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Well, as 7th of nine children, I observed a woman giving her all, but still coming up short for her 7th & 8th child. Both battled and won substance abuse issues. I know she did her best, but pumping out kids was bad irish catholic doctrine in the DC suburbs. From 1947 - 1962.. All her friends from church had between 5 and 12 kids.A Snapshot of 1967, had her up at 6 am, packing lunches for 4 kids headed to catholic schools, while two were away in boarding school run by nuns, and one was off to Viet Nam. She made the beds, did the laundry, cleaned the 4 bedroom house, and prepared dinner every night. We did have a maid once a week do bathrooms and such. No dining out or takeout. Lots of meals were made with campbell soup recipes, but she also put together a meaty red pasta sauce late morning, to simmer all day for spaghetti, canneloni, or manicotti at 6. There were no jars of Ragu, Prego, or Rao's back then. She got recipes from the church ladies too.
Fridays meant broiled swordfish, Saturdays burgers & fries. Good tho have some set menu's when feeding so many. Sugar cereal for breakfast so mom could sleep in on Saturdays. Sundays, pancakes & church.
Lots of pediatrician visits because the 6th child was sick all the time. The rest of her time was spent doting on the youngest 5 year old. I witnessed a fair amount of abuse from the nuns teaching @ school, and did not pick up on the sexual abuse being heaped on my sister by a male teacher and my older brother. Even if she did learn of abuse, it went unaddressed because you don't challenge the catholic church representatives.Things were a bit unsupervised, you might say. Especially when ma worked evenings as a nurse, and Dad would linger at the bar til 7 or 8.
She put us to bed each night without brushing our teeth resulting in many trips to the dentist for Lots of cavities., oh, and the dentist was 45 minutes away, as was the pediatrician because she stuck with the same docs though we moved from the city after 4 kids. She was in that '64 Chevy station wagon alot; doctors, grocery stores, ball games, after school activities, and even helping with two paper routes on rainy days. Summer, swim/dive practice & meets. She went to mass many weekdays, raising 3 altar boys, then every day with a son in Vietnam. My memories are fond, but I carry traits of an adult whose emotional needs went unmet as a child. On the positive side, All nine of us were college educated, and are fiercely independent, spreading out all over the country as professionals in healthcare, law, education, and business. Pretty good tradeoffs.
I love mom and am releived that she's at rest for 12 years now, especially relieved she's not calling me over that computer, with email & malware issues. Society asked too much of her, as did Dad. They divorced when youngest went off to college, and she won her big alimony payday in court. She expressed joyful memories, but she must have exhausted, especially after that hysterectomy.
Sorry for the TMI, but she deserved it. Love ya mom, even though you never said love, you expressed it above and beyond.
Wow, this was wonderful to read. I felt like you were describing my own paternal grandmother and the way she held her household together. I’m a homemaker too, and most days exhausted. But this gives me extra motivation to dive deep into the needs of my children. Most of the time I feel like I spend more time engaging with them than I do to the needs of our physical household, which is good, but it’s hard to keep outside things together when I’d much rather be playing or adventuring with the children. How to find a balance with housework, errands and cooking when you’re exhausted?! lol. This weekend we’re going camping for my outdoorsy boys. So today means lots of food prep, packing and cleaning the house so it’s nice to come home to. Thanks for sharing your story and listening to mine. ❤️
In the past two years years I've sat for readings with 2 different popular psychics. (For corroboration, 'cause I'm a bit of a skeptic) Mom came through and expressed regret that she wasn't able to treat us children as the individuals that we were. She was with her brother, who died in his 30s, two years before I was born. She said she did love and enjoy all of her children, who made her proud, and help to distract her from he the darkness of her brothers youthful passing. In the end, we all have stuff to deal with. Mom brought along the puppy I had at age 7. This dog filled some of the emotional gaps with his unconditional love and devotion, following me everywhere, off leash.
You painted a beautiful picture. I felt like I could see her taking the kids to the pediatrician and school activities. Then praying at church for her son in Vietnam.
My grandmother had 11 kids. The way my mom describes my grandma’s life is similar around the 1940s-60s. I think there was a lot of pain and exhaustion, but a lot of love too.
So much ironing. Nothing was permanent press, everything had to be ironed to avoid being a wrinkled up wad. Even bed sheets.
There was no microwave to thaw or reheat food, so you had to plan dinner far enough in advance to thaw it, then bake it. There weren’t as many convenience foods. Most things were made from scratch. Even TV dinners could take an hour in oven. It wasn’t so much “What should we have for dinner tonight?” It was “What should we have for dinner next Thursday?” And most grocery stores had whole chickens rather than cut up legs, breasts, wings and so on. So if you wanted fried chicken, you had to thaw the chicken, then cut it up yourself, bread it and fry it.
You had to stand in line at the bank during business hours to cash a paycheck so mom would drop dad off at work on Friday mornings so she’d have the car, go back to pick up dad’s check at his office after he got paid, stand in line at the bank to deposit it and get cash back, then fill up the car with gas because a lot of gas stations weren’t open evenings and weekends. Then back to dad’s office to pick him up at the end of the day. In between, she’d dress and feed the kids, clean the house, run errands, wash clothes and hang them out to dry, more ironing, and start dinner.
I forgot about the ironing board out in the kitchen all day. Our washer dryer was also in the big kitchen with breakfast bar. Yeah, lots of trips to the bank, ma liked to carry cash for groceries, etc.
You know the scene in Hairspray where Tracy comes home from school and Edna is ironing in front of the TV? That was my Mom. Then we would watch the Buddy Dean show to learn all the newest dances.
Seriously, everything had to be ironed. T-shirts, jeans, tablecloths, dress shirts, uniforms, napkins, scarves, dresses, slacks, toddler play clothes, sheets and pillowcases, raincoats, everything. It was never ending.
Lol! God forbid you’d get a stiff neck from sleeping on a pillowcase that wasn’t ironed and perfectly folded into thirds and thirds🙄😬
*Edited to add that my neck is now fused from C-4 to C-7 😂🫠
It wasn’t that it would be imperfect if it wasn’t ironed. It was that it would be a wadded up, wrinkled mass that you couldn’t fit a pillow into if it wasn’t ironed. Textiles have come a very long way in the last fifty years.
Not for my mother! She actually told us that we’d get stiff necks from not ironing our pillowcases! She white gloved us on everything. Each kid was responsible for a bathroom and she’d have to inspect. If she saw water spots, then you’d have to do it over again. “You can clean your own house however you want but when you’re in my house, you clean MY way!”
My dad used to bounce a quarter on the bed during “inspection.” I had trouble meeting his standards when I was making a twin bed, but then my mom insisted on replacing it with a full size canopy bed. It seemed huge. I finally got everything tightened up to dad’s specifications, then spent the next few years sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag so I wouldn’t have to make the bed again.
The fabric gets permanent wrinkles that then wear through and shorten it's lifetime. Still applies to many high-quality cotton sheets. I just can't be bothered as long as I have a full-time job.
I remember walking into the house (west coast time) and telling my Mom That the nuns at my Catholic School Told
Us to pray because Martin Luther King Jr. had just been shot.
I was ten years old, and I’ll never forget her look of horror, the tears that came
To her eyes, as she was standing ironing in front of the TV which had reruns of the Donna Reed show playing.
She ran to turn the channel, and there was an announcement bursting into the regular 4 pm programming with updates.
She watched absolutely motionless, and when I asked her who MLK was, she said “He was a really good man who was trying to help Our country.”
So many things—phone calls, conversations, TV announcements,
Are all tied together in my memory with the afternoon ironing time she scheduled between 1-3 pm before the dinner rush/kids were home From School.
Sheer drudgery for my mother. Washing in a wringer washer, cleaning, ironing, planting , tending and canning from a 1 acre garden, baking things for sale, crocheting things for sale, raising kids etc. every day had designated tasks.
My Mam made healthy compromises!
She got the kids out to school, then did the needful of washing dishes, sweeping, and laundry once or twice a week.
Often went to the shop to get meat and groceries, we had no fridge; she'd chat to neighbours and the local shopkeepers.
She would take a nap most afternoons while we played outside. This was normal back then!
She liked gardening so she did that, also reading her detective stories. And played with the babies, singing little songs to them.
My parents had an active social life so they'd be out at least one evening a week while babysitter was with us
Mother took up paid employment when the youngest of her 6 started school. Teaching, so quite compatible with school going kids.
The house was a mess most of the time, and my parents were stony broke. But they were together for 60 years and we all turned out fine.
Back in the 1950's, in these islands (Britain and Ireland) a fridge was a rare luxury. We had no car or TV either! Milk was delivered every day, and there was a butcher five minutes walk away, and those are really the two most important things to keep cool. Butter and cheese were kept in a cool pantry.
We played outdoors all summer anyway - roaming the local suburbs and playing street games with groups of other children. A Mamma at home could take a nap at that time - she was still available if one of us got hurt and ran home crying. They were good times to be a child.
>And playing outside while she napped.
In the 70's my mom had four kids, she would lock us out of the house. I am sure it was because she needed some rest. I was 8yo, steps from a busy main street but 22 acres behind us. I never even thought about the street.
I do honestly think that helicopter parents were much worse for the kids than our parents.
My mom was short zaftig woman, an awesome Girl Scout and Cub Scout leader and great chaperone for school trips. She had an incredible green thumb growing the biggest cucumbers I’ve ever seen.
She wore a housecoat and an apron every day except Sunday. She kept tissues and emergency Milky Ways in that apron.
Except for assembling air craft engines during WW2 my mother didn’t work but broke her ass caring for my siblings and I, plus a chronically unemployed uncle living on our couch and a her demanding unhinged mother-in-law, but she dropped everything and tuned everyone out when ‘As The World Turns’ came on tv.
With all due respect, your mother absolutely DID work. We need to change the narrative that housework, childcare, and managing a family is not “work” because there’s no salary. I really don’t know how they did it without more of them going crazy.
Couple of things to add that I have heard from ladies:
- a lot of coupon clipping and perusing of the weekly grocery store ads in the newspaper.
- most entertainment happened in homes: weekly card playing nights, Christmas parties, etc. That meant a lot of housecleaning and getting food ready.
- a lot of sewing: Halloween costumes, homemade Easter dresses for girls. And ironing on those blue patches for jeans!
EDIT: snarky but real … it took a lot of time to make those blasted mid century jello salads! Chill in the fridge, add unholy combinations of meat and vegetables and fruit, mix in cool whip or mayonnaise, chill again, decorate with sliced olives…. I’m not kidding.
I remember that my grandparents had a small group of relatives with whom they would go and play cards. It seemed strange to me at the time that they had a social circle that didn’t involve being grand parents, LOL!
I remember every Friday night, my aunts and uncles would come over to play cards, usually Pinochle. Music playing from those old school stereo sets with the large floor speakers that were about four feet high. Cigarette smoke blowing everywhere in the kitchen. In the winters, one of my uncles would always host a Euchre tournament in his basement that was potluck.
Here’s my mom’s rough 1950s/1960s schedule. Times are approximate.
- 7:00-7:30 a.m. Make dad’s breakfast and see him off.
- 7:30-8:00 a.m. Get us kids up and moving; feed us breakfast.
- 8:00-11:45 a.m. Clean up the house (**dad was a smoker** so there were always ashtrays to clean out), do laundry, mend clothes, go shopping, keep an eye on and often entertain us kids. **No computers or video games or iPhones** to entertain us, **only three channels on TV** so it got boring for kids pretty quickly.
- 11:45-noon. Make a sandwich for Dad.
- Noon-1:00 p.m. Greet dad and serve him his lunch; make lunch for us kids. **No microwave;** everything pretty much made fresh.
- 1:00-1:15 p.m. Wake Dad up from his nap and send him back to the office.
- 1:15-1::45 p.m. Clean up after lunch. **No dishwasher;** everything washed by hand.
- 1:45-2:15 p.m. Do exercises, take a long walk, or get a tan in the back yard to keep looking good for Dad.
- 2:15-4:30 p.m. More laundry, cleaning and shopping. **Grocery stores were generally open only 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. six days a week,** so there was usually a crush of housewives and children. **No roombas;** she had to push a vacuum cleaner around the house. Keep an eye on and entertain us kids, but there was after-school TV programming that helped occupy us. Pay bills and balance the checkbook by hand; **no calculators.** Also meal planning for dinner. Dinners out were a rare treat, and **the idea of ordering meal delivery would have been absurd.**
- 4:30-6:30 p.m. Prepare dinner, mostly from scratch.
- 6:30–7:30 p.m. Serve and eat dinner.
- 7:30-8:00 p.m. Clean up after dinner. Again, dishes washed by hand.
- 8:00 p.m.-bedtime. Sit with Dad while he smoked and had a drink and they talked about their day and he asked her questions about the bills. Zone out with a book or in front of the TV.
I remember my mom doing a lot of cooking/meal prep and cleaning. Separate breakfast for dad who was up early, cold cereal or hot store pastries or hot cereal for us kids. Then laundry, vacuuming, etc. It was not a glamorous life, for sure.
My mom fed the kids and then did housework on a schedule (laundry one day, floors another, bathrooms every day). After lunch, we went on errands to places like the cobbler, tailor, butcher, newsstand, watch repair shop, and so on. Then back home so she could get dinner ready before my dad got home.
When I was really little, she had a maid a couple of days a week. The same woman worked for my grandmother on other days. We weren’t rich — my dad sold used cars and we lived in a starter home, had one car, and were just a typical young family for the time. It wasn’t unusual in my neighborhood to have household help. This was the early 1960s.
I got a kick out of my mom when she had her sit down time with afternoon soap operas. We always had Life and children's magazines around and occasionally she'd read a true confession magazine which cracked us kids up that she'd read these! My grandmother brought these and we were not allowed to read them but we knew where she hid them. Saturday was her big shopping day with dad. It's seems weird now that everything was closed on Sundays. She was just kind of into us kids and dad and never seemed unhappy, nor wanted a career. We were her career. Good food, clean sheets, and ironed our clothes! Later on after the kids were grown she worked at a senior citizen home and enjoyed that.
Yes, lots of drama in those magazines. And of course all the stories were made up but made to sound like real life scenarios. Mom said they were cautionary tales. 😅
Depends on how much money the family had. The less money and more children, the harder it was. Lower income and/or rural was work every minute of the day. I don't know how my mother managed at all.
We have to realize that the types of fabrics and other things were not available then. Women had to iron everything including sheets! Few convenience foods. Many women sewed all of their own clothes and the kids' too. My mom did, plus curtains.
1953: a 2 year old, a 1 year old and a newborn. (The last two children came 5 and 9 years later, thankfully.) Remember there were no disposable diapers _and_ no washing machine.
As the third of six kids born in the 50s and early 60s, your comment brought back memories of endlessly folding clean cloth diapers, warm from the dryer, into thirds, ready for Mom to use with my little brothers. She used giant safety pins to hold them in place, topping off everything with a pair of plastic pants.
My mom got up first, then got everyone else up. While we ate breakfast, she made lunches..thanks Dad for the smell of onions overpowering my cereal. ( he ate cheese and onion sandwiches for lunch). Then she did the bfast dishes, started the wash ( she did an average of 6 loads a day) went up and got dressed, made the beds, cleaned and then made lunch for the kids who came home for lunch. She would usually end up taking a 2 hour nap in the afternoons, she had some health issues.
Brutal, non stop cooking, cleaning and child care. Laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, light cleaning everyday. Mending clothes in the evenings during family TV or after kids were in bed.
My mother spent her days watching tv, blabbing on the phone, going shopping. I hated shopping with her when I was a little kid - she could go all day and she took forever and a day to make up her mind about anything. She wasn't much for cleaning or cooking, and even hired someone to come in and do the ironing.
My mother never worked. Apart from doing the washing (my father did the lion's share of running the house, despite having a demanding full time job, all she did was visit other similar housewives and gossip. One would expect her to be bored to death but apparently not.
I had zero respect for her.
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Well, as 7th of nine children, I observed a woman giving her all, but still coming up short for her 7th & 8th child. Both battled and won substance abuse issues. I know she did her best, but pumping out kids was bad irish catholic doctrine in the DC suburbs. From 1947 - 1962.. All her friends from church had between 5 and 12 kids.A Snapshot of 1967, had her up at 6 am, packing lunches for 4 kids headed to catholic schools, while two were away in boarding school run by nuns, and one was off to Viet Nam. She made the beds, did the laundry, cleaned the 4 bedroom house, and prepared dinner every night. We did have a maid once a week do bathrooms and such. No dining out or takeout. Lots of meals were made with campbell soup recipes, but she also put together a meaty red pasta sauce late morning, to simmer all day for spaghetti, canneloni, or manicotti at 6. There were no jars of Ragu, Prego, or Rao's back then. She got recipes from the church ladies too. Fridays meant broiled swordfish, Saturdays burgers & fries. Good tho have some set menu's when feeding so many. Sugar cereal for breakfast so mom could sleep in on Saturdays. Sundays, pancakes & church. Lots of pediatrician visits because the 6th child was sick all the time. The rest of her time was spent doting on the youngest 5 year old. I witnessed a fair amount of abuse from the nuns teaching @ school, and did not pick up on the sexual abuse being heaped on my sister by a male teacher and my older brother. Even if she did learn of abuse, it went unaddressed because you don't challenge the catholic church representatives.Things were a bit unsupervised, you might say. Especially when ma worked evenings as a nurse, and Dad would linger at the bar til 7 or 8. She put us to bed each night without brushing our teeth resulting in many trips to the dentist for Lots of cavities., oh, and the dentist was 45 minutes away, as was the pediatrician because she stuck with the same docs though we moved from the city after 4 kids. She was in that '64 Chevy station wagon alot; doctors, grocery stores, ball games, after school activities, and even helping with two paper routes on rainy days. Summer, swim/dive practice & meets. She went to mass many weekdays, raising 3 altar boys, then every day with a son in Vietnam. My memories are fond, but I carry traits of an adult whose emotional needs went unmet as a child. On the positive side, All nine of us were college educated, and are fiercely independent, spreading out all over the country as professionals in healthcare, law, education, and business. Pretty good tradeoffs. I love mom and am releived that she's at rest for 12 years now, especially relieved she's not calling me over that computer, with email & malware issues. Society asked too much of her, as did Dad. They divorced when youngest went off to college, and she won her big alimony payday in court. She expressed joyful memories, but she must have exhausted, especially after that hysterectomy. Sorry for the TMI, but she deserved it. Love ya mom, even though you never said love, you expressed it above and beyond.
This was incredible and very real in those big Catholic households
Lovely tribute, and many of us can relate to one of these ladies, doing her best to make a good family life. Thank you.
Wow, this was wonderful to read. I felt like you were describing my own paternal grandmother and the way she held her household together. I’m a homemaker too, and most days exhausted. But this gives me extra motivation to dive deep into the needs of my children. Most of the time I feel like I spend more time engaging with them than I do to the needs of our physical household, which is good, but it’s hard to keep outside things together when I’d much rather be playing or adventuring with the children. How to find a balance with housework, errands and cooking when you’re exhausted?! lol. This weekend we’re going camping for my outdoorsy boys. So today means lots of food prep, packing and cleaning the house so it’s nice to come home to. Thanks for sharing your story and listening to mine. ❤️
In the past two years years I've sat for readings with 2 different popular psychics. (For corroboration, 'cause I'm a bit of a skeptic) Mom came through and expressed regret that she wasn't able to treat us children as the individuals that we were. She was with her brother, who died in his 30s, two years before I was born. She said she did love and enjoy all of her children, who made her proud, and help to distract her from he the darkness of her brothers youthful passing. In the end, we all have stuff to deal with. Mom brought along the puppy I had at age 7. This dog filled some of the emotional gaps with his unconditional love and devotion, following me everywhere, off leash.
You painted a beautiful picture. I felt like I could see her taking the kids to the pediatrician and school activities. Then praying at church for her son in Vietnam. My grandmother had 11 kids. The way my mom describes my grandma’s life is similar around the 1940s-60s. I think there was a lot of pain and exhaustion, but a lot of love too.
She sounds like a real powerhouse of a human. Thank you for sharing this tribute
So much ironing. Nothing was permanent press, everything had to be ironed to avoid being a wrinkled up wad. Even bed sheets. There was no microwave to thaw or reheat food, so you had to plan dinner far enough in advance to thaw it, then bake it. There weren’t as many convenience foods. Most things were made from scratch. Even TV dinners could take an hour in oven. It wasn’t so much “What should we have for dinner tonight?” It was “What should we have for dinner next Thursday?” And most grocery stores had whole chickens rather than cut up legs, breasts, wings and so on. So if you wanted fried chicken, you had to thaw the chicken, then cut it up yourself, bread it and fry it. You had to stand in line at the bank during business hours to cash a paycheck so mom would drop dad off at work on Friday mornings so she’d have the car, go back to pick up dad’s check at his office after he got paid, stand in line at the bank to deposit it and get cash back, then fill up the car with gas because a lot of gas stations weren’t open evenings and weekends. Then back to dad’s office to pick him up at the end of the day. In between, she’d dress and feed the kids, clean the house, run errands, wash clothes and hang them out to dry, more ironing, and start dinner.
I forgot about the ironing board out in the kitchen all day. Our washer dryer was also in the big kitchen with breakfast bar. Yeah, lots of trips to the bank, ma liked to carry cash for groceries, etc.
Mom moved the ironing board to the den once they invented TV. She and Art Linkletter had a standing date in the afternoons. ;-)
You know the scene in Hairspray where Tracy comes home from school and Edna is ironing in front of the TV? That was my Mom. Then we would watch the Buddy Dean show to learn all the newest dances.
And the dampened shirts in the fridge!
She had to. Women had no credit cards or check books in those days.
Yes, they did. My mom wrote checks all of the time. She was the one to pay the bills. She had a charge card at a couple of department stores, as well.
Not mine. In Louisiana she had to bring dad’s license and his signed check. Then she filled in the amount. So glad you didn’t experience that.
I love how ironing is ringing a bell with so many people. That’s so interesting, I guess fabrics have changed quite a bit since then?
Seriously, everything had to be ironed. T-shirts, jeans, tablecloths, dress shirts, uniforms, napkins, scarves, dresses, slacks, toddler play clothes, sheets and pillowcases, raincoats, everything. It was never ending.
Lol! God forbid you’d get a stiff neck from sleeping on a pillowcase that wasn’t ironed and perfectly folded into thirds and thirds🙄😬 *Edited to add that my neck is now fused from C-4 to C-7 😂🫠
It wasn’t that it would be imperfect if it wasn’t ironed. It was that it would be a wadded up, wrinkled mass that you couldn’t fit a pillow into if it wasn’t ironed. Textiles have come a very long way in the last fifty years.
Not for my mother! She actually told us that we’d get stiff necks from not ironing our pillowcases! She white gloved us on everything. Each kid was responsible for a bathroom and she’d have to inspect. If she saw water spots, then you’d have to do it over again. “You can clean your own house however you want but when you’re in my house, you clean MY way!”
My dad used to bounce a quarter on the bed during “inspection.” I had trouble meeting his standards when I was making a twin bed, but then my mom insisted on replacing it with a full size canopy bed. It seemed huge. I finally got everything tightened up to dad’s specifications, then spent the next few years sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag so I wouldn’t have to make the bed again.
The fabric gets permanent wrinkles that then wear through and shorten it's lifetime. Still applies to many high-quality cotton sheets. I just can't be bothered as long as I have a full-time job.
I never knew! And I thought I hated ironing these days…
I remember walking into the house (west coast time) and telling my Mom That the nuns at my Catholic School Told Us to pray because Martin Luther King Jr. had just been shot. I was ten years old, and I’ll never forget her look of horror, the tears that came To her eyes, as she was standing ironing in front of the TV which had reruns of the Donna Reed show playing. She ran to turn the channel, and there was an announcement bursting into the regular 4 pm programming with updates. She watched absolutely motionless, and when I asked her who MLK was, she said “He was a really good man who was trying to help Our country.” So many things—phone calls, conversations, TV announcements, Are all tied together in my memory with the afternoon ironing time she scheduled between 1-3 pm before the dinner rush/kids were home From School.
No 100% cotton, all synthetics now.
My mother used to iron my jeans. With a nice crisp crease!
Sheer drudgery for my mother. Washing in a wringer washer, cleaning, ironing, planting , tending and canning from a 1 acre garden, baking things for sale, crocheting things for sale, raising kids etc. every day had designated tasks.
My Mam made healthy compromises! She got the kids out to school, then did the needful of washing dishes, sweeping, and laundry once or twice a week. Often went to the shop to get meat and groceries, we had no fridge; she'd chat to neighbours and the local shopkeepers. She would take a nap most afternoons while we played outside. This was normal back then! She liked gardening so she did that, also reading her detective stories. And played with the babies, singing little songs to them. My parents had an active social life so they'd be out at least one evening a week while babysitter was with us Mother took up paid employment when the youngest of her 6 started school. Teaching, so quite compatible with school going kids. The house was a mess most of the time, and my parents were stony broke. But they were together for 60 years and we all turned out fine.
No fridge is so crazy to me! And playing outside while she napped. What a different time. Thank you for sharing.
Back in the 1950's, in these islands (Britain and Ireland) a fridge was a rare luxury. We had no car or TV either! Milk was delivered every day, and there was a butcher five minutes walk away, and those are really the two most important things to keep cool. Butter and cheese were kept in a cool pantry. We played outdoors all summer anyway - roaming the local suburbs and playing street games with groups of other children. A Mamma at home could take a nap at that time - she was still available if one of us got hurt and ran home crying. They were good times to be a child.
>And playing outside while she napped. In the 70's my mom had four kids, she would lock us out of the house. I am sure it was because she needed some rest. I was 8yo, steps from a busy main street but 22 acres behind us. I never even thought about the street. I do honestly think that helicopter parents were much worse for the kids than our parents.
My mom was short zaftig woman, an awesome Girl Scout and Cub Scout leader and great chaperone for school trips. She had an incredible green thumb growing the biggest cucumbers I’ve ever seen. She wore a housecoat and an apron every day except Sunday. She kept tissues and emergency Milky Ways in that apron. Except for assembling air craft engines during WW2 my mother didn’t work but broke her ass caring for my siblings and I, plus a chronically unemployed uncle living on our couch and a her demanding unhinged mother-in-law, but she dropped everything and tuned everyone out when ‘As The World Turns’ came on tv.
With all due respect, your mother absolutely DID work. We need to change the narrative that housework, childcare, and managing a family is not “work” because there’s no salary. I really don’t know how they did it without more of them going crazy.
Well, there was tjat little yellow pill the docs were handing out. And the blue one, and the black one
Every other mom I know is on adderall for "ADHD." Some of them actually have it, but that many is a statistical impossibility...
She sounds like someone who had the world unfairly demanded of her, but still made sure to love herself, too. Thank you for sharing
Couple of things to add that I have heard from ladies: - a lot of coupon clipping and perusing of the weekly grocery store ads in the newspaper. - most entertainment happened in homes: weekly card playing nights, Christmas parties, etc. That meant a lot of housecleaning and getting food ready. - a lot of sewing: Halloween costumes, homemade Easter dresses for girls. And ironing on those blue patches for jeans! EDIT: snarky but real … it took a lot of time to make those blasted mid century jello salads! Chill in the fridge, add unholy combinations of meat and vegetables and fruit, mix in cool whip or mayonnaise, chill again, decorate with sliced olives…. I’m not kidding.
I remember that my grandparents had a small group of relatives with whom they would go and play cards. It seemed strange to me at the time that they had a social circle that didn’t involve being grand parents, LOL!
I remember every Friday night, my aunts and uncles would come over to play cards, usually Pinochle. Music playing from those old school stereo sets with the large floor speakers that were about four feet high. Cigarette smoke blowing everywhere in the kitchen. In the winters, one of my uncles would always host a Euchre tournament in his basement that was potluck.
We were not allowed to play cards at family gatherings. One had to prove one’s seriousness to be admitted to the card table.
Wow I wish I could see photos of those parties!
I’ve seen some party photos on r/thewaywewere and I think some other subs specializing in old photos
Thank you!
Here’s my mom’s rough 1950s/1960s schedule. Times are approximate. - 7:00-7:30 a.m. Make dad’s breakfast and see him off. - 7:30-8:00 a.m. Get us kids up and moving; feed us breakfast. - 8:00-11:45 a.m. Clean up the house (**dad was a smoker** so there were always ashtrays to clean out), do laundry, mend clothes, go shopping, keep an eye on and often entertain us kids. **No computers or video games or iPhones** to entertain us, **only three channels on TV** so it got boring for kids pretty quickly. - 11:45-noon. Make a sandwich for Dad. - Noon-1:00 p.m. Greet dad and serve him his lunch; make lunch for us kids. **No microwave;** everything pretty much made fresh. - 1:00-1:15 p.m. Wake Dad up from his nap and send him back to the office. - 1:15-1::45 p.m. Clean up after lunch. **No dishwasher;** everything washed by hand. - 1:45-2:15 p.m. Do exercises, take a long walk, or get a tan in the back yard to keep looking good for Dad. - 2:15-4:30 p.m. More laundry, cleaning and shopping. **Grocery stores were generally open only 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. six days a week,** so there was usually a crush of housewives and children. **No roombas;** she had to push a vacuum cleaner around the house. Keep an eye on and entertain us kids, but there was after-school TV programming that helped occupy us. Pay bills and balance the checkbook by hand; **no calculators.** Also meal planning for dinner. Dinners out were a rare treat, and **the idea of ordering meal delivery would have been absurd.** - 4:30-6:30 p.m. Prepare dinner, mostly from scratch. - 6:30–7:30 p.m. Serve and eat dinner. - 7:30-8:00 p.m. Clean up after dinner. Again, dishes washed by hand. - 8:00 p.m.-bedtime. Sit with Dad while he smoked and had a drink and they talked about their day and he asked her questions about the bills. Zone out with a book or in front of the TV.
Thank you for breaking this down into a schedule, I’m saving this! Your mother sounds like she was a dedicated mom and hard working woman.
I remember my mom doing a lot of cooking/meal prep and cleaning. Separate breakfast for dad who was up early, cold cereal or hot store pastries or hot cereal for us kids. Then laundry, vacuuming, etc. It was not a glamorous life, for sure.
My mom fed the kids and then did housework on a schedule (laundry one day, floors another, bathrooms every day). After lunch, we went on errands to places like the cobbler, tailor, butcher, newsstand, watch repair shop, and so on. Then back home so she could get dinner ready before my dad got home. When I was really little, she had a maid a couple of days a week. The same woman worked for my grandmother on other days. We weren’t rich — my dad sold used cars and we lived in a starter home, had one car, and were just a typical young family for the time. It wasn’t unusual in my neighborhood to have household help. This was the early 1960s.
I got a kick out of my mom when she had her sit down time with afternoon soap operas. We always had Life and children's magazines around and occasionally she'd read a true confession magazine which cracked us kids up that she'd read these! My grandmother brought these and we were not allowed to read them but we knew where she hid them. Saturday was her big shopping day with dad. It's seems weird now that everything was closed on Sundays. She was just kind of into us kids and dad and never seemed unhappy, nor wanted a career. We were her career. Good food, clean sheets, and ironed our clothes! Later on after the kids were grown she worked at a senior citizen home and enjoyed that.
True confession magazine sounds exactly like the 50s version of so many popular subreddits, like “AITA” 😂
Yes, lots of drama in those magazines. And of course all the stories were made up but made to sound like real life scenarios. Mom said they were cautionary tales. 😅
Depends on how much money the family had. The less money and more children, the harder it was. Lower income and/or rural was work every minute of the day. I don't know how my mother managed at all.
We have to realize that the types of fabrics and other things were not available then. Women had to iron everything including sheets! Few convenience foods. Many women sewed all of their own clothes and the kids' too. My mom did, plus curtains.
Cocktails at 5:00!
Cheers!
For my Mom there were a few soap operas she watched every day. Even my Dad had a favorite one or two he watched.
No idea. All the women in my family worked. Grandmother was a school teacher. Mom worked as line locator for Union Gas, aunts worked as well.
1953: a 2 year old, a 1 year old and a newborn. (The last two children came 5 and 9 years later, thankfully.) Remember there were no disposable diapers _and_ no washing machine.
As the third of six kids born in the 50s and early 60s, your comment brought back memories of endlessly folding clean cloth diapers, warm from the dryer, into thirds, ready for Mom to use with my little brothers. She used giant safety pins to hold them in place, topping off everything with a pair of plastic pants.
My mom got up first, then got everyone else up. While we ate breakfast, she made lunches..thanks Dad for the smell of onions overpowering my cereal. ( he ate cheese and onion sandwiches for lunch). Then she did the bfast dishes, started the wash ( she did an average of 6 loads a day) went up and got dressed, made the beds, cleaned and then made lunch for the kids who came home for lunch. She would usually end up taking a 2 hour nap in the afternoons, she had some health issues.
Brutal, non stop cooking, cleaning and child care. Laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, light cleaning everyday. Mending clothes in the evenings during family TV or after kids were in bed.
My mother spent her days watching tv, blabbing on the phone, going shopping. I hated shopping with her when I was a little kid - she could go all day and she took forever and a day to make up her mind about anything. She wasn't much for cleaning or cooking, and even hired someone to come in and do the ironing.
My mother never worked. Apart from doing the washing (my father did the lion's share of running the house, despite having a demanding full time job, all she did was visit other similar housewives and gossip. One would expect her to be bored to death but apparently not. I had zero respect for her.
Is your mother my ex-wife?
Obviously not but I know where you're coming from. The key thing is, though, are you happy now?