What Was Believed to Be a Womans Most Important Job During the 1950s?
The 1950s is remembered as an era of platonic homes and perfect housewives. Nonetheless this decade marked the starting time of a momentous social modify: the rise of the working wife and mother.
Poor women had e'er laboured when they needed to earn a crust for their families, oft through casual occupations such equally charring, baby-minding and taking in lodgers. But in postwar United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, the proportion of married women in regular paid piece of work grew dramatically: from around i in v in 1951 to nigh one-half two decades afterwards.
This phenomenon was first glimpsed during the 2nd World War, when patriotic housewives were recruited for munitions work, and once again in the tardily 1940s, when women were chosen dorsum into the factory to aid the nation's flagging export industries. 'United kingdom is up against it', one 1947 poster proclaimed: 'Try and costless yourself for work, whole-time or role-fourth dimension. In the next large endeavour, yous can be ane of the women who turn the tide of recovery.'
Through the course of the 1950s, such measures became peacetime norms. Early on marriage, smaller families and improved healthcare made it possible for mothers to consider a return to the workplace once their children were at school. This marked a significant change from earlier times, when spousal relationship had usually signalled a woman'due south permanent withdrawal from paid employment. Sociologists named this emerging pattern the 'dual role', noting how young wives were at present working until their first pregnancy, retreating to the domicile for 5 or ten years, then re-entering the workforce fit and good for you in early middle historic period. Past the tardily 1960s, media commentators were convinced that a cardinal shift had taken place: 'Not so long ago women were expected to choose either a task or marriage', a Adult female'southward Own journalist observed in 1969. 'Today the ambitious girl doesn't see why she tin't take marriage and a career.'
This verdict was optimistic, given the narrow range of jobs available to the returning married woman. Her labour was in greatest need in low-paid sectors, where women had toiled for decades as factory hands, shop workers, cleaners, cooks and carers. More attractive openings could be constitute for those with formal qualifications, in nursing, teaching, medicine and social piece of work, all occupations in which single women had previously made a mark. By the 1950s, employers in these fields were starting time to recognise married women's demands for flexible hours and retraining. Careers in more prestigious professions, such as police force, academia, business and the ceremonious service, remained largely the preserve of men.
Nonetheless, these 'niggling jobs', as they were oft called, represented new pleasures for the postwar housewife. Paid work, even of the near routine kind, could offering her a ticket to the world beyond the kitchen and a small slice of financial independence. 'You do feel overnice when yous get your bit of money on a Fri and know that y'all've earned it', was how 1 woman in south London put information technology to a researcher in the mid-1950s. 'I used to turn the room around simply for something to exercise', recalled another, describing her former non-earning cocky. Many working wives took pride in helping to secure 'extras' for their families: a juicier cut of meat, new clothes for the children, fifty-fifty a television or a car. 1 Swansea housewife spoke of her morning paper round in near euphoric terms: 'I meet people, have a chat, hear the news and have a glorious walk … My savings are slowly rising and our family will be able to take a holiday this year.'
Few husbands were willing to relinquish their breadwinner condition, but they did recognise the advantages of a second income. 'With but one working in the house we wouldn't be able to become things nosotros wanted and we wouldn't exist able to keep holiday', explained one xxx-year-old welder. A few husbands fifty-fifty lent a mitt with cooking and washing up, or put the children to bed when wives worked evening shifts at the manufacturing plant. 'Of course, a hubby has to help out at home', i plumber wrote, 'but he'south getting the do good.'
'Helping out' did not amount to an equal sharing of housework and childcare. These tasks nevertheless fell to mothers. Many of the 'footling jobs' deemed a good fit for married women in the 1950s were part-fourth dimension, which enabled wives to attend to their traditional duties aslope earning a supplementary wage. From one perspective, this was an ideal arrangement. Factories offering a choice of shift patterns, unpaid get out during school holidays or regular seasonal work had no shortage of willing recruits. On the other manus, part-timers were commonly ineligible for promotion, pensions or pay rises and were the first to be laid off when trade was slack.
Furthermore, the promotion of part-fourth dimension work as the 'natural' domain of wives and mothers gave government and employers little incentive to invest in nurseries or afterward-school clubs, which would take given women more selection about the kinds of jobs to pursue. Part-fourth dimension work too let husbands off the hook, presenting little challenge to their design of continuous, full-time employment, or to their exemption from most domestic chores.
Despite this, the rise of the working wife and mother proved transformative. She became an ordinary figure in affluent Britain: a resourceful, well-adjusted woman whose earnings allowed her family to savor the fruits of a consumer lodge. Moreover, returning to work subsequently a period of home-making allowed many women to claim some sort of life of their own, beyond marriage and motherhood. The postwar housewife wanted more than her mother'south generation had been able to imagine. These desires presaged the politics of autonomy and self-determination that the Women'south Liberation motion would nurture in the 1970s. Lilliputian jobs could have big effects.
Helen McCarthy is author of Double Lives: a History of Working Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2020).
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Source: https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/rise-working-wife
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