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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/01/double-lives-by-helen-mccarthy-a-history-of-working-mothers Three quarters of British mothers are now in paid employment – a huge change over the past century – but, as this impressive study suggests, women still do more at home Three generations of working mothers. My grandmother, at home with 10 children between the wars, took in sailors’ washing to make ends meet. She had no schooling after the age of 12 and remained a “housewife”, dependent on my grandfather. In the 1950s my mother, a school-leaver at 14, worked part-time while her three kids were small, then full-time in the accounts office of a big department store. In the 1970s my older sister left home, trained as a teacher, married and also had three children. She retired a headteacher on a professional pension; her life was poles apart from my grandmother’s. Yet all three women led “double lives”, fitting their paid jobs around housework and childcare. Their labour was also typically female. Laundry work such as charing or cleaning has been a perennial standby for the poorest women in society. Girls like my mother, with some schooling, turned to the factory, shop or office work; those with more qualifications have been ushered into the “caring” professions such as nursing and, above all, teaching. “There are no typical lives,” Helen McCarthy writes in her impressive and nuanced study. Each is unique. But the best history writing, like hers, shows how representative the individual life is. Continue reading...
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