The CBB :: View topic - work and marriage

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#1: work and marriage Author: Laura V, Location: Czech Republic

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:59 pm
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When did attitudes change towards married women (and mothers) having a profession? I feel so sorry for Daisy, Bride and Julie when they have to give up their careers after all that hard work Sad

#2: Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:15 pm
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I think it would have been during the late 1960s or early 1970s, Laura V. I don't think a housewife in the 1950s would have been so likely to have a career as well, particularly while she had children to look after. Of course in a lot of the poorer areas women would have had to work to earn enough to help feed the family and pay the rent. I presume you are thinking of EBD type families.

#3: Author: janem, Location: Ash, Surrey

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:04 pm
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I got married in 1976 and my boss assumed I would be leaving work after the wedding. Confused

#4: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:05 pm
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In Ireland, women were forbidden to to work in the civil service, local authority and in schools after marriage until the 1970s. In Britain this was only a law until 1946 (I think) but was the norm until around the same time.

#5: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:21 pm
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WW2 *began* to change things - many women had to enter or re-enter the work force to fill the jobs left by men called up into the forces, and after the war quite a number of women weren't keen to give up working, having become used to earning their own money and being more independent.

It still took until the end of the 1960s (think feminism etc) until working after marriage became acceptible for middle class women, I would say. And even then, it wasn't by any means the norm.

Even now, many women earn less than men for doing the same job, or get asked in job interviews whether they intend on having children.... Rolling Eyes

My mother gave up work (civil service) on marrying - this was 1966.

Caroline.

#6: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 9:19 pm
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A lot of men assumed that their wives would find fulfilment in being a wife and mother after marriage, and never mind whether the wife had had a good job, or enjoyed what she had done for a living.

#7: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 9:23 pm
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For some women that is what they want to do - certainly both my sisters-in-law stopped working when they started their families. I think, today, though that there is more choice - it's not automatically assumed that the woman will stop working. A cousin of mine - a few years older than I, continued working while her husband stayed home to look after their 3 little girls - made sense to me - she had the higher paid job - but some of the older aunts and uncles were scandlised.

#8: Author: Samantha, Location: London

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 9:34 pm
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When I got married (1994) my grandmother, then nearly 90, was amazed to find that I didn't have to give up work - note: HAVE to. My mother-in-law, not nearly 70, was appalled to find that I didn't intend to after having a baby. She still is, 4 years on. I think that it was normal until pretty recently - remember that married women only got to have their own private tax returns in the last 15 years. Before that it went on their husband's, more or less.

#9: Author: tiffinata, Location: melbourne, australia

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 12:56 am
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it appears most women these days have to go back to work at some point after having a baby, otherwise things like the mortgage will not be paid!
Finding childcare (here) is the hard part

#10: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:39 am
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I think there was a backlast post WWII - the men came back from war, and expected the women to leave the jobs they had been doing and go back to the children and kitchen and the whole Leave it to Beaver thing.

A friend of mine worked out that with a four month old and a four year old all of her take home pay was going to daycare - economically, it would have made more sense to stay home. However, she's in a career where you if you leave for a couple of years, you're out permanently.

Another friend who got married in 2000 had her supervisor assume she'd quit grad school after marriage!

#11: Author: lizarfau, Location: Melbourne

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 6:58 am
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tiffinata wrote:

it appears most women these days have to go back to work at some point after having a baby, otherwise things like the mortgage will not be paid!
Finding childcare (here) is the hard part

Yep, I agree - unless one's fortunate enough to have a partner on a high income, there's no choice at all whether to work or not, here in Oz at any rate.

#12: Author: Ruth B, Location: Oxford, UK

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 9:45 am
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Caroline wrote:

Even now, many women earn less than men for doing the same job, or get asked in job interviews whether they intend on having children.... Rolling Eyes

Caroline.

A question you can refuse to answer as it is highly illegal to ask it!!

#13: Author: alicat, Location: Wiltshire

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 1:18 pm
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The trouble is finding a way to refuse to answer that won't automatically lost you the job!!!
After once being asked "So when do you and your husband intend to start a family?" (which I think the Col Blimp interviewing me thought was a correct way to put this question) and floundering, I consulted some friends and we agreed the best response would be "Sadly our first child died at birth from a serious genetic defect so I dont think that'll be an issue."
Of course I've never had the chance to test this since......but anyone who wants to, feel free!

#14: Author: Mia, Location: London

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 3:38 pm
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alicat wrote:

The trouble is finding a way to refuse to answer that won't automatically lost you the job!!!
After once being asked "So when do you and your husband intend to start a family?" (which I think the Col Blimp interviewing me thought was a correct way to put this question) and floundering, I consulted some friends and we agreed the best response would be "Sadly our first child died at birth from a serious genetic defect so I dont think that'll be an issue."
Of course I've never had the chance to test this since......but anyone who wants to, feel free!

It's sufficient to say that you do not wish to answer the question. I would have thought most UK employers are clued up enough about legislation not to ask it now anyway.

#15: Author: Dreaming Marianne, Location: The Peninusular

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:07 pm
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I once went for a job interview in a *very* traditionally make area.

Interview went really well, hit it off and just clicked with the interviewers (both male).

At the end of the interview, when they are skimming through those obligatry questions, Man 1 say: "So, apart from being obviously female, have you any other disabilities that we should know about?"

Man 2 drops his head into his hands and shakes his head slowly as he imagines the court case.

I actually think Man 1 was joking an just had an unfortunate sense of humour. Didn't get the job though (this was around 2000)

#16: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:15 pm
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Ruth B wrote:

Caroline wrote:

Even now, many women earn less than men for doing the same job, or get asked in job interviews whether they intend on having children.... Rolling Eyes

Caroline.

A question you can refuse to answer as it is highly illegal to ask it!!

Indeed - but it is still asked sometimes, in spite of this.

An ex-colleague of mine got asked in an interview only a few weeks ago if she had adequate childcare arrangements for her little boy....!

Even more shockingly, she answered the question.

#17: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:55 pm
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Out of interest, what job does Bride get? I expect a good one since she was really clever, wasn't she?

My grandma left work when she got married/had kids in the fifties. She had seven kids and when the youngest (twin daughters) were still babies - this would therefore have been late 60s/early 70s - she decided she would like to become a teacher.

She went to night school to get the necessary qualifications (she left school at fourteen) and then heard of interviews at the local Catholic teacher training college. She was unsure of whether or not to apply as my aunts were still so young, but my grandad said that if she didn't do it then when would she? She might as well start straight away.

She went along to the interview, told them what qualifications she had, and they said she could start with the new training year. This was in the early seventies at the earliest. I don't know if her being working class and going to teach working class children had anything to do with it, but the fact that she was a wife and mother (of seven, including quite young children) doesn't seem to have been a problem for her.

#18: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 5:05 pm
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Bride was originally planning to be a librarian, but - I think it's in Coming of Age - we're later told that she's training to be a teacher.

One of my grandmas worked in the 1950s/1960s - she worked as a hairdresser so she kind of worked for herself - even though she was married with a child, and she was considered to be quite unusual Very Happy

.

One of my university lecturers had a theory that this was partly a regional thing - in places like Lancashire, which had a tradition of women working in mills, it was considered less unusual for a married woman to work than it was in places where the traditional industries were male-dominated - but that probably wouldn't apply to upper-middle-class people like Bride and Julie et al anyway.

#19: Workingt mums Author: janetbrown23, Location: Colchester

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 7:51 pm
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I was born in 1948, my mum didnt go back to work until the year before i left school. I was an only child but it is hard to see how mum could have worked, at primary school at least it was only the "deprived" children who stayed to school dinner so she walked the mile and a half to school 8 times a day. I was lucky I only had to do it 4 times. Of all the 45 children in my class there was only one whose mother worked and she was a dinner lady at her daughter's school. My dad was a mechanic so we were not exactly well off, i remember orange box furniture and so on but it was frowned on to work.

Jan

#20: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 6:50 pm
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tiffinata wrote:

it appears most women these days have to go back to work at some point after having a baby, otherwise things like the mortgage will not be paid!

This is an area where, in my opinion, equality has backfired. Back in the 1970s, mortgage lenders would only calculate the amount they were prepared to lend on the husband's salary, because of course the wife would get pregnant and have to give up work. So it was possible to buy a house on one person's salary only. Once the wife's salary began to be taken into account, house prices rose to match the mortgages obtainable on two salaries, so now it's essential to have two salaries to raise a mortgage on a three or four bed family home.

Jay B.

#21: Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK

Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 6:56 pm
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I agree with Jay. While I dislike the assumption that the woman would stop work and so her money didn't count, all it has done is increase the amount you can borrow and hence the amount the market will pay, thus raising the cost of houses.

#22: Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire

Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 11:28 pm
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All that is true. It's also true, though, that in the 1970s a colleague of mine who was widowed and had a young son couldn't buy a stair carpet on hire purchase because she didn't have a man to sign the agreement! Any man would have done - she offered to call one in from the street!

I, for one, having lived through it, wouldn't go back.

#23: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 5:56 am
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Tara wrote:

All that is true. It's also true, though, that in the 1970s a colleague of mine who was widowed and had a young son couldn't buy a stair carpet on hire purchase because she didn't have a man to sign the agreement! Any man would have done - she offered to call one in from the street!

Assume this was before 1975 and the Sex Discrimination Act?

BTW - enter the above into my search engine as I couldn't remember the year and was faced with a huge warning from tiscali about viewing adult content! Laughing

#24: Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire

Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:42 pm
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Yes, it was pre-1975, but only just ( Laughing

at Tiscali!). Teaching was also one of the few jobs where women got equal pay at the time.

#25: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:03 am
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I thought this quote from Beverly Gray's Career (1935) rather telling. Lenora has just informed the others of Rosalie's engagement:

Quote:

"Then she didn't continue with her music," Beverly said, almost regretfully.

So, the immediate assumption is that getting engaged naturally trumps becoming a famous pianist -- but there's some regret. (You may be happy to know that, volumes later (1939-40), Rosalie is in an accident and loses her memory long enough to become a famous pianist after all.)

Beverly herself is engaged in the 1941 offering, but still looking forward to the wedding in the 1955 volume. It is my understanding that publishers actively discouraged writers from marrying off the heroines of series, on the grounds that readers would lose interest. Whether this is because married women were expected to stay home and stop having adventures, I'm uncertain. At any rate, one of the remarkable things about the CS for a post-Pollyanna girls' series, is that marriage doesn't automatically make characters fall off the face of the earth.

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