Equal work

[SnowyMacie]

I'm currently reading an eye-opening book called The Way We Never Were, and one of the things that I didn't know is that after World War II women pushed, sometimes forcefully, out of the workforce and into domesticity. I had always thought that it was not the norm before World War II for women to work and so it was very much a willful exit and transition into the role of housewife and mother. However, that was very much not the case. The notion that housework was entire a woman's job and being a stay-at-home mother without help was very much an idea that only came out in the 20th century.

The other thing that was very eye-opening to me when it talked about that was just how privately unhappy that time was for both men and women. Someone quoted a saying their mother once told them about the life of a housewife in those days, she said it was "baking, bridge, booze, and boredom." Men were also as secretly unhappy, they felt intense pressure to keep up appearances, unhappy about giving up certain things, or even just felt completely out of place being the "sole breadwinning, head of household" picture that lifestyle aimed for.

In other words, the picture that nostalgia paints about men being happy going off to work and coming home to a clean house with a cooked meal from a happy stay-at-home wife with two kids and a dog is just that, it's an ideal. It doesn't work like that and didn't work like that when that was the norm, it just was about creating the appearance of that.

 

[mkgal1]

I've had that book on my "wish list" for YEARS. I'm glad you mentioned it (and how history has been re-written).

 

[Paidiske]

*Adds book to wish list*

I completely agree. The other thing that's a bugbear of mine is the way many thinkers kind of project the realities of that time backwards. So they'll say that when we were hunter-gatherers, the women tended the cave while the men went out hunting. Nope; sorry. We did not have post-industrial-revolution patterns of home separate from work until very late in history; for most of history, work and home were much more integrated and everybody (children who were old enough included) worked for the survival of the whole group.

 

[Dave-W]

for most of history, work and home were much more integrated and everybody (children who were old enough included) worked for the survival of the whole group.

That is very true.

My wife read a book (can't remember the name) several years ago which was a compilation of journals of the wives of the US pioneers, from the very late 18th century thru the first half of the 19th. (pre-Civil War) The women did a LOT of very hard work. So did the kids. For much of the time it was "all hands on deck" to get the job done.

 

[JRichard68]

Hi. I'm 'ValleyGal's' husband. Anything anyone would like to know, ask.

 

[Paidiske]

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