Interesting to look back. Your right to remind us all, it hasn't ben that long ago....and how far we've come as equals. There's an older woman in my hiking group who I commensurate with. We both "take" care of our husbands, dinner on the table when he gets home type thing, laundry done....and it's NOT the norm. I've been told I'm a slave....yada...yada...yada. Yet, it's a choice. I make dinner for both of us and it's my laundry too. ♥

Well presented Wednesday.

Yet...look at all the abuse toward woman in the workplace that finally came to light. Yes, some was from decades ago, but many more recent.

I grew up living in small apartments. I was envious of the beautiful homes of the sitcoms. I don’t think I paid too much attention to the relationship if the couples, but more to the storyline.

I was not a fan of The Honeymooners.

DH is a bit older. Our division of labor is very traditional. Although I sometimes think it would be great if he liked to cook, like other husbands I know, those husbands don’t do half of what mine does in general.

http://mastatelibrary.blogspot.com/2016/09/married-teacher-rule.html Read this rule.

Thankfully, things were changing fast in the 1960's when I was still a kid. By the time I came of age many of the laws had caught up with the public's shift in attitude. Thanks to those who went before and worked for change, I never was turned down for a credit card in my own name or stuff like that.

I can enjoy many of those old shows as being "of their time," almost like a fantasy, not intended to portray the whole of reality. So I still Love Lucy, and can laugh at Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. But I laugh harder at Dave Chappelle, and his more modern sensibility.

Well said, Kevin, VERY well said! ! ! Thank you!

Rusty

Kevin - I was going to say the same about the honeymooners. The men were the buffoons, the women always the sensible ones, a theme alive and well into today’s entertainment.

It’s great that society has changed to where women have mostly the same career opportunities as men so that people can choose their roles not have them dictated. In my case we reversed traditional roles a couple years ago. My wife’s career has soared upward while mine soared to India. So now I’m the one responsible for cooking and cleaning and laundry and making sure the kids are doing what they’re supposed to be where they’re supposed to be. I’ve definitely gained appreciation for the role of housewives, at least those that don’t outsource all their duties!

I hadn't read Kevin's comment before posting mine; so this is my reaction to his: Yes, it was nice back when ONE breadwinner could support a family. But why did it have to be a man (because the majority of the time, it was.)

There is no doubt that things have changed. If a woman married well...by which I mean a husband who was decent...then being a SAHM was fine...men were not all "barbaric" to use Kevin's word. However, if a woman married an abusive man, a drunk or etc. then she was really stuck as she couldn't work outside the home easily, she couldn't get credit on her own, she couldn't get a bank account in her own name and so much more that would make extracting herself from that untenable situation almost impossible. Even today, many women find themselves married to abusers who so demean and control them that they are unable to escape. But back then, it was even worse.

Certainly a look at old magazine ads from the era often show treating women in a way that would be intolerable now....

sexist ads of yore

IMO, one person's domestic servitude can be someone else's being supportive...

IMO, one person's domestic servitude can be someone else's being supportive...

It's all a matter of choice, no? You can have 2 men working a field, but if one is enslaved and has no choice, it's completely different from the other who is there of his own choice and benefits from his own toil.

I suppose you're in a good situation where you don't have to complain about things. However if a person lacks control over their life then complaining is something that at least gets some of the angst out. Many people don't see things as black and white as all that.

Also there is room for different stories of women and men throughout history. Some people just want one story and one way for families to work. That's what they want but it's just not so. Live it or don't understand it or don't. Just look around and see all the different family units and roles the people choose.

Prehistoric woman probably a hunter as well. Just one of many evidence-based stories.

https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/science/article/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions

In addition to now holding a job outside of the home, women are still much more responsible for domestic tasks. It could appear women have it better now, but do they? I wonder how many women would trade the responsibility for mowing the grass once a week for their (usual) responsibility for getting 3 meals a day on the table, 7 days a week, 365 days a year? Not just cooking but planning and shopping and often cleaning up. Or would women trade getting the oil changed in the car once every few months or driving it to the garage for repairs for some other unending responsibility...like even having to be the one to shop for gifts for everyone in the family as well as everyone in HIS family?

For me it isn't just the difficulty or ease of doing those tasks, its the relentlessness of those things that women do daily, in addition to an outside job, that makes the division of labor less than fair. I do see many younger heterosexual couples with the men being way more responsible for their children's care and daily needs than in the past. I think that is a great direction to be headed and I think children will benefit greatly from having hands-on dads.

Household task breakdown

Yayagal

http://mastatelibrary.blogspot.com/2016/09/married-teacher-rule.html Read this rule.

"Did you know that in the 19th century through the mid-20th century cities and towns throughout the United States, and even elsewhere in the world, had rules in place that prevented married women from holding permanent teaching positions?"

~~~~

I know this first hand --Missouri grammar school in the 50s. Until 8th grade, all my teachers were elderly unmarried women, on the edge of retirement. My 8th grade teacher, MRS. Sanders was an anomaly so the rule must have changed by then. It was rather strange, wondering who her husband was, what did he look like?

I remember Father Knows Best, hated the Honeymooners, and don't recall Elisabeth. However, I lived in a sitcom and didn't know it. That said my parents had a very loving marriage which lasted 50 years till he died. My mother took cooking lessons when they were first married and was the best cook in town. She got up in the morning and made a three-course dinner WITH homemade dessert for the big meal at noon. My father would arrive driving his telephone car,(he was the manager of the telephone co.) and would use the bathroom, wash his hands and sit down with the napkin on his lap. She actually stood by the window to see his car coming up the street so she could pour the water. After this delicious dinner, he'd get up and never think of carrying his plate two feet to the sink, walk out to his car followed by her for a goodbye kiss. She did a wash on Monday, ironed on Tuesday, grocery shopped on Friday, and did everything. He did not lift a finger except for manly jobs like mowing and weeding. Needless to say, that wasn't passed on to the next generation. Ask my husband.

As someone who lived through the 1950's and 60's, I can tell you life was much different than how it's portrayed in some TV show or movie. It may be hard for some of you to imagine, but some women enjoyed being SAHM and wives, and most women weren't treated like servants, or abused. Most women could have worked outside the home if they wanted to, and many did.

No, life wasn't perfect for women back then, but life is never perfect. Women may have it better today in some ways, but there's one thing that I wish would change. Back then a woman wasn't ridiculed for choosing to be a SAHM and housewife. I was a SAHM and I couldn't tell you how many times I've been ridiculed and insulted for what I chose, because I wasn't " working".

It's silly to base your opinion of life in the past by what you see on some sitcom, Women didn't cook and clean wearing pearls and heels, and not all women were weak, mousy and abused by their husbands. Do TV show and moves today actually reflect your real life ?

Oh good Lord, imagine, in 50 years, everyone watching the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo and thinking that is how we all live today! LOL

WWl is when women got to have really good paying jobs. They were crammed back into the kitchen when that war was over and not allowed to work those jobs they had done so well. Along came WWll and again women left the domestic sphere to take on jobs reserved for men and did them well. When that war ended not only were most women fired but our government did an ad campaign telling women that they would be taking a job away from a man with a family if they insisted on continuing to work one of those well paying jobs. People still believed that when I was young. Women historically were not allowed to become doctors or lawyers or any number of jobs and were not even allowed to attend the schools that would make you educated to become one. How do we account for women not being allowed to play golf? I could list this stuff endlessly. Glass ceiling anyone?

In the sitcom Bewitched Samantha was not allowed to exercise her gifts. She simply learned to lie about it. When I was young and everyone says women were stay at home moms I was envied by my fourth grade friends because I was the only one with a mother at home. Those mothers would have said they didnt work but they did. They worked at the schools, they worked in family businesses or what ever but they worked and that was not some liberal north or crazy hippie west, it was deep south.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s and our home was "traditional" in that Dad worked and Mom took care of the house and kids, of which there were 5. My Dad rarely did anything around the house, my Mom was sort of a jack of all trades. Unlike the sitcom moms, mine didn't wear dresses and pearls. She was very casual. Shorts in the summer, jeans or pants in the winter. She made lunch for my Dad when he came home from the hospital and before he started his afternoon clinic. She made dinner with dessert every night. Then my Dad got sick, with cancer. My mom had to work a menial job (scheduler at the hospital) just to have health insurance. My dad was off work for maybe 5 years, and when he returned my mom got her master's degree so she could teach if he relapsed, but thankfully she never needed to.

My father always got strange looks when he mentioned how unfairly women were treated after WWII. He was 4F because of a bad leg so worked in a factory along with the women. Many of the men who took the jobs he considered lazy good for nothings because the women worked harder and better. It took until the 1970s until women were again welcomed into some of the jobs that they fulfilled during the war. Until recently there were and probably are jobs that women fulfilled back then such as plumbing and electrical things that a woman need not even ask for training because she would never be hired. The younger ones do not understand how far women have come and how easy it would be to slip back into being not even a person but something to use, abuse, and discard.

Children were often protected from the worse abuse because it would either happen behind closed doors or when the children were not there. There were a lot of unexplained bruises and wearing of long blouses. It was an open secrete that correcting should be done to the body and not to where it could be seen.

I salute all SAHMs - and SAHFs, as well (I know three of the latter). Personally, I'm happy I had the choice to work, because my mother did not. Which she resented tremendously, and rightfully so; saying she was born too early for Women's Lib.

She would have been a business whiz, with her personality and energy. But no college and no jobs open except as a housekeeper or waitress left us pretty poor after her divorce.

I learned long afterwards that while my parents were still married and my dad had financial difficulties, she took a job as a receptionist. The company absolutely loved her, and promoted her steadily - this was the 1950's - until she was earning a higher salary than my dad.

So he made her quit. Hurt his fragile little male ego, I guess. She was devastated.

I don't consider staying at home or not, a matter of one choice being better than the other. It's the fact I DO have a choice, that is what matters.

My family has always chuckled about the fact that my niece-in-law admits to being very intimidated by the fact that everybody loves to cook in my family, including my brother (who took food carving classes with our mom and happily made a turduckhen for one memorable Thanksgiving) and my nephew (her spouse), who has owned three houses so far, each one of which he's remodeled the kitchen to include a 36" Bluestar range, which I recommended to him based on all the old GW Kitchen posts that first talked about it!

He LOVES those high-powered open burners, so many thanks to those early Bluestar fans who were so generous with their experiences. I wish I had room for one for myself, LOL.

And actually, my spouse is a very good cook as well. Went through hotel & restaurant training for his degree. But since I like to cook.....

....He does the laundry!

I grew up in the 50s/60s. My dad was the breadwinner and my mother was the homemaker. She wasn't perfect but she had dinner on the table every night, baked wonderful pies and I got to come home from elementary school every day for lunch. Dad always took over the weekend cooking and it was he who would rise early in the morning to scrub and wax the kitchen floor. He was the family gardener and handyman who could fix anything. If I became ill when I was small he was the one who would bring an old army cot in my room and sleep with me. Many of of classmates had mothers who worked in small businesses they owned, like the local dress shops, bakeries and small coffee shops. Some worked alongside their husbands in small businesses for a few hours while the kids were in school.

My children were raised in the 70s and I have zero regrets that I choose to be a SAHM and that I had the opportunity to do so. We had some lean budget stretching years but it was worth it. My husband didn't cook but he helped clean and was a very involved father. I remember thinking it was so stupid when I would leave the kids home with him and someone would mention how he was babysitting. Nope. He was parenting. Sadly, what I did see in the 70s were quite a few suburban SAHM mothers who weren't all that much into the parenting end. Their kids were basically latch key kids while mom was out pursuing her hobbies or enriching herself. That was their part in the women's movement I guess.

My parents immigrated along with many of my aunts and uncles after WWII. Everyone worked when they came here. The men generally in restaurants, the women as domestics. When I visited relatives there as a child, it occurred to me, that there was always plenty of work for everyone on the farm.

When I would watch these programs on television, they seemed as realistic to me as the looney tunes. A made up fairytale. Insulting if you took it seriously, but sometimes amusing if taken in the spirit it was intended.

I disagree about Alice on the Honeymooners. She didn’t take any of his “carp” without giving him a piece of her mind. She had the best lines.

Yes, there were the “bang, zoom, to the moon” lines, but her response was never one of fear. I found the later shows ridiculousness in their depiction of marriage and home life, and way more insulting.

I never said that all men are abusers. I certainly never lived the life as depicted in those old shows. My parents had a long and loving relationship and they were total partners in life. They came from very poor families, had no education and managed to forge a good life together. My dad never wore a suit and my mom never wore pearls, or a fancy chiffon apron.

I, myself, was a home maker, wife, and mother, and now a grandmother. My husband got an education and had a career. I never got that higher education and never had a career.

We were much like my parents, partners in life. He earned the income and I put it the best use by keeping the house, cooking the meals and we never paid for childcare.

My husband, on the other hand, lived in a house where his father would abuse and hit his mother. She had five kids, no education, no means of support other than him and her own mother gave her the advice to just stop complaining and to take the abuse from her husband as a matter of course. She, herself, had been the wife of a man who totally terrorized her and the kids. She had even fewer choices that her daughter did and she was not upset when he was hit and killed by a car crossing the road.

It was not that long ago that women had very little recourse against the abuse of their husbands. We forget that it was not that long ago that women were not educated, allowed to vote, or to have their own financial affairs.

Much domestic abuse was overlooked.

I remember watching an old movie , probably pre WWII, where the scene was that a man was having words with his wife on the street and a friendly policeman advised him, in a most comic Irish accent, to take her home and beat her, but dont do it in the street. Nowadays that would dialogue would be wholly unacceptable.

It is my understanding that the prohibition era was brought about largely as a reaction to the abuse that women suffered at the hands of men under the influence of alcohol. Times were hard and men were stressed and their families paid a price for that stress and fear and frustration.

Honeymooners did depict the wife as the calm and wise one, but that did not stop Ralph from threatening her as his main source of humor.

As they moved out to the burbs and had a couple of kids, mom did get less abused, a bit more empowered, and a bit smarter, but she still had mainly being a wife and mother as her only route, even if she was educated. And, her driving a car was still a source of humor. That was back in the day when there was one car and dad took it to work, leaving her stranded or walking to town for her shopping, in real life.

Some may point out that it is just TV fiction. But, I think that it gives credence to that adage about how life imitates art, and vice versa. Media images do reflect us. Humor is at its most humorous when it really does reflect us and who were are. At that point in history, we were finding humor in what we now see as an abusive relationship.

Watching those old TV shows can give a first hand account of our social history. There is so much of who we were that is reflected in those old shows. It was not all negative. There were many more cultural norms of the time, some of them were quite honorable.

My own life was not the Honeymooners and it was not Leave It To Beaver, either. But, all of America laughed at that humor.

I was a home maker starting in the 70s, too, and I do remember that I got discounted by so many of my generation who were beginning to get educations and have careers. I felt that I was looked down upon.

I used to fix my husband a very nice lunch at a time when he worked close enough to come home for lunch. I and the kids would sit with him as he had his lunch and I always made it as special and wonderful for him as I could. After he went back to work the kids wend down for a nap and that was my time.

When he went out to work he did not have to concern himself as to who was keeping care of the home and the kids. I was right there with his dinner prepared for him, for almost his entire career. I felt that we were partners and this was my job.

Given some of the workplace hardships that he endured, I often felt fortunate to only have to deal with the laundry and dinner and maybe painting a wall.

We each had a part to play and he was never abusive. He grew up with his father abusing his mother and never wanted to be that husband/father.

As the kids got older and set out on their own, it was just me and the dog waiting for him to walk in the door in the evening. And, his dinner was almost always awaiting him.

I, too, faced criticism from peers who saw it as an unequal match. One real difference between my mom, my grandmothers and myself is that, if I really wanted to do something different, I could much more easily have done it. But, I didn't.

Regrets? Yes, I have regrets. I wish that I had become an urban planner or an engineer. I regret some of my decisions. He does too. He had to finish the education and go out and find a career to support his family, and he did what he had to do to make that happen. He made a nice living and a nice retirement for us and I endeavored to spend his income in a wise and resourceful manner. What he really wanted to do was to enter the field of anthropology which has been a long interest of his.

One interesting thing about his career were the number of working women he encountered who wished that they had a "wife' at home, as he did.

Life has a lot of trade offs and there is rarely a second choice offered.

One thing that I see about marriage or partnership nowadays is that much of the basic structure of family life has not evolved to match the new freedoms and roles that many women have.

There are many two income families, many single parents, and many kids in day care.

Ask a gathering of working mothers about the division of household labor and child rearing and you will find that the burden still sits mainly with the women. Not for all, obviously. But, for many it still is functioning within the framework of an old model of family life. And it often does not work well within that framework. I see much dysfunction. I see it in the lives of our two grown children and their young families.

Much has not caught up to the new version of family life.

I am pleased to hear talk of improving child care and incorporating it as a basic fact of life for many and giving it some priority. Women/mothers with careers is not regressing backwards.

I envy young women today who have so many choices of their own to make.

Sure, I had choices, but I did not know it. I did not grow up with the idea that I could get an education. I came from a solid working class background and higher education was really only for my two older brothers. Husband came from working class roots, too and his father's only advice was to become a truck driver like he did. Our families offered us no vision.

Even our schools offered no real paths or option or inspiration as to what to do after those 12 years. It was a different world back then and it is difficult for some to imagine if they have never lived it.

We married two weeks after I graduated from high school. He was just a young Airman in Air Force who had joined the AF in lieu of being drafted into the Army and going to Viet Nam. When he got out, he used the GI bill to go to college. We had children at a young age and he knew that it was his duty to support us, and he did. He exercised a solid work ethic and I was always there with his dinner, the kids, and the home fires burning when he got home.

Our relationship has always been solid, but we do both have some regrets.

I was born several months before Pearl Harbor and WWII. My mother had been a teacher before she married. Many pregnancies and 4 children kept her at home in the traditional stay at home mom role. Laundry was a two or three day chore. She baked our bread and cooked all our meals. She was an equal partner with my father in the leadership of our family. All of us kids knew we would be earning a college degree, giving us career choices to provide for us and to serve us in any financial emergency. But the huge difference occurred when I was in college. The girls graduating in May were marrying in June, and they were all on the pill, something I had never heard of. Now, a woman could work, plan for her family’s financial security, and decide when to have a baby and when, if ever, to have another. I remember when DH and I eloped at spring break. I was finishing my Master’s degree that summer and talked with the older women in my department about my continuing career plans. They would laugh at me, remembering their own early years as a bride and explain that the following year I would be surely on maternity leave. “No, I would explain. That won’t happen. I’ve got The Pill.” They were always taken aback. There had been no such option for them and most of them had returned to teaching only recently after taking leave for years to raise their kids. By the time I was ready to have our kids and be a stay at home mom, the pill had allowed us to build a nest egg for our family to give us a solid foundation and to allow me to be home to raise our children.

And I recall after I'd been working and married a couple of years, my manager's boss came to me and said he was surprised that I seem serious about my career....that most other women would be pregnant by now. Can you imagine? He also told me he purposely hired post-menopausal secretaries so he didn't have to worry about them getting pregnant and leaving. SMH.

Empowering a women to control her reproductive life empowers and benefits the whole society. We are fortunate that women can easily find birth control here in the US. For some, in some cultures, a woman's desire to be in control of her own life often meets head on with cultural obstacles.

These divisions of labor and the different parts that men and women play in the reproduction process is something that we have not redefined very well, yet. The immutable facts of nature are just that, immutable. At least, they are for now. That may change in humankind's future.

Depending on your age, your mother and grandmother certainly had many fewer choices.

I really offends our modern sensibilities to see women being portrayed as the foolish creatures as it used to be. But, it is a part of who we were at that time. This was considered to be a subject of humor.

The really early TV shows are interesting in many ways but it has to be remembered that it was the way it was at the time and it doesn't mean that people were any more good or bad. The core of our humanity has not changed, only our sensibilities have changed.

"We are fortunate that women can easily find birth control here in the US." I think many women are that not all that fortunate if they happen to be poor or live in some birth control "desert" as described here:

https://powertodecide.org/what-we-do/access/birth-control-access

"19,318,330 women in need live in contraceptive deserts

1,289,130 women in need live in counties without access to a single health center that provides the full range of methods"

We've got a long way to go to claim women here have easy access.

There was an article in todays news feed about the low birth rate that we are experiencing. Given that our natural urges are still intact, there must be enough birth control in the hands of women to make a difference.

There will always be need of some kind not being meant, somewhere. That is just a fact of our imperfect world. Overall, it is accessible to those who seek it.

If we keep leaning to the right in our politics, we just might find the plight of women in need to increase.

Just by circumstance, I have recently seen movie and media images and stories of some of these religious cultures and social cultures where women are completely excluded and even denigrated and looked upon with suspicion. Our culture is different, for now.

Women have to be diligent and put up defense against some of these forces that would set us back to those days where we were laughed at for driving a car and where married women were referred to as Mrs. Him.

maifluer, you are right that we have to exercise some vigilance over our modern status and rights. It is not that long ago that things were very different. Young people take it for granted and don't realize how little removed we are from those days.

wild child, you are right that a father cant be a "babysitter". He is a parent. That is something that I have always corrected. How can he be babysitting?

I did wonder if it was the lack of physical connection this past year rather than birth control methods that lead to the reduced number of births.

As cultures become more prosperous the number of births drop. It was the same in Rome no less back during the empire. It is not exactly understood as to how or why it happens. Educated prosperous women mostly have fewer children. This was true before reliable birth control.

Another of those cultural memes is that women DO house work, men Help.

Have you ever seen the movie "Idiocracy"? In this movie the well educated and upper class couple in the movie find the child bearing years slip away from them and they find that their plans to have children get thwarted and they remain childless.

Joe Six Pack, on the other hand, has managed to procreate with any number of women who bear his many children

Here is another example of life and "art" interplaying with one another.

The more educated and/or prosperous a person is, the more careful are the choices as to procreation, generally speaking.

I agree, the other person in the equation cannot help with the family duties. They should be just as responsible as the other.