The proper conduct of a housewife in 1950....

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Here's some friendly advice for all women from a book used in the housewife school in Norway in the 1950's. Enjoy Smile

Get all work done.
Plan your tasks carefully, and keep an eye on the clock. The man doesn't feel the warmth flowing towards him when he hears you say "are you home already?"

Have dinner ready
Plan a delicious meal already the night before. That way you show him that you care about him and his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home, and a good dinner is a part of the neccesary welcome

Prepare yourself
Take 15 minutes to rest so that you are rested when he comes home. Then you will also be hapy to see him, instead of being to tired to care. Forget all worries you may have and be eternally grateful that you have the man who is walking through the door soon. While you rest you can think about appointments and things you can do to boost his spirits. When you get up in the morning, take care of your looks. Fiks your makeup, tie a ribbon in your hair and look rested and alert. He has just spent time with many frustrated and tired people. Be a little more festive and intresting than usual. He may need a little pep after the long day at work.

Clear away the mess
Take a last round throught the house before he comes home, gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper and so on, put it in a bucket or trashbin and leave it in the bedroom to deal with it later. Then you go over the tables with a moist cloth. The man in your life has to feel that he has come to a place of peace and quiet, and it will also make you feel more relaxed. To keep the house in order is yet another way to show him that you really care about his coming home.

Prepare the children
Spend a few minutes washing the hands and faces of the children (if they are small), comb their hairs and change their clothes if they are dirty. The children are his little treasures, and they should look it.

Minimize all sound
Notice especially if your husband has to drive through rushtraffic. When he gets home, eliminate all sound from the dishwasher (if it's on of course). Encourage the children to be quiet when he comes. Let then make a little noise beforehand, so they get it out of their system,

Be happy to see him
Greet him with a warm smile and be happy. Tell him that it is good to have him home. This can lead to him feeling additional worth about his day. He needs all the romance he can get from you.

Don't!!!
Don't greet him with complaints. Solve your problems before he gets home, and if not, wait with them until the evening comes. Also, don't complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as a small problem in relation to what he may have gone through at work that day. Don't let the children flood him with problems and demands. Just let them greet their father briefly.

Be nice to him
Give him the comfortable chair or suggest that he get some rest on the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. You can offer to massage his feet, but don't insist on this. Talk to him with a soft and relaxed voice. Let him relax.

Listen to him
Maybe you have a dozen things to tell him, but his coming home is not the right time. Let him talk first, then he will listen more to what you want to tell him later.

The goal
Try to make your home into a place of peace and order, where your husband can refresh himself in body and spirit. If you do this he will rather want to spend time with you than anything else in the whole world, and he will spend all his free time on you and the children. Try to live after these rules for his coming home from work and see what happens. This is the correct way of having a man come home to you, not by complaining and being an irritation.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 11 • Views: 7,513 • Replies: 53

[+4] - Setanta - 11/20/2010I agree that once upon a time (and even today, if to a lesser extent) women saw "home-making" as their role, and it is an insult to such women to call them brain-washed. My grandmother,...

Sorry about the typos in my translation.

But I wonder if this was written by a man or a woman... If it was written today I'd say a man for sure, but in the fifties.... who knows.

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dumbwife?

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Here's some friendly advice for all women from a book used in the housewife school in Norway in the 1950's. Enjoy

So there was a school for that? =)

Ye, I cant see a modern woman doing that. In fact, I cant see an ancient woman doing that either. It feels like it would take machine-like endurance to survive that ever day.

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@manored,

All American schools in the 1950s and well into the 1960s had "home economics" courses which were to teach the girls to cook and sew and keep house.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

All American schools in the 1950s and well into the 1960s had "home economics" courses which were to teach the girls to cook and sew and keep house.

Wally's first wife was the president of the Future Homemakers of America Club, in high school.

I always get a hoot out of that.

She's a really nice lady.

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@Setanta,

In the early 1950's in my Junior High School (7th-9th grade) the boys went to wood shop. The girls had Home Economics. The school had an area that was set up like an apartment.

Here we learned "useful" things like cooking, making a bed,..................... and cleaning a toilet.

When my son was about in the same grades, things got a little more equitable. He took a course called, "bachelor living", which taught similar skills. But notice the name of the course. The implicit message was that if you did not have a woman to do those things for you, you had better learn to do them yourself!

Oh well, I suppose that cultural change evolves slowly!

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At the end of our senior year, we snuck into the chem lab, and took a bottle of white phosphorus sticks, which ignite in water (i forget what they were stored in, but a liquid in which they would not ignite. We poured the contents of the jar down one of the lab table drains, turned on the water and got the hell out of there.

The home ec room was in the basement immeidately below. Apparently some of the Junior girls were in there, baking for some kind of event. The white phosphorus burned through the pipes and landed on their stoves. No one was injured, but man, everybody was seriously pissed. The only thing i can say in mitigation is that we had no idea--that's how we learned just how volatile white phosophorus is.

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@Setanta,

In our school, this was called the "pre wed" program.

The woman in the article is available through Stepford Industries .

My wife would come in to my office and say"What do you want for supper?" (we call it supper)

"I could eat a steak" sez me.

"Great" Ill call for reservations at Fair Hill.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

that's how we learned just how volatile white phosophorus is.

Join the US military and you even get to use it and other equally nasty things on humans.

Be, all that you can be, in the arr arr army.

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@Phoenix32890,

When I was working in student housing in college, I saw many things about my generation's home economic skills. Both men and women are pretty messy and it's kind of absurd how many had to learn how to do laundry. Serious.

It's kind of interesting. There are many "domestic" traits that I think men are adopting. I can testify that few of the women I've dated are very confident in a kitchen, and almost all of my male friends are very prideful cooks. I gather that many of my friends spent more time bonding with their mothers, but in my case my dad taught me. Some things don't change though. I'm pretty lazy about making my bed (maybe three times a week?), but I always hang up my towel after I shower. I guess I don't like others having to take care of my business for me.

A
R
T

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Cyracuz asked:

Quote:

But I wonder if this was written by a man or a woman...

This statement convinces me it was written by a man:

Quote:

You can offer to massage his feet, but don't insist on this.

Yeah, it was written by a man who was forced to endure a foot massage by a woman who said to him, 'Dammit - you will have this foot massage and furthermore, you will ENJOY this foot massage - I've been waiting all day and practicing my soft voice and technique and you will not disappoint me by shattering my dream which is to give you this foot massage.'

I do think men tend to be more intuitive cooks than women. I know I love to cook and have always cooked, but my son teaches me things about cooking I KNOW I never taught him. And he's not been formally taught cooking anywhere else.

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@aidan,

Hm.. I think it could have been written by a woman. A brainwashed woman, as it would seem to us in this day and age, but once upon a time our values were different, and many women accepted and even embraced it.

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@Cyracuz,

I agree that once upon a time (and even today, if to a lesser extent) women saw "home-making" as their role, and it is an insult to such women to call them brain-washed. My grandmother, who raised me, had exactly that attitude. She kept the house, and kept it well--inside and out--well enough to have been on the cover of "Better Homes and Gardens." She prepared all the meals, and got up early in the morning to prepare my grandfather's breakfast. She got up even earlier on Saturday morning, because that was the day of the week that she did her baking, including all the bread we ate.

She considered that a normal relationship, and when i briefly lived with her years later, as an adult man, and after the death of my grandfather--she maintained the same equation. She kept the house, and i paid the bills. She made the meals, and i drove her around to do the shopping and to hell carrying things. I mowed the lawn and painted the house and the garage, and kept everything up to the same high standard she met. When i was a boy and my grandfather was still alive, he performed to functions to the same high standard.

Certainly women have a choice not to do this--but that's no good reason to denigrate women who do make this choice.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Hm.. I think it could have been written by a woman. A brainwashed woman, as it would seem to us in this day and age, but once upon a time our values were different, and many women accepted and even embraced it.

In the fifties, very few married women worked. Their "job" was to see to it that all was made comfortable for the man when he came home from work. Some educated women held jobs as teachers. In that way, they could be home when the kids returned from school, and have time to straighten up the house and prepare dinner.

When both my brother and I were on our own, my mom was looking for something to do. She got herself a job as a bookkeeper. She had done that work before she was married, and was really excited about getting the position.

My parents were not rich, and some extra money would have been very helpful. But it was not to be. My father was furious, when my mother told him about the job offer. I remember him saying, "no wife of MINE is going to have to work".

So my mother, heartbroken, turned down the job.

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@Setanta,

Agreed.
I didn't wish to insult such women, merely to reflect what seems to be the general opinion of young women today.

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@Cyracuz,

I didn't think you did intend to insult anyone. It is a general attitude these days, or so it seems to me, that women who wish to remain at home are "brain-washed." I don't for a moment believe that my grandmother ever wanted to work outside the home. Certainly women often did in her lifetime, but she was born in 1899, when that was not common.

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@Setanta,

It could just as easily be said that anyone who wants to go out and work if they have the option to stay home are brainwashed.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Hm.. I think it could have been written by a woman. A brainwashed woman, as it would seem to us in this day and age, but once upon a time our values were different, and many women accepted and even embraced it.

One must understand the forces that shaped the fifties. During the war, we had conscription, and many young men were away from their families. Women had to work to support their families, (Remember "Rosie the Riveter"?) At that time it was shown that women could do many of the jobs formerly open only to men.

When the war ended, the men came home, and they needed to find work. Women were laid off from their jobs so that a man could have the position. This developed into an era where staying home for women, and raising families was the cultural norm.

Why do you think that there was a "baby boomer" generation?

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@Cyracuz,

I'd go along with that. That would be your basic Protestant work ethic brainwashing, a la Max Weber.

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The proper conduct of a housewife in 1950....

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