Did your mother work outside the home?

Did your mom work outside the home, have a paid job? What about your aunts? What about the mothers of your friends?

While it may be selection bias in my brain, it seems to me that 90% of the women I knew while growing ip worked outside their home.

So when I hear stuff like millenials and etc are the first true generation to balance work and motherhood and etc I just roll my eyes. Not only are they not the first, their grandmothers (me!) aren’t the first.

Hells bells MY grandmothers and great grandmothers had jobs or businesses back in the day tho granted, not all of them.

But I guess every generation thinks they are the first to face specific life situations.

Mother worked as a receptionist in a group medical practice before I was born. She filled in occasionally when we were growing up. She went back in the early 80s (I was 11 or so) to pay for Catholic school tuition.

It seemed like a lot of friends’ mothers worked. This was in the 80s. Latchkey kids.

Relatives on my mother’s side were all older (she was the youngest of a large family), but many of the women worked when their kids were older or out of the house. There were a lot of bookkeepers and other office workers.

My mother was a school teacher before marriage, but really didn't work after that. She answered the phone at my father's business just to get enough hours for social security. Among aunts and grandmothers it was probably about 50/50, although I don't think any of the working mothers had what we consider professional occupations today.

My mother was active in the church and had a lot of charitable women's activities through her church organizations and was always busy, but I suppose that doesn't fall into the work category as we know it.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom except for the relatively short period of time between her first and second marriages. None of my friends' mothers worked outside the home. None. This was in a neighborhood built post-war, middle class mix of blue/white collar. I was raised there in the 50s/60s.

Neither did my aunts work outside the home. One was married to a lawyer, one a real estate developer, one a CT Supreme Court judge. My grandmother was a purchasing agent--a job that no women held back in the early century. The story goes that she would sign POs "H. S______" and when the men came up to see the purchasing agent, they were shocked. They assumed that "H" was a man. So she was the sole standard bearer for working women in the family.

My MIL was stay-at-home until her husband died in 1965, and then she got a job in retail.

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Originally Posted by catherine

My mother was a stay-at-home mom except for the relatively short period of time between her first and second marriages. None of my friends' mothers worked outside the home. None. This was in a neighborhood built post-war, middle class mix of blue/white collar. I was raised there in the 50s/60s.

Neither did my aunts work outside the home. One was married to a lawyer, one a real estate developer, one a CT Supreme Court judge. My grandmother was a purchasing agent--a job that no women held back in the early century. The story goes that she would sign POs "H. S______" and when the men came up to see the purchasing agent, they were shocked. They assumed that "H" was a man. So she was the sole standard bearer for working women in the family.

My MIL was stay-at-home until her husband died in 1965, and then she got a job in retail.

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So weird! ALL my aunts worked on both sides of the family! Oh wait, no— one was married to an insurance executive, and so she hostessed and schmoozed for him.

My mother was an outlier in our family and neighborhood. She was one of only two female pharmacy school grads at UC Boulder way back in the early 1940s. In between kids and after divorce, she worked as a hospital pharmacist until retiring. Most other family females were farmer's wives and did not work outside the home. Neighborhood moms might have gotten something like a teaching degree but mostly raised kids and did charity work. I was the only kid I knew with a working mom.

My mother was a nurse. She and Dad juggled their schedules so one of them would often be home with me during the day, so she worked a lot of night shifts.

According to my brother, my mom worked a lot during WWII years and amassed a nice savings account by 1949. She married and did not return to work until all the kids started school. Then she was my dad's office bookkeeper, secretary, finance director, and all around worker. They retired together.

During the first half of my life with my parents we lived way out in the country and my mother was fairly busy giving me baby brothers every other year while keeping us all fed. She augmented that by chopping cotton in the spring and picking said cotton in late summer.
By the time we moved into town when I was in 6th grade she had 5 boys needing constant supervision and made a little extra money taking in ironing. By the time I left home all her kids were in school and she took her first full-time job as a clerk in a day old bread store where she remained for over 20 years.

Relatives aside, I don't recall many of my friends having working mothers. My childhood neighborhood was prosperous post WWII middle class building boom where the roles of stay at home mothers and heads of households were pretty clearly defined. My mother didn't know the location of the car's gas cap, but was an excellent homemaker and made what seems like a full time job of it.

My mom was a engineer. She was able to do part time for some caretaking but she quit working after her second kid (she was in her 40s by then, so had done 20+ years in the workforce). My grandmother had a law degree but after doing some stints related to that including helping write a book, didn't really make use of it, only sometimes worked outside the house teaching English as a Second Language, as she was caretaking several generations, younger and older.

None of the mothers in my childhood neighborhood worked, except the one divorcee across the street. Only one aunt worked who was unmarried. I did have a great aunt who did the bookkeeping for her husband's garage but she had no kids. All of the mothers with kids were non working though some did get jobs when the kuds got to high school.

My mom was an RN, but stopped working when I was born and was a SAHM for the duration. Most of my friends' moms did not work. My MIL worked part-time until her kids were older, and then she worked full-time. My mom was unusual at the time in that she was a SAHM with a car, so she was highly valued as a source of transportation, field trip chaperone, etc.

I come from a very large family, so that was job enough for my mother - until my dad left and she had to enter the "real" workforce. Pretty much everyone I knew worked in one manner or another.

My mom stayed at home until the youngest entered school then she worked in the town hall as a clerk. My older sister and I were at home with the younger two until she came home an hour or so after school was out.

One of my aunts was a hairdresser, always. The other aunt worked seasonally when the crops came in to the cannery in town. Otherwise she was at home.

Two of my friends' moms worked at the bank. We had family-owned stores in town, so the moms worked there.

Some of my friends lived on dairy farms and moms on farms do hard work---most millennials couldn't possibly do what they did I don't think.

My mother-in-law was a nurse, but she didn't start working until the boys were well into school.

One of my grandmas was a telephone operator.

I guess wherever this is coming from is ignoring the Baby Boomer generation which by and large were working moms. I know I was and so were all my friends---with one exception I can think of.

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Originally Posted by KayLR

I guess wherever this is coming from is ignoring the Baby Boomer generation which by and large were working moms. I know I was and so were all my friends---with one exception I can think of.

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Good point. Most of my friends (and naturally many coworkers) were working Boomer mothers.

I was a latchkey kid. Lots of my friends were as well. A lot of childcare then was self-care. We were expected to stay home on
our own, or with siblings, from a young age.

My mother worked as a seamstress for the first two years my parents were married so dad could go to school on the GI bill. After that she quit working and became a housewife. As an elementary school kid all my friends’ mothers were SAHMs. The one wrinkle to that was that J’s mom was a work from home mother. She did secretarial work for a State Farm agent.

I have both worked and been a SAHM during my kids' childhoods. Glad for both experiences, but absolutely TREASURE the time I had at home with my son before he died - and realized from that the value of the time I had with the other kids. In all honesty, more often than not, I felt being a SAHM was harder than going out to a job. Just my opinion and experiences.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

I have both worked and been a SAHM during my kids' childhoods. Glad for both experiences, but absolutely TREASURE the time I had at home with my son before he died - and realized from that the value of the time I had with the other kids. In all honesty, more often than not, I felt being a SAHM was harder than going out to a job. Just my opinion and experiences.

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Being a SAHM is definitely harder than going out to a job, at least in my experience. I, like you, spent time at home as well as at work during their growing-up years. The hardest job of all was the family day care I ran from my home. My own two preschoolers plus three others. All by myself. That was the hardest job I ever had. My career in market research, working many 60-70 hour weeks catering to clients and flying all over the globe was a cakewalk compared to that.

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Originally Posted by catherine

Being a SAHM is definitely harder than going out to a job, at least in my experience. I, like you, spent time at home as well as at work during their growing-up years. The hardest job of all was the family day care I ran from my home. My own two preschoolers plus three others. All by myself. That was the hardest job I ever had. My career in market research, working many 60-70 hour weeks catering to clients and flying all over the globe was a cakewalk compared to that.

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Watching more than just your own child/ren is hard! I "babysat" for one other child at one point when my youngest was still pre-school age. It was nice but more work than one realizes. Can't imagine doing more like you did.

My mother was working for an eye surgeon and eventually became his surgical nurse. My grandmother quit work, to take care of her dying husband and mother, while putting her sister in a nursing home. She ended up staying out of work (close to retirement), to raise us. Most of the mothers I knew, worked, although one friends mom, seemed to not work as much as she worked. (in construction with drug issues, husband was an u/c officer, who was pulled off when an issue with mother).