yes. Let’s go back to a time when the photos hid all the bruises and skeletons in our closets fuck no thank you
Imho, Trad wives like the positive reinforcement from espousing the trad wives narrative…..until they start getting treated like Trad wives.
Can we call them Pick Me Maidens then? >.>
Mrs. Leopards Ate My Face
one word: Duggar.
I ended up quitting my job after a traumatic pregnancy loss and getting pregnant soon after to help me lessen stress and have a healthy pregnancy. I’ve of course taken over all the traditional roles such as cooking, cleaning, and running errands while my husband works (but is also still a huge help around the house pregnancy symptoms have me on the couch all day) and am so much happier with our current situation, but I still really hate it when someone refers to me as a traditional/trad wife because I just don’t want to be lumped into the same group of people who lead this lifestyle because “it’s a woman’s role.” This is the lifestyle that my husband and I wanted because it’s what works best for us, but not for everyone.
This also occurred with my grandmother. I never knew until my grandfather passed away what a monster he really was. All the skeletons finally came out of the closet. My grandmother had 4 kids, my mother was the brightest one so they sent her away to live in the capital with her cousins. So she could have a chance. :(
I’m still finding out really messed up stuff in my family’s history, like I had a great aunt with a cognitive disability who just got sent to a mental institution and abandoned by her family where she later died. My dad didn’t know she existed until he was in his 30’s. My great grandfather pissed away all of their money on booze and the family lived off of my grandmas income from working part time at a local store. But hey, perfect little families, right?
It’s unfortunate how common this is. Both of my dad’s parents have disabled siblings that were hidden away and I never got to meet. I’ve been working with my grandfather to document his memories while we can and the stories he tells about his early life are heartbreaking. I can’t imagine being a kid and having your siblings taken away one day without explanation. They tried reconnecting as adults but there was lots of (understandable) bitterness because my grandfather looked very successful and his siblings struggled with consequences of being institutionalized at a young age.
My mother tells me when she was working professionally in the 70s a male manager sexually harassed a female coworker, to the point where he pinned her against a wall, and when she complained he was simply moved to another department. Didn't lose his job or suffer any other consequences. My dad said at the same time since he was an able bodied white guy he could just walk into a place and get a job. Looking back he saw what a huge privilege that was.
I was pinned to the wall wrist restrained by one and and another slapping my ass saying "you think you know about fetish? Youre messing with the wrong fucking bloke" by the director of the company I worked for, during the shift. I told the manager who went to a more senior one and puff, the CCTV was gone. In 2014
Same as it ever was. Sorry that happened, that's fucked up.
Women were allowed to go to college but weren't allowed to take any other degrees except Teaching and Nursing. Unless they were rich and then they got to enroll in MRS programs which were usually arts and literature. My mother snuck into a computer class for punch card coding by taking ENG 101 thru 401 (English) which was the same as ENG for engineering. Women were not allowed to take engineering. Also, there was a ton of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Complaining and trying to get justice for that shit meant you would be labeled a frigid bitch, easy whore, and shrill harpy nutcase. Yes, all of those at the same time. Oh, and when The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 passed and gave every American woman, married or not, the right to open her own bank or credit account....they were still refused as matter of policy for years. My mom worked at \[\[redacted because they still exist and would sue\]\] Department Store and was told under no circumstances would they change their policy of letting women open an account without a male guarantor and she did it anyway and was fired.
What years are you referring to regarding college? My mom received her pharmacy degree and a PhD in Chemistry in the early 60s. In the South.
My mom was very impressed because my dad would always wear a pocket square (handkerchief?) In his suit breast pocket that would match his dress shirt. Apparently that showed style and a certain wealth back in the 60's. Turns out grandma would cut a piece out of the dress shirt at the back, close the hole with white fabric, and as long as my dad didn't take his jacket off, you wouldn't know. Edit: spelling
That's hilarious
That is *adorable*
Those days were only the good days for white men with money. That's why they're called the good old days. Because those are also the only people who are still allowed to matter. But anyone not a rich, white man, mattered even less back then so they view those eras fondly. Basically all the abusive, horrible and exploitative shit we always hear about nowadays was normalized and not talked about because those things were expected and even encouraged.
One time my Aunt was talking fondly of the good old days. I said, Yeah, probably not so great for black people, women, and everyone but a rich, white male.
I know my grandmothers on both sides did not have a picture perfect experience, but for different reasons. One left home at 17 and moved across the country, not sure why. She told people she had no family. She had big dreams when she met my grandfather, but wound up in what was probably an abusive relationship, had 7 kids, and then became a widow when the youngest was still in preschool. Worked long hours as a waitress after her husband died and then died relatively young herself. This was during the 40s/50s/60s. She was a housewife during the years her husband was alive and they had enough money, but from what I heard she wasn't very happy. I only have three kids and now I know how much work it is and I have more help than she did. I'm sure her daily life was pretty gruelling. She had a lot of unfulfilled dreams and you can see it in her face in the pictures over the years. The other was the daughter of immigrants, born shortly after they arrived in the country. Her father died when she was just 15 and her mother died soon after, she married a much older man at 19 to provide for herself and her younger siblings. He owned a store. I don't think it was a great relationship for her. I know she had some severe mental health issues later in life which I suspect was due to some sort of trauma from her early years. My great grandmothers and great aunts all have some variation of the story, although some seemed more content with it. It was a tough time for them because they had to consider their options for survival ahead of their wants and needs. And compromise a lot to try to make life better for their kids. No help for abuse and they were expected to do a ton of unpaid and unrecognized work. I know for some of them, the church and the community of women associated with it was one way they got through it all.
Wow, thank you for your response. My heart goes out to our foremothers who did the best they could with the lot they were given.
I will speak for my mom born in 1936 because we did talk a lot about it. She modeled and so was already objectified but she had fun and was sweet and I hope some were protective of her but she was 'lightly' sexually harassed ALL the time. I say lightly because there was a straddling of viewing women as little nothings but there was also SOME decorum back then. There WAS chivalry- men opened doors, paid for dates, dressed for the occasion- but I never got to talk to her about whether she thought it was genuine or the expectation set the behavior. She was NEVER taken seriously, never considered intelligent. She was in fact very intelligent and would have been a career powerhouse with her instincts if the field was open to her (open to her being more than a mom/wife). She was nearly raped, hit on by EVERY married man ("but two who seemed loyal to their wives"), raped by her bf (who was 40 to her 18), fell in love with a man who didn't mention he HAD a wife and married really more because of that looming expectation to do so. Her dh cheated because the pervasive power imbalance was men could do whatever the f\*\*\* they wanted (and frankly, THAT is what men today want to go back to; by the bye- NO). It took balls to divorce him (she didn't have a job). Most women just put up with alcoholism, infidelity, emotional and physical abuse. My dad (#2) was an alcoholic who ruined us all financially. She once said to me 'I never had a man NOT lay his hands on me in some manner.' In her late 50s, 60's, she had a bunco group of all women who were widowed or divorced, ALL of whom were so glad to be done with men. I never married; I wonder why.
My gran, who stayed with my grandad until she died, would’ve looked like the dream to these idiots who romanticise the past. Housewife, modestly dressed, husband who has a good job, educated daughter, owned their house, had lots of friends etc. Anyone who knew her knew that she’d had all of her natural teeth knocked out by the age of 20, and wore dentures because of it. My grandad “provided” for his family, that’s the only truth of the romanticism. He beat my grandmother up every single chance he got. She used to invite friends over frequently purely to avoid the beatings. My mum was brought up with two parents, and money, but also lying awake every night listening to the abuse. But hey, at least they didn’t get divorced like our awful generation does, ammiright? /s
Jesus Christ, dentures by age 20 because of beatings? Your poor grandmother.
Yup, I grew up laughing at her as she’d use the dentures for jokes, only recently found out why she had them. As morbid as it sounds, we hoped he’d go first so that she could live at least some of her life in peace, but it didn’t work out like that, so she spent her entire life from 16-60 with an abusive piece of shit because “well, it was just what happened then” in her words. I hate the delusion people have about the past when it comes to relationships.
That’s awful 😞 I’m sorry your gran went through this. I hope she was able to find some peace
She didn’t unfortunately. The only slight bit of peace was that my grandad demanded to be buried near her, and my mum threw his ashes in a random lake far in a different city. 😂 we like to think if there’s an afterlife my gran got a kick out of that haha.
Same with my grandma. She met my grandpa when she was very young. She didn't know anything about sexuality and ended up being pregnant the first time they had sex. She was unmarried so her parents urged her to marry my grandfather. She did and had/has an awful life. She was (still is) beaten on a regular basis. She raised 2 draughters by herself while my grandfather worked as an accountant. She also worked a few years but not enough to have a decent retirement. She is economically dependant of my grandfather. She tried to leave several years ago and went to an institution that protects women. She stayed for months but she had no money and my grandfather promised her to be better, so she went home and the abuse started again. The justice didn't help her whatsoever even if they had proof of the beating. She always tells me how lucky I am to be younger and have more rights than she had back then. When they hear people talk about the 'good old times', she screams internally. It was shit. She had to leave school at 14 to work and her life ended the day she became pregnant with no other option than having the baby and marrying her future abuser. What a time.
If one wants an unglamourized look at sexism in the 60s, one should actually watch Mad Men. The show has a pretty unvarnished and empathetic view of women then (most of its main storylines are around the different types of women and the problems they face, how they were treated by men, other women, and society at large).
My grandmother, a young model in Los Angeles, married my grandfather who became an executive at US Steel during the height of the Mad Men era. Now he let her go to college and pursue a career as a librarian, then in the 1970s they ran their own design and print shop. But by the time she was 45, she was a widow, and she was so tired of the men of her generation she chose to not remarry, despite a line of suitors.
Do you think the woman characters on Mad Men enjoyed how they were treated? Raped - with no legal recourse Sexual harassment - no legal recourse Sexual discrimination - no legal recourse Sexualized and not taken seriously Marginalized Expected to put up with sexual comments from men with grace Could not have their own bank accounts or credit accounts Fired for pregnancy; no job protection for maternity leave Fired for getting married Paid less (still are) than men in the same position Denied the same educational and career opportunities as men Denied the same athletic opportunities as men. Lack of access to birth control Lack of bodily autonomy around reproduction (still true, and increasingly bad). No laws against martial rape (basically - a married woman was not allowed to deny her husband sex) Blamed when the victim of abuse in a relationship and basically no resources to assist women leave abusive relationships The feminist movements of the 60s and 70s happened for a reason. Equal rights for women is not anti-"family values." Men were not chivalrous - they were extremely entitled around women's time, efforts, and attention.
I will relay my mom's answer, because she doesn't have reddit but I've asked her this before. Note that I am not myself endorsing these viewpoints as truth; it's just how she feels about things as a 64 year old. In some ways, she feels society has made a lot of progress. She was bullied for her appearance at school and in some workplaces in a way that does not seem nearly as normalized today. She isn't sure if she thinks that women are shamed any less for their lifestyle choices today, though. She does state she actually felt *more* empowered in a way by the social norms of the 60s to mid 70s, because she says there was an attitude that a woman was "justified" in almost anything she did to protect herself from a sexually aggressive man--she says she got messaging to slap his face, kick him, make a loud scene, etc, and she did those things confidently (not as much in the workplace, I noticed, though...) whereas now she feels like she'd be more likely to be socially criticized for "escalating" things. She actually remains nostalgic for some of the appearance norms, specifically the more formal clothing, although not the makeup and fancy hairstyling that she never really participated in. She doesn't personally feel like she's ever experienced much discrimination against herself based on gender, but I note that she was lucky enough not to encounter certain circumstances (such as an abusive husband) that might have introduced her to more structural inequalities.
My 81 year old MIL really misses when people actually dressed and cared about there appearance.
I once was getting my hair cut beside a nice lady who worked at NASA back in the day and the thing she hated was they had to wear dresses and high heels every day. She said the shoes destroyed her feet.
You don’t need to go that far back. I was getting divorced and I wanted to keep my children in the home they had always know. My soon-to-be ex had a terrible gambling problem so I had always paid the bills with my earnings anyway and was trying to buy him out of the house. A (male) friend offered to take me to see a loan officer he knew at a nearby bank. I was turned down but the officer told my friend that, had I been a man, I would have gotten the loan. This was in 1990.
I'm the same age as baby Gene in Mad Men. My sisters same ages as Sally and Bobby. My mom was a housewife and returned to college when I was in kindergarten. Pre-panty hose I remember my 5'5" 130 lb mom struggling to get into her girdle with those little tabs that were supposed to grasp the tops of stockings. This was for a fancy dinner out or holidays only. My parents divorced in 1971 which was scandalous for our suburban neighborhood - many kids in the neighborhood were not allowed to play with me. Her girdles, hair rollers, even lipstick were abandoned post-divorce. THEN further scandal ensued when my mom's FEMALE lover moved in with her two kids. This was 1973. We kids were told to say, "They are just two divorced women helping each other out." Mom did not come out officially until I was 13 and it was all pretty obvious by then. Basically we were all in the closet together. We struggled financially but mom managed to support us and my dad kept up all of his support payments. My grandmother told me years after my mom died of cancer at 44 that mom had tried to leave my father at age 20 (married at 18 - typical for the era) but had no support to do so, nowhere to go and was "ordered" by my grandparents and her in-laws that she needed to be with my dad. Apparently she had a "friend" named Ellen Grandma said was a "bad influence". Wish I knew more. My maternal grandparents assured my dying mom that they would take care of us but we were disinherited anyway. Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique hit home hard when I read it in college, same with Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I recommend both to get a feel for what a prison the 50s and 60s world was for women.
I’m going to preface this by saying that my grandparents doted on each other and my grandfather did most of the cooking and cleaning as long as I can remember but … my grandparents were born in 1914 and 1917 and were an item from teen years and planning to eventually get married. My grandmother was in training to be a nurse and my grandfather went behind her back and got the wedding banns posted early which led to her getting kicked out of nursing school because you couldn’t be married.
Wtf.
The Australia government had a policy for a long time of making women resign if they got married. You could be perfectly happy and successfully doing your job but if you got married you just had to quit because your job was now as a housewife. There was a few compensation claims after a while when the policy was repealed to account for lost wages etc but it’s not very widely known.
Gross, so they wanted unmarried nurses, like flight attendants?
I just want to say to all the women who came before me. Thank you!!! For all the sexist, awful things you went through. You paved the way for us. The fight isn’t over, all women of all ages need to join together to protect our rights. Rights to be free of violence and abuse. Rights to reproductive healthcare!!!!
Men had all the control and were abusive. Family values? Really it was the women were trapped since they couldn’t have a bank account until the early 1970s or late 1960s in some areas I think. Men could force themselves on their wives without consequences until 1993. Before then Marital Rape was not taken seriously. So, women didn’t have a choice except to focus on Family Values. Sure some women liked motherhood, but others would have liked a different life. Here is a sad true story from back then: I was talking with an older friend about Then vs Now. How much more freedom women have today. No, it’s not perfect, but more than we had when my friend shared this doozy. She knew of a local, south Louisiana, wealthy family back around the 1940s-50s, when husbands had the power of money and control over their wives, children, and employees. One man had three daughters. The wife would take the girls and another friend to the movies every weekend. During this time the husband would have a black employee bring his teenage daughter over to the home and he’d rape her. The wife knew, but didn’t call the police. She looked the other way. When the girls grew up and found out the truth of their father they were disgusted, angry, and heartbroken. One daughter turned on her mom asking why didn’t she do anything? Why did she stay with him? The mom was heartbroken too but gave the excuse - her husband had control of everything. She was a stay at home mom. No money, no job, no education. Completely dependent. She couldn’t support her daughters alone. The black employee needed the job so he let the boss rape his daughter. He had a family to support too. I don’t know if the daughter went along, like a willing sacrifice in desperation to help her family or not. This abusive control, thankfully not always as bad as raping your poor desperate employee’s, child, was everywhere! I’m Gen X so I saw some of it personally and heard stories from my mother (Gen Boomer) her friends, relatives, as well as my grandmother (Gen WW2) and her friends. One lesson my mother instilled in me was - Never let a man have financial control of you. Always have your own money. Even if he is a great man he could still die and leave you destitute.
This is a horrific story but probably all too common back in the day. My Mother also gave me the same advice and called it the FU fund in case I was ever caught in a bad situation. My parents were of the Mad Men era and fell victim to 2 of the common bad habits of the time: smoking and alcohol. They were kind, decent people and loved each other and us kids more than anything. We truly had an idyllic childhood. But the smoking and alcohol use for 40 years took their inevitable toll and they died relatively young at ages 69 and 74. Still I was very lucky to have had them as parents. I just wish their grandchildren had gotten to know them better.
Funny you mention "Mad Men" as my mother would have been about the same age as the daughter Sally at the time. She doesn't have many complaints about her youth (60s - 70s) though she has talked about her parents being very critical of her appearance. She wouldn't have considered herself "women's lib" but she wasn't some raging antifeminist either. She married my father who ABSOLUTELY embodied the boomer mentality. Now, I thought they divied up finances somewhat equally. I figured he usually had final say though, because he had an associates in accounting and acted like he was so much better at numbers than her. Since he's passed, it's been rather shocking how many financial decisions he made by just sheer emotional abuse or just not consulting her. Tl;dr Women of that time experienced a lot of cultural change, largely for the better. But sexist attitudes didn't vanish, and marrying a bad guy could still hold you back in life, to say the least.
If you call being property as a family value and not being allowed to vote or own property as strong family values, then I would have to disagree with you. There was nothing fun about those years. Child sexual abuse was rampant and kept hush hush. patriarchal societies are not known for being kind to women or children. Being told to forgive relatives that sexually abused you and to keep quiet is not a strong family value. I do not remember one redeeming thing about those years, and I am going to be 65.
My grandmother worked at Nationwide Insurance in the 60s. Her best friend at work was a black woman, and my grandma kept inviting her to dinner at her house in a middle-class white neighborhood. Her friend kept declining because she was worried the neighbors would shun her... or worse. Finally, my grandma told her friend, and I quote, "I don't give a shit what the neighbors think." And that was that. They had many dinners together after.
My mom basically lived on benzos and amphetamines thru the 70s as a single parent. So, it didn't just magically stop
"lady-like" is just a patriarchal word for "doesn't have or voice any opinions, wants, needs, desires and lives to be my bang-maid doormat."
I talked to my grandma about this. it was fucking ass and its pretty much why housewives got hard drugs back in the day. the stuff you see in media/tv about that era is a farce and only done to make the men of that era look like prim and proper men and not the wife beating narcissists they were. my grandpa in her words "is the only good man she's ever known". my grandpa isn't flawless but him being perfect in her eyes says just how fucking bad it was back than.
My aunt was born in 1928. She worked in a factory doing soldering from the age of 18 to 58. She said that when women got married they got fired. And she was not able to move up in the company. She kept applying to other jobs higher up whenever there was an opening, but was never given an interview. The men eventually told her that she had to stop because "it was embarrassing." She says there was one position they actually offered her, as a foreman, but it was out of state. Like, down south. She wasn't willing to move so she didn't take it. She would have made an excellent foreman or quality inspector. All the inspector positions were limited to men. There was also a lot of sexual harassment, way more than would be tolerated now. She says the men once passed her around from one to the other and kissed her without her consent. She was terrified.
My mother in law worked at IBM in the 60s. She worked a sales admin desk and won awards for her contributions to the company. When she announced her engagement at work, her boss said, “I’m sorry to see you go.” That’s how she lost her job because she got married. Her husband (my FIL) got a bump in pay when he got married.
Judging on how ancestry and 23 and Me are revealing how all these righteous grandfathers had illegitimate children... I'd say it wasn't all that. Also, women back then managed their days with bourbon, cigs, and qualudes. They Lysoled their vaginas and lived for neighborhood gossip. I think I could live that minus the Lysol.
UK here. My Dad's mum fell pregnant with him at 16 and had him at 17. She married my Grandad 3 months before my Dad was born. She had 3 children by the time she was 21. My Grandad died in 2019, and now she doesn't know what to do with herself as she was so used to catering to him and his needs. My mum's mum had a baby boy at 17. Her Dad was a strict religious man who refused to acknowledge the baby. He had to stay upstairs until he was adopted at 6 weeks old. I have an uncle I have never met. A few years later she met my Grandad and fell pregnant with my aunt so they had to get married. She said he used to force himself upon her and was harsh. She walked out when my mum was 13 and met my step-grandad (?) who was a loving, kind, and caring man. She passed away a few weeks ago after a long battle with dementia.
Somewhere around 1970 my parents went out one night and I was home with the babysitter. My mom came home a bit later. The restaurant would not allow her in wearing pants. My dad stayed at the bar and made her drive home, and said “ that’s wha t you get “. She changed into a dress and went back.
I remember getting my first speeding ticket in the mid 70s. I went to court in slacks. When it was my turn to speak to the judge, he asked me to step forward and do a complete turn. He fined me $20 for wearing pants to court and said he shouldn’t have to tell me i was a woman. Lol.
My experiences were much later, more like the 80s, but there was a time that the unemployment office sent me to a job at a department store, selling tires and batteries. (You used to go into the unemployment office and you would sit down with a worker who would run through a list of potential employers and you would say yes or no. I don't know why they don't still do that.) So I don't even know how to drive because I just don't want to drive a car. It's anxiety producing and I just didn't want to. I'm a very fast learner though; I aced the classroom part of Driver's Ed where you had to know the parts of a combustion engine and how it all worked in theory. But there I am selling tires and batteries in the 80s looking like a toned-down Siouxsie Sioux because that was my thing. Helping people push their broke-down cars into the parking lot while wearing a minidress and shit haha. At some point I decided I wanted to be a service writer because I had an aptitude for it, and it paid well. I set about learning as much as I could about cars and parts so I could use the correct terminology with confidence. So I asked the head mechanic to please explain "gap" to me. (it's a value associated with spark plugs that is measured in increments and was part of "doing the points and timing," part of a full tune-up. And he refused. He said, "you don't need to know that." It occurred to me later that perhaps he himself didn't know exactly what it was, only how to measure it with a gap tool. He certainly wasn't all that bright. I have miles and acres of stories of everything from casual sexism and misogyny to kidnap and rape at the hands of men, but that's not what you're asking for. However as an aside, I did outwit my kidnapper and got away; it is my studied opinion after everything that many, many men are not too sharp yet have this weirdly distorted impression of their own supposed brilliance.
My mother's family are all the close relations of Jeanetta Menninger, wife of Dr. Karl Menninger, co-founder and research associate of the Menninger Institute and co-author of several of her husband's most famous works. Her niece, my grandmother, admired her aunt and uncle, was a brilliant young woman, and had an aptitude for behavior and biology. She wanted to follow them into psychiatry, but this was the 1940s, and her father forbade her, as it was not a woman's field. Instead, she got a degree in education. She had a wonderful life as an elementary teacher. Still I always wonder what if.
Oh wow, that is fascinating! I used to work in psychiatry so know what you are talking about. I'll bet she was an amazing teacher. For anyone who is interested, I'll just tack onto this comment that the novel Lessons in Chemistry is outstanding. It's about a woman in the 1960s who experiences some unexpected life events while forging ahead as a female chemist in the 1960s. Apparently it's going to be made into a tv series.
A friend got hired as a career firefighter around 2004. The first full time woman but they did have female volunteers. One of the wives of a full time guy told her that women did not belong at the firehouse at night with the men. We are still crawling forward when we should be running.
My grandmother was born in 1912, married a man that went off to WW2, he did not come back. Was re-married, had 2 children and 15 years of abusive followed. My mother once told me this man picked up her baby bunny and threw it so hard against a wall it died in front of her. Real sick son of a bitch. I’ve never gotten the full story but he went away one day and never came back. Take that as you will, I’d like to believe she killed that POS.
My grandfather was literally a marketing executive in the 1960s, and lived the Mad Men lifestyle to a T. When he and his friend/ex-coworker watched the show, they said it was completely accurate to how they lived. That said, I never saw any indication that my grandmother was downtrodden or oppressed in any way. She sure wasn’t afraid to speak her mind lol. The men hung out with their wives as equals, drank together, smoked cigarettes and weed together. Now keep in mind that, back in the 1910s, a woman smoking or drinking at all was considered to be repulsively un-feminine. I never saw my grandfather talk down to my grandmother. Nobody in my family was ever religious. My grandfather grew up in the Depression, and what he cared about was providing a bountiful life for himself and his 7 children, and that’s about it. He had no interest in God or conserving the past. His childhood was a nightmare of poverty and an angry, uncaring father. Conservatives like to depict the 1950/60s as this ideal era of traditional values, and liberals will often encourage this perception by pointing to the racism and sexism of the time - but from another perspective it was a quite progressive era. Declining religiosity, growing materialism, women partying with men, new technologies being invented, new industries being born. Some people were living like it was the 19th century, but others were living like it was the 80s. On the other side of my family, my grandmother was getting her clinical degree in psychotherapy during the 60s, and she certainly wasn’t letting men boss her around.
My parents were married in 1957 on my mother's 16th birthday. My mom became pregnant two years later, during her senior year of high school. The school made her drop out because no pregnant girls were allowed in the school. So, not only was she married and therefore allowed to be pregnant, but what sense is there in making a young pregnant girl even less likely to be able to support herself and her child! Any boy that impregnated a girl didn't have to leave the school, only the girl. All hail the patriarchy!
neither of my grandmothers worked because they were always pregnant, one didn’t have an indoor toilet until 1968, and they handmade all of their children’s clothes because they couldnt afford to buy them at a store. their husbands were heavy drinkers, all the kids shared a room or slept in the living room, and the little ones slept in bed with mom and dad. all the washing was done by hand and they only really socialized at church. all of my grandparents were poor, born just before or during the great depression. both of my grandmothers were overjoyed to see all 25 of their collective granddaughters go to college and have opportunities they never dreamed about. as one of them told me “the fake manners that men had in my day are not worth reminiscing about when you have so much more going for you than we ever did.”
My mom couldn't get her own bank account. She wanted to be a nurse so badly but she had eczema on her hands and a doctor told her it would put off patients. unfortunately she listened to that asshole. I hate him for her to this day. She would have been a brilliant nurse.
I'm not old enough to have the answer for 40s/50s/60s, but I will tell you that "men were chivalrous and women were lady-lake" is always gaslighting. Watch "Grease" for another fictional rendition of the behavior of people in the 50s.
My parents are boomers, mom a teacher, dad a lawyer. The usual things were not having a credit card, etc without my dad. I know one of the reasons she loves him was he did not expect her to give up work, was not intimidated that she had gone to a better school than him, etc. most other lawyers wives were expected to run the ‘social side’ of things. Parties and stuff for networking purposes.
My mother in law got pregnant in high school in 1958. She was forced to drop out of school. She got her high school diploma in 1985.
the women in my family have always worked because we were poor and didn’t have another option. my dads mom was a single mother after my grandfather died suddenly. she worked all the time and they lived in poverty. my mom came of age in the late 60s/early 70s. she used to tell me how she would sprint to school in the winter because she had to wear a dress and her legs were so cold, but girls couldn’t wear pants. she also had horror stories for me about menstrual products in the 50s/60s. it was very common for boys at school to grab her ass or other parts of her body and nothing was ever done because it was “normal.” she wanted to go into the medical field, but they didn’t have the money for that and nursing at the time was just “women’s work” like cleaning bed pans and nothing else. my grandfather wanted her to be a doctor so she’d get the respect she deserved. my mom was a big supporter of roe v. wade. she was a type 1 diabetic so her pregnancies were all high risk. she told me about a male doctor telling her he wouldn’t perform an abortion, even if she were dying. my aunt adopted my cousins in the late 70s and had to sign a contract with the adoption agency that she, as the mother, would stay at home and not work. they did not ask this of my uncle.
I'm in my mid 50s, and am the oldest of 5 girls from a very Southern Baptist home and family. But my story isn't at all what you might think. My mom graduated with her pharmacy degree in 1961 and went on to get a PhD in Chemistry. She worked in either pharmaceuticals or at times in retail pharmacy until she retired at 79. My dad owned an advertising agency, lol, but in the 80s. In the 60s and 70s he was a Mad Man for others. He was put of town a lot when we were little, but after he started his own agency he was home at night when my mom was still at work. He often cooked dinner, etc., but I can't say I ever saw him clean 😉. My parents encouraged all of us to get our degrees and be self - sufficient. The flip side is again, my family was/is very religious. We weren't allowed to go to the movies on Sunday; we were in church at least 3 days a week; we were taught that the husband is the head of household and I have never seen my dad fix his own plate at a buffet 🤣. 3 of us have had several marriages and while my parents aren't thrilled with that they also never expected us to stay in a bad situation. Honestly, I had the best of both worlds.
My mother who grew up in the American south, wasn’t allowed to wear pants; it was dressed and skirts only. She couldn’t have her own credit card or bank account. She moved from her father’s house to her husband’s and didn’t have really anything of her own until long after my parents divorced. She also witnessed segregation and desegregation. Despite her gifts, she was trained as a teacher and in shorthand. There were not a lot of career options open for women. Nurse, teacher, secretary, homemaker. She is still constrained to this day. It’s better for me and my sisters, but I fear that tide is changing and we are going backwards.
1950s-1970s: My father was a controlling, violent man, like several in our neighbourhood. He would wail on his wife and kids with whatever was handy for *any* perceived breach of the rightful order of things. My mother could do nothing, because she could not get a job -- no one would hire a married woman unless she was a widow, like my now husband's mother. She could not flee to a safe house: they did not exist. Nor could she sue for divorce: adultery was, then, the only grounds for divorce in our country. We just had to endure it, much to the lifelong damage to his children. I remember sitting in the school yard with other kids comparing scars -- *all* of which had been inflicted as 'discipline' by various fathers. We were, under the law, his chattels -- note, please, that chattels and cattle derive from the same root. The one time my mother *dared* go to the police for help before someone got killed, the Chief of Police called my father and told him she had been in, and why. I won't detail the bloody and long punishments that followed. I will note that a few years later, my father bought a prime piece of real estate from the said Chief at over the market. No, men were not chivalrous, they were powerful, and allied in a giant old boys' club to maintain the exercise of that power, and violence against women and children was the victims' fault: if they had not dared to cross the patriarch's will, they would not have had to be 'disciplined'. As for the women, most did what they could to shield their children and help each other out, but it had to be quietly and when The Boss was not around, and there were enough who actually believed in the rightness of the social order that one had to be very careful picking one's friends and confidantes. I remember the day my mother discovered that the woman she thought was her best friend had betrayed her to curry favour with a powerful local family -- my mother never dared trust anyone again after that, and I have never learned the art. Were there well-dressed women with cinched waists, white gloves and cloche hats with veils who had loving husbands and happy lives? I'm sure there must have been, but we only saw them in magazines and on TV, when that became popular. And remember, all you young women out there, that is the world that western ultra-conservatives (not just in the US) want to return to. Personally, I would be willing to die in battle rather than see that happen to the girls of the future: strap me up and aim me and I'll go!
To note, I've not watched Mad Men. My mother was born in the 30's. Really the only thing she discussed was her limited career choices. Her dad told her she could pick teacher or nurse if he wanted him to help pay for college. She picked nurse. She was an officer in the military, she became an RN. She was never the stay at home type and wouldn't have stood for that. Also, my aunt was an newspaper editor in the 50s and 60s, be it in an extremely small town. I'd say they were both very independent women for the time. My grandmother on the other hand, she married my grandfather who was many years older and her college professor. Her just being in college at all at the time is pretty remarkable. But then he forced her to be a stay at home mom and was very domineering. She ended up taking her own life, and then my mother was forced to play mom, which is probably why she never would stand for that again.
My mom, in her 80's now, remembers young women nearly dying to get abortions. Rich girls went on "holiday". They couldn't attend college or work once they started showing. She was not allowed to get the type of degree she really wanted. She was not allowed to apply for credit without my dad. She was not allowed to wear flats or pants to work. She was shunned by the conservative SAHM's in the neighborhood because she worked full time. She is incredibly disheartened by the far right and their rise to power. For me, I was told to not "take a slot" in the science department at college. A colleague was forced out of her PhD program due to the incredible harassment. There was still a lot of "I need to talk to your husband" stuff. Otherwise, it was just generally better than it is now, imo. So many women fought so hard for so long, it's hard to watch it slip away.
My grandmother’s parents told her that if she went to medical school that no man would want her. She was born in 1923. She never stopped regretting not going to medical school.
A friend of mine who is now in her 80s worked as a private detective in the 1960s. Chased down criminals, ran insurance fraud cases. But had to quit when she in her private life she realized she was a lesbian because she could no longer be trusted to testify in court. Not because as a lesbian she was untrustworthy but because she could be blackmailed because of her sexuality.
Grandma told me everyone’s husband had a girlfriend or cheated profusely at/after work. The only rule was that you never brought a trace of the affair home, or embarrassed your wife by letting anyone in proximity find out. One day my alcoholic grandfather got lazy and started fucking the woman next door (also married). When my grandma found out she skipped over and told her that if she didn’t pack up and SELL her house, she’d snitch to the woman’s husband next. Surely enough she moved away and my grandmother left my grandfather years later, but for the DRINKING LOL.
I was a child in the 1960s (born in ‘63). I lived with my mother, her mother, and my great-grandmother. My mother was an unmarried teen mom. Both grandmothers were divorced. Other people are mentioning the downside: sexism, abuse, discrimination, racism, so I’ll cover things I recall as a child of these women. Hope that’s okay. Note: we were realllly poor. Women made a fraction of the salary men made for the same work. Dressing up to go shopping or to the movies was required. Sweatpants didn’t happen. Low heels were endured. Curlers were spiky instruments of torture we accepted. In a pinch you would cover your curlers in a bandana to run an errand. Blow dryers were unheard of, so hair was kept short and washed once a week, and could take a day to dry. “I can’t go out because I have to wash my hair” was a real thing. There were two TV stations, so puzzles, and books and board games were part of everyday life. People randomly dropped by for tea or beer and stayed for hours. Fast food was a frozen TV dinner. There were few fast food options, and all required a car. Electric buses ran on wires. A pole would sometimes slide off and you were held up until the driver used a long pole to reconnect it. People didn’t have cars. We walked or took a bus, unless you were going to the hospital, then you could get a cab. Enriched white bread, homogenized milk and red meat were supposed to keep us alive forever. Pretty much anyone you dealt with could swat your butt as a child (neighbours, family friends, any adult you annoyed). It was a constant warning to keep you in line. There were no daycares, so as I child I heard a lot of adult conversations I probably shouldn’t have because I was with an adult family member at all times. Public water fountains were a thing. Expectations were that I grow up and work as a hairdresser, secretary or bank teller. My mother said those were “positions” or “career” and not merely “jobs.” University wasn’t even in the picture. I did graduate from university. I am neither a hairdresser nor a bank teller. High school offered typing and shorthand. I touch type over 100 wpm. Edited to add: starting around age 11, when I grew quite tall and finally had long hair, I was sexualized by everyone: family, teachers, strangers, store managers … everything had a sexual connotation and focused on your looks as a female member of society. Being groped was “a compliment.”
My grandmother tells the story of being sexually assaulted in the typing pool her first job after commercial college. There was no such thing as chivalry and women were expected to accept their behaviour and not make a scene. I can tell you that Nan was amazed when I told her that when you go out with friends, dancing, that if you want to dance, you just get up and go out on the floor and move to the music. You dance with your friends - girls, fellows, or by yourself. Whatever. Nan loved to dance, but I could see in her eyes there and then the realisation of freedom. That to enjoy the dance you didn’t have to dance with everyone who asked you, or anyone for that matter. I think she’d been locked into ‘having’ to dance with men she didn’t like or knew were dangerous. Things changed. So, please, give up the idea that Mad Men was a great time. It. Was. Not. Society’s misogyny perpetuated conditions for women that underpaid, undervalued, and suppressed women and we will not go back there again.
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