50s housewife

[JMarie]

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Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by a parasite.  For most people this parasite doesn’t cause any major health problems, so we never really hear much about it, but for a pregnant woman who gets infected with it, it can cause great harm.   Not to mom, but to baby.   Toxoplasmosis in an unborn baby can cause severe brain damage and vision loss.  My cousin has both.

Seems like a good blog post, right?  Informative and correct (I still remember this from nursing school, 20+ years later).  But she prefaced it with this 

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I have a cousin who is much older than I am, but she still sleeps in a crib.  She has to.  She was born with severe brain damage.   The saddest part is that when she was first developing in the womb she was completely healthy.  And then her mom cleaned the litter box.   Here is a warning for pregnant women about cats.

Um, she doesn't sleep in a crib.  Most likely, she's in a hospital bed with siderails.  I guess that since her cousin won't be reading the post, it's okay to slam her.

[Lurky]

I'm always intrigued by the "women never worked" types, because every time, they're completely insane and have no idea of basic history, or even common sense.  Even in the 50s, probably the only decade where this could be true for upper middle class women, with the push to get women out of the workplace so men coming back from WW2 could work, who do they think were the teachers, nurses, bakers, laudresses, household cleaners, housekeepers, secretaries, cooks, people working in shops etc etc etc were?  

And OK, that's mostly urban, but farm women have always worked as hard as the men, whether as a famer's wife, daughter or dairymaid etc.  My dad grew up in a village, and his mother always went out to work as a charwoman (cleaner) both before and after his own father died.

It's such bullshit.  In the UK, TV ownership rocketed around the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 - mostly bought on Hire Purchase.  And the whole thing people like my parents who were kids in the 1950s say is that they had so much more freedom when they were kids, than their own children and grandchildren did/do.  The whole trope about 50s childhood is walking to/from school alone, getting to run around the streets/fields playing without parents knowing where they were. 

ETA is she a poe?  In being feminine:

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And your voice.  Avoid speaking loudly, crudely, or in any manner that mimics men.  Please, never ever curse.  If you must, come up with suitable alternatives such as “shoot!” or “bugger!”   But don’t curse.

How can she write that with a straight face?  I'm british, I swear a lot, but I know what the words I use mean, and I'd never say Bugger in 'polite' company!

 

 

[JMarie]

From her manifesto (Manifesto?  Really?  Is she Mussolini?)

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Do you remember the smell of sheets fresh off the clothes line?

No, because my mom always used the dryer.

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 Do you remember Saturday morning pancakes and family picnics?  

We had cereal on Saturday mornings, just like any other day.  I've never been on a picnic, family or otherwise.

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Do you remember Sunday dinner? 

Sure, we had dinner on Sundays.  But it was never a Norman Rockwell "Sunday Dinner."

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Do you remember your last family matriarch?  The woman who held family close together and kept the traditions alive?

We didn't have one of those.

[CelticGoddess]

1 hour ago, Lurky said:

I'm always intrigued by the "women never worked" types, because every time, they're completely insane and have no idea of basic history, or even common sense.  Even in the 50s, probably the only decade where this could be true for upper middle class women, with the push to get women out of the workplace so men coming back from WW2 could work, who do they think were the teachers, nurses, bakers, laudresses, household cleaners, housekeepers, secretaries, cooks, people working in shops etc etc etc were?  

And OK, that's mostly urban, but farm women have always worked as hard as the men, whether as a famer's wife, daughter or dairymaid etc.  My dad grew up in a village, and his mother always went out to work as a charwoman (cleaner) both before and after his own father died.

It's such bullshit.  In the UK, TV ownership rocketed around the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 - mostly bought on Hire Purchase.  And the whole thing people like my parents who were kids in the 1950s say is that they had so much more freedom when they were kids, than their own children and grandchildren did/do.  The whole trope about 50s childhood is walking to/from school alone, getting to run around the streets/fields playing without parents knowing where they were. 

ETA is she a poe?  In being feminine:

How can she write that with a straight face?  I'm british, I swear a lot, but I know what the words I use mean, and I'd never say Bugger in 'polite' company!

 

 

With only a few exceptions, most of the women in my family, from the time they landed on this continent (and most of my family was here in the late 1600's) worked outside the home.  And that included both those who lived in large communities and more rural areas.  Most women were domestics but some were seamstresses, milliners, wall paper hangers, teachers.  Even the wealthier side of my family included women who worked outside the home.  (some of these women were the daughters of politicians)  

A favorite story of my family is that of my great (x3) grandma who had the misfortune to marry a Cunningham.  He decided, when his wife was pregnant) to join the Union Army in 1862, and not return until sometime in 1866.  (Rumor has it he was a POW).  They had 8 children.  My great(x3) grandma raised her children and ran the family farm alone.  When her husband decided to return to his loving (yeah, right) family, she leveled a shot gun at him and told him to keep walking.  Apparently he did because he remarried and proceeded to father another 8 (or 10, the number is up for debate) children.  This woman worked on a farm until her death.  (Sometime in the 1890's).  And so did her daughters.  

My grandma was actually one of the first women on her side of the family who did NOT work outside the home when her children were younger.  Her sister was a wall paper hanger, her other sister was a WAC and then worked in a school cafeteria.  (My grandma did also but that was after my grandpa became disabled).  I grew up knowing that women in my family worked.  It was just how things were.

Most of these women (who don't or won't acknowledge that women have worked outside the home since time began) probably don't care to read or learn history.  It's so much easier to just watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie and use that as a historical snap shot.   They would swoon if they were to realize that Ma also worked outside the home.

ETA:  My family has always been slightly matriarchal in nature.  And that is because my family tended to have strong women.  These were the same women I spoke of above who worked outside the home, and kept the family together.  Mainly because so many of them married jerks.  My grandma was NEVER submissive to her husband.  No, she was the woman who got pissed when he got drunk, so she hid his wallet then dumped a pitcher of ice water over his manly parts.  He never crossed her again.