Has Britain changed for the better? 1945-2013 scenarios

First topic message reminder :

SCHOOL-1945 vs. 2013




Scenario : Johnny and Mark get into a fight after school.

1945 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends.

2013 - Police called, and they arrest Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it. Both children go to anger management programmes for 3 months. School governors hold meeting to implement bullying prevention programmes.




Scenario : Robbie disruptive in Class - other students cannot work.

1945 - Robbie sent to the office and given six of the best by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2013 - Robbie given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADHD - result deemed to be positive. Robbie's parents get fortnightly disability payments and school gets extra funding from government because Robbie has a disability.





Scenario : Billy breaks a window in his neighbour's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1945 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2013 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care; joins a gang; ends up in jail.




Scenario : Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1945 - Mark gets glass of water from Principal to take aspirin with. Passes exams, becomes a solicitor.

2013 - Police called, car searched for drugs and weapons. Mark expelled from school for drug taking. Ends up as a drop out.




Scenario : Johnny takes apart leftover fireworks from Bonfire Night, puts them in a paint tin & blows up a wasp's nest.

1945 - Wasps die.

2013 - Police & Anti-Terrorism Squad called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, investigate parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated. Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly in an airplane again.




Scenario : Johnny falls over while running during morning break and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. She hugs him to comfort him.

1945 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing footie. No damage done.

2013 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy and ends up gay.




Ok so far-fetched but possibly not so far-fetched in some cases??

Eilzel wrote:

eddie wrote:                      SCHOOL-1945 vs. 2013




Scenario : Johnny and Mark get into a fight after school.

1945 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends.

2013 - Police called, and they arrest Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it. Both children go to anger management programmes for 3 months. School governors hold meeting to implement bullying prevention programmes.




Scenario : Robbie disruptive in Class - other students cannot work.

1945 - Robbie sent to the office and given six of the best by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2013 - Robbie given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADHD - result deemed to be positive. Robbie's parents get fortnightly disability payments and school gets extra funding from government because Robbie has a disability.





Scenario : Billy breaks a window in his neighbour's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1945 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2013 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care; joins a gang; ends up in jail.




Scenario : Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1945 - Mark gets glass of water from Principal to take aspirin with. Passes exams, becomes a solicitor.

2013 - Police called, car searched for drugs and weapons. Mark expelled from school for drug taking. Ends up as a drop out.




Scenario : Johnny takes apart leftover fireworks from Bonfire Night, puts them in a paint tin & blows up a wasp's nest.

1945 - Wasps die.

2013 - Police & Anti-Terrorism Squad called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, investigate parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated. Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly in an airplane again.




Scenario : Johnny falls over while running during morning break and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. She hugs him to comfort him.

1945 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing footie. No damage done.

2013 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy and ends up gay.




Ok so far-fetched but possibly not so far-fetched in some cases??

You just know I'm not going to be one to nod along with this   

1, But some kids simply got battered; ended up insecure and pushed around all their lives. The bullies remain bullies forever.

2. Sometimes however teachers just went overboard and exercised ridiculous levels of abuse against children which were uncalled for and left some pupils scarred both emotionally and physically.

3. While another kids dad whipped him with the belt out of pure frustration but the boy never cared telling anyone cause no one would believe him anyway- if he got whipped he MUST have done something wrong right? Kid ends up resenting father.

4. This is equally ridiculous but can't think an equally ridiculous counter haha.

5. Kids fire fireworks at people; at pets; at buildings; the fireworks blow up in their faces causing permanent injury- and society wonders how this could happen   

6. Kids are sexually abused but can't tell anyone; they never can; and go to the grave often without ever being able to share the suffering that pained them. Meanwhile actual gay kids are forced to keep shtum through fear of the law and subject to social humiliation and suspicion.

I know all those above are ridiculous and intended to be. But the reason I don't honestly see the funny side is because shit like that is designed to give the impression EVERY social change is a bad thing and we would do better to just wind the clocks right back to a time when everything was 'perfect'. It wasn't perfect; their were problems people just didn't want to know about them so pretended they didn't exist; the servile wife, the abusive teacher, the abused son or daughter, the closeted gay, the black second-class citizens etc- things changed for a reason. We may have problems now but they had problems then too.

so what im hearing is that you were bullied at school, ignored by your mother, physically and sexually abused by your father

smelly_bandit wrote:

Eilzel wrote:

You just know I'm not going to be one to nod along with this   

1, But some kids simply got battered; ended up insecure and pushed around all their lives. The bullies remain bullies forever.

2. Sometimes however teachers just went overboard and exercised ridiculous levels of abuse against children which were uncalled for and left some pupils scarred both emotionally and physically.

3. While another kids dad whipped him with the belt out of pure frustration but the boy never cared telling anyone cause no one would believe him anyway- if he got whipped he MUST have done something wrong right? Kid ends up resenting father.

4. This is equally ridiculous but can't think an equally ridiculous counter haha.

5. Kids fire fireworks at people; at pets; at buildings; the fireworks blow up in their faces causing permanent injury- and society wonders how this could happen   

6. Kids are sexually abused but can't tell anyone; they never can; and go to the grave often without ever being able to share the suffering that pained them. Meanwhile actual gay kids are forced to keep shtum through fear of the law and subject to social humiliation and suspicion.

I know all those above are ridiculous and intended to be. But the reason I don't honestly see the funny side is because shit like that is designed to give the impression EVERY social change is a bad thing and we would do better to just wind the clocks right back to a time when everything was 'perfect'. It wasn't perfect; their were problems people just didn't want to know about them so pretended they didn't exist; the servile wife, the abusive teacher, the abused son or daughter, the closeted gay, the black second-class citizens etc- things changed for a reason. We may have problems now but they had problems then too.

so what im hearing is that you were bullied at school, ignored by your mother, physically and sexually abused by your father

Christ you are a boring old drip   

sphinx wrote:No I am not wrong - I am not talking pregnancies I am talking unmarried mothers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy_and_sexual_health_in_the_United_Kingdom wrote:
Births to teenagers increased during the 1960s and peaked in 1971 at 50.6 per thousand of the population. Since 1971 they have gradually fallen to their lowest level since the mid Fifties. The proportion occurring outside marriage has increased from around one in six in the 1950s to nine in every ten in 2006. Teenage abortion rates are currently at their highest rate since legalisation in 1968. Although the number of conceptions are falling the proportion ending in abortion has increased over the last ten years.

Yep, that's because they weren't desperate enough to have knitting needles stuck up them to cause a miscarriage or all the other terrible things they used to do.   

Sassy wrote:

sphinx wrote:No I am not wrong - I am not talking pregnancies I am talking unmarried mothers

Yep, that's because they weren't desperate enough to have knitting needles stuck up them to cause a miscarriage or all the other terrible things they used to do.   

Read again Sassy - among teenagers the pregnancy and birth rates are lower but the number of single mothers and abortions is higher - much much higher.

So we have swapped unmarried birthing centres, adoptions and knitting needles for single mothers, multi father siblings and nice hospital instruments and drugs.

And you think this is somehow an improvement.

sphinx wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Yep, that's because they weren't desperate enough to have knitting needles stuck up them to cause a miscarriage or all the other terrible things they used to do.   

Read again Sassy - among teenagers the pregnancy and birth rates are lower but the number of single mothers and abortions is higher - much much higher.

So we have swapped unmarried birthing centres, adoptions and knitting needles for single mothers, multi father siblings and nice hospital instruments and drugs.

And you think this is somehow an improvement.

How on earth have we swapped for single mums, that is absurd and they way you present it is if this is another excuse to let men off their responsibilities? The fact is to me it is men that have not adapted in the majority of cases and to me where there was a sense to control women, this illusion has been shattered by the fact women now realise they have the freedom to chose their own paths in life and just as many kids do exceptional well with single parents, and the difference between married and single is so marginal it is of little relevance. So yes it is a massive improvement because like you now have a say where before you were have been too frightened to get a divorce because the law protected men from beating their own wives and raping them. It is if you want to go backwards and say well because of some tiny marginal difference on raising children with either single or two parents is some reason to claim it is not an improvement, that is utter balderdash.


Jesus a woman back then had to rely on the men for contraception and again was not in control pf protecting herself as men could again with many women being forced into sex. The fact is all should have the same equality within the law that affect them directly as everyone else, back then Irish were discriminated against, women where they had been working were shoved back into the home in the main, gays were treated as criminals, blacks and Asians stereotyped appalling from a dying ember of the British Empire, which is really relevant here as many ask why it has taken so long for many of these nations to move forward, well because they were taught the values of pre 1950's Britain which as seen discriminated against many, they left a system that has gone on for years of where now they are only in the last few decades starting to see the freedoms we have also which again were won from standing up against those who tried to push them down here.







Anyway have a read:





THE WAY WOMEN WERE: 60 YEARS AGO

How we've changed since 1952

Married at 21, mothers at 22 and fantastically unconcerned with waxing – life for women in 1952, when Elizabeth became Queen, was very different.

When the Queen ascended to the throne 60 years ago, rationing was still in force, Winston Churchill was at the helm of the good ship Blighty and, if you were lucky enough to have a television, chances are you’d be watching the test card. The women who had worked so hard for the war effort had been unceremoniously booted out of their jobs and back into the kitchen: the men had come home. Feminism was only just entering its toddler phase: Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex (published 1949), was kicking and screaming, but the women’s movement would not hit puberty until the Sixties. Despite this, it’s often looked back on with rose-tinted varifocals by baby boomers. But was it really the decade of ‘we’ve never had it so good’?

A woman's place...

In 1952, 75% of women were married, with the average age for marriage 21 years old. Their place was firmly regarded as in the home – something of a shock to those who had worked during and after the war. “It wasn’t easy,” says Patricia Staley, 90. In 1950, she had given up an office job at the National Coal Board to marry. “I was a wife and full-time mother to three boys under four. I wanted to be at work.” Access to contraception was extremely limited. “Men took care of that side of things,” she says, “that’s why I got pregnant so often.”

“I remember distinctly the talk that went around about the potential [for contraception],” says Elizabeth Smith, also 90, “but that came after. I opted for ‘periodic abstinence’ where you had to time it just right. The implant, now that would have been handy in my day.” It’s not surprising that only 3% of women who started having sex in the Fifties had 10 or more sexual partners. Nowadays, 13% of women have had 10 or more. In the Fifties, the average age for a woman to have her first child was 22.

Elizabeth, married at 21, had her first child when she was 31 which was very unusual in her day. “I was the oldest of my friends to fall pregnant and it came as a shock. A customer [she was a waitress at a restaurant in St Albans] noticed before I did. That was my last day at work for the rest of the decade.” She vividly remembers the coronation: “We were having a party and I heard the Queen say, ‘Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.’ I was wondering whether I could really cut it as a mother and those words really resonated with me.”

Sixty years ago the average woman had 2.2 children and didn’t work. If they did, the average weekly pay was under £5. While unemployment stood at a low 2%, this did not include the majority of women, who were charmingly labelled ‘economically inactive.’ Some bucked the trend. In 1952, Marjorie McNicol was married to a farmer and working as a teacher: “I'd get up at 6am to milk the cows, teach, come home and make dinner, help with the animals till 10pm and then go to bed.” Lillian Brocklebank, then 30, was the manager of a toy shop, but workers’ rights were practically non-existent. “You had to work the day before and the day after the bank holiday, or you didn’t get paid,” she says. “Employers were always looking to get out of paying you your entitlement.

Social Scene

It’s no surprise that there wasn’t much time for leisure. Lillian, now 90, says: “We would go to the pictures but not with women after they got married.” While Patricia says going out, “would have meant that my husband would have had to stay in on his own.” There’s a sense that men were hapless creatures who should not be allowed to fend for themselves. As Marjorie says, “[my role was] looking after my husband. And he didn’t half need looking after.” When women did go out, they favoured outdoor pursuits such as walking or, in Marjorie’s case, hockey. They rarely went to pubs or bars. “I sometimes had a snowball when my husband and I went to dinner,” says Lillian, “but I could never do it as a single lady.”

Popular culture was just getting started. The pop charts were launched in late 1952 and women read magazines such as Good Housekeeping and My Home. Designer clothes seemed a million miles away. “I never had the money to follow fashion,” says Lillian. “I bought my clothes from C&A until I was humiliated at a dance when a woman was wearing the same dress.” Elizabeth’s mother would make her clothes using Vogue patterns. “The few pieces I bought were a luxury. I remember a yellow beach coat my husband gave to me for our honeymoon. It was in a Harrods box and I was sure I’d keep it forever.”

So how far do these women think we’ve come? “It’s much freer now,” says Patricia. “Girls can all go out together. I would never have dreamed of doing that.” But the Fifties did have its advantages. There was none of this pesky waxing business for a start. “We liked having hair on our arms and legs,” says Marjorie. Women are now deemed able to ‘have it all’, but perhaps it’s the strain of managing all this which leads us to yearn for a simpler time. Elizabeth describes modern life as exhausting, “We’re petrified that something – our career or our self image – might slip and the entire pyramid will come down.”

The pressure can seem overwhelming but it’s only the nature of that pressure that’s changed – women have always had unreasonable expectations foisted upon them. Would you rather play pregnancy roulette with the first man you ever had sex with, too scared to leave him alone lest he break the kitchen, or have your own career, money and freedom, and an indoor toilet?

How we live now is by no means perfect and we have a long way to go to achieve equality, but at least we can have a snowball or six on a Saturday night (and be the one who pays). Hurrah for feminism, I say.

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-way-women-were-60-years-ago#image-rotator-1

sphinx wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Yep, that's because they weren't desperate enough to have knitting needles stuck up them to cause a miscarriage or all the other terrible things they used to do.   

Read again Sassy - among teenagers the pregnancy and birth rates are lower but the number of single mothers and abortions is higher - much much higher.

So we have swapped unmarried birthing centres, adoptions and knitting needles for single mothers, multi father siblings and nice hospital instruments and drugs.

And you think this is somehow an improvement.

Abortions are higher because they are now recorded and legal, and girls don't die from them.

The conservative/authoritarian always idealizes the past, it's a big part of their psychology:

Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way, the authors commented in a published reply to the article.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

It's like they are talking about a different world to the one I was brought up in.

Eilzel wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:

so what im hearing is that you were bullied at school, ignored by your mother, physically and sexually abused by your father

Christ you are a boring old drip   

6 points to your post and 4 of them are about children being abused

you do the maths

Sassy wrote:

sphinx wrote:

Read again Sassy - among teenagers the pregnancy and birth rates are lower but the number of single mothers and abortions is higher - much much higher.

So we have swapped unmarried birthing centres, adoptions and knitting needles for single mothers, multi father siblings and nice hospital instruments and drugs.

And you think this is somehow an improvement.

Abortions are higher because they are now recorded and legal, and girls don't die from them.

Yeah and the reason they have gone up from when they were first legal so girls did not die from them?

sphinx wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Abortions are higher because they are now recorded and legal, and girls don't die from them.

Yeah and the reason they have gone up from when they were first legal so girls did not die from them?

Seriously, this is your claim to life being better then in 1945 for women, than today?


Behave

Didge wrote:

sphinx wrote:

Read again Sassy - among teenagers the pregnancy and birth rates are lower but the number of single mothers and abortions is higher - much much higher.

So we have swapped unmarried birthing centres, adoptions and knitting needles for single mothers, multi father siblings and nice hospital instruments and drugs.

And you think this is somehow an improvement.

How on earth have we swapped for single mums, that is absurd and they way you present it is if this is another excuse to let men off their responsibilities? The fact is to me it is men that have not adapted in the majority of cases and to me where there was a sense to control women, this illusion has been shattered by the fact women now realise they have the freedom to chose their own paths in life and just as many kids do exceptional well with single parents, and the difference between married and single is so marginal it is of little relevance. So yes it is a massive improvement because like you now have a say where before you were have been too frightened to get a divorce because the law protected men from beating their own wives and raping them. It is if you want to go backwards and say well because of some tiny marginal difference on raising children with either single or two parents is some reason to claim it is not an improvement, that is utter balderdash.


Jesus a woman back then had to rely on the men for contraception and again was not in control pf protecting herself as men could again with many women being forced into sex. The fact is all should have the same equality within the law that affect them directly as everyone else, back then Irish were discriminated against, women where they had been working were shoved back into the home in the main, gays were treated as criminals, blacks and Asians stereotyped appalling from a dying ember of the British Empire, which is really relevant here as many ask why it has taken so long for many of these nations to move forward, well because they were taught the values of pre 1950's Britain which as seen discriminated against many, they left a system that has gone on for years of where now they are only in the last few decades starting to see the freedoms we have also which again were won from standing up against those who tried to push them down here.







Anyway have a read:





THE WAY WOMEN WERE: 60 YEARS AGO

How we've changed since 1952

Married at 21, mothers at 22 and fantastically unconcerned with waxing – life for women in 1952, when Elizabeth became Queen, was very different.

When the Queen ascended to the throne 60 years ago, rationing was still in force, Winston Churchill was at the helm of the good ship Blighty and, if you were lucky enough to have a television, chances are you’d be watching the test card. The women who had worked so hard for the war effort had been unceremoniously booted out of their jobs and back into the kitchen: the men had come home. Feminism was only just entering its toddler phase: Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex (published 1949), was kicking and screaming, but the women’s movement would not hit puberty until the Sixties. Despite this, it’s often looked back on with rose-tinted varifocals by baby boomers. But was it really the decade of ‘we’ve never had it so good’?

A woman's place...

In 1952, 75% of women were married, with the average age for marriage 21 years old. Their place was firmly regarded as in the home – something of a shock to those who had worked during and after the war. “It wasn’t easy,” says Patricia Staley, 90. In 1950, she had given up an office job at the National Coal Board to marry. “I was a wife and full-time mother to three boys under four. I wanted to be at work.” Access to contraception was extremely limited. “Men took care of that side of things,” she says, “that’s why I got pregnant so often.”

“I remember distinctly the talk that went around about the potential [for contraception],” says Elizabeth Smith, also 90, “but that came after. I opted for ‘periodic abstinence’ where you had to time it just right. The implant, now that would have been handy in my day.” It’s not surprising that only 3% of women who started having sex in the Fifties had 10 or more sexual partners. Nowadays, 13% of women have had 10 or more. In the Fifties, the average age for a woman to have her first child was 22.

Elizabeth, married at 21, had her first child when she was 31 which was very unusual in her day. “I was the oldest of my friends to fall pregnant and it came as a shock. A customer [she was a waitress at a restaurant in St Albans] noticed before I did. That was my last day at work for the rest of the decade.” She vividly remembers the coronation: “We were having a party and I heard the Queen say, ‘Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.’ I was wondering whether I could really cut it as a mother and those words really resonated with me.”

Sixty years ago the average woman had 2.2 children and didn’t work. If they did, the average weekly pay was under £5. While unemployment stood at a low 2%, this did not include the majority of women, who were charmingly labelled ‘economically inactive.’ Some bucked the trend. In 1952, Marjorie McNicol was married to a farmer and working as a teacher: “I'd get up at 6am to milk the cows, teach, come home and make dinner, help with the animals till 10pm and then go to bed.” Lillian Brocklebank, then 30, was the manager of a toy shop, but workers’ rights were practically non-existent. “You had to work the day before and the day after the bank holiday, or you didn’t get paid,” she says. “Employers were always looking to get out of paying you your entitlement.

Social Scene

It’s no surprise that there wasn’t much time for leisure. Lillian, now 90, says: “We would go to the pictures but not with women after they got married.” While Patricia says going out, “would have meant that my husband would have had to stay in on his own.” There’s a sense that men were hapless creatures who should not be allowed to fend for themselves. As Marjorie says, “[my role was] looking after my husband. And he didn’t half need looking after.” When women did go out, they favoured outdoor pursuits such as walking or, in Marjorie’s case, hockey. They rarely went to pubs or bars. “I sometimes had a snowball when my husband and I went to dinner,” says Lillian, “but I could never do it as a single lady.”

Popular culture was just getting started. The pop charts were launched in late 1952 and women read magazines such as Good Housekeeping and My Home. Designer clothes seemed a million miles away. “I never had the money to follow fashion,” says Lillian. “I bought my clothes from C&A until I was humiliated at a dance when a woman was wearing the same dress.” Elizabeth’s mother would make her clothes using Vogue patterns. “The few pieces I bought were a luxury. I remember a yellow beach coat my husband gave to me for our honeymoon. It was in a Harrods box and I was sure I’d keep it forever.”

So how far do these women think we’ve come? “It’s much freer now,” says Patricia. “Girls can all go out together. I would never have dreamed of doing that.” But the Fifties did have its advantages. There was none of this pesky waxing business for a start. “We liked having hair on our arms and legs,” says Marjorie. Women are now deemed able to ‘have it all’, but perhaps it’s the strain of managing all this which leads us to yearn for a simpler time. Elizabeth describes modern life as exhausting, “We’re petrified that something – our career or our self image – might slip and the entire pyramid will come down.”

The pressure can seem overwhelming but it’s only the nature of that pressure that’s changed – women have always had unreasonable expectations foisted upon them. Would you rather play pregnancy roulette with the first man you ever had sex with, too scared to leave him alone lest he break the kitchen, or have your own career, money and freedom, and an indoor toilet?

How we live now is by no means perfect and we have a long way to go to achieve equality, but at least we can have a snowball or six on a Saturday night (and be the one who pays). Hurrah for feminism, I say.

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-way-women-were-60-years-ago#image-rotator-1

You are damn bloody right men are being excused their responsibilities - that is my point.

Object all you like to the idea that things should not be so but the fact is there are children suffering now who would not have suffered as badly then because the situation leading to their suffering now simply would not have been allowed to happen then.

Yes I know there are children who are not suffering now who would have suffered then but are you contend to swap one group for another?

How about looking a what worked and did not work at both times and using all the bits that worked so that suffering is reduced to a minimum?

sphinx wrote:

Didge wrote:





How on earth have we swapped for single mums, that is absurd and they way you present it is if this is another excuse to let men off their responsibilities? The fact is to me it is men that have not adapted in the majority of cases and to me where there was a sense to control women, this illusion has been shattered by the fact women now realise they have the freedom to chose their own paths in life and just as many kids do exceptional well with single parents, and the difference between married and single is so marginal it is of little relevance. So yes it is a massive improvement because like you now have a say where before you were have been too frightened to get a divorce because the law protected men from beating their own wives and raping them. It is if you want to go backwards and say well because of some tiny marginal difference on raising children with either single or two parents is some reason to claim it is not an improvement, that is utter balderdash.


Jesus a woman back then had to rely on the men for contraception and again was not in control pf protecting herself as men could again with many women being forced into sex. The fact is all should have the same equality within the law that affect them directly as everyone else, back then Irish were discriminated against, women where they had been working were shoved back into the home in the main, gays were treated as criminals, blacks and Asians stereotyped appalling from a dying ember of the British Empire, which is really relevant here as many ask why it has taken so long for many of these nations to move forward, well because they were taught the values of pre 1950's Britain which as seen discriminated against many, they left a system that has gone on for years of where now they are only in the last few decades starting to see the freedoms we have also which again were won from standing up against those who tried to push them down here.







Anyway have a read:





THE WAY WOMEN WERE: 60 YEARS AGO

How we've changed since 1952

Married at 21, mothers at 22 and fantastically unconcerned with waxing – life for women in 1952, when Elizabeth became Queen, was very different.

When the Queen ascended to the throne 60 years ago, rationing was still in force, Winston Churchill was at the helm of the good ship Blighty and, if you were lucky enough to have a television, chances are you’d be watching the test card. The women who had worked so hard for the war effort had been unceremoniously booted out of their jobs and back into the kitchen: the men had come home. Feminism was only just entering its toddler phase: Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex (published 1949), was kicking and screaming, but the women’s movement would not hit puberty until the Sixties. Despite this, it’s often looked back on with rose-tinted varifocals by baby boomers. But was it really the decade of ‘we’ve never had it so good’?

A woman's place...

In 1952, 75% of women were married, with the average age for marriage 21 years old. Their place was firmly regarded as in the home – something of a shock to those who had worked during and after the war. “It wasn’t easy,” says Patricia Staley, 90. In 1950, she had given up an office job at the National Coal Board to marry. “I was a wife and full-time mother to three boys under four. I wanted to be at work.” Access to contraception was extremely limited. “Men took care of that side of things,” she says, “that’s why I got pregnant so often.”

“I remember distinctly the talk that went around about the potential [for contraception],” says Elizabeth Smith, also 90, “but that came after. I opted for ‘periodic abstinence’ where you had to time it just right. The implant, now that would have been handy in my day.” It’s not surprising that only 3% of women who started having sex in the Fifties had 10 or more sexual partners. Nowadays, 13% of women have had 10 or more. In the Fifties, the average age for a woman to have her first child was 22.

Elizabeth, married at 21, had her first child when she was 31 which was very unusual in her day. “I was the oldest of my friends to fall pregnant and it came as a shock. A customer [she was a waitress at a restaurant in St Albans] noticed before I did. That was my last day at work for the rest of the decade.” She vividly remembers the coronation: “We were having a party and I heard the Queen say, ‘Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.’ I was wondering whether I could really cut it as a mother and those words really resonated with me.”

Sixty years ago the average woman had 2.2 children and didn’t work. If they did, the average weekly pay was under £5. While unemployment stood at a low 2%, this did not include the majority of women, who were charmingly labelled ‘economically inactive.’ Some bucked the trend. In 1952, Marjorie McNicol was married to a farmer and working as a teacher: “I'd get up at 6am to milk the cows, teach, come home and make dinner, help with the animals till 10pm and then go to bed.” Lillian Brocklebank, then 30, was the manager of a toy shop, but workers’ rights were practically non-existent. “You had to work the day before and the day after the bank holiday, or you didn’t get paid,” she says. “Employers were always looking to get out of paying you your entitlement.

Social Scene

It’s no surprise that there wasn’t much time for leisure. Lillian, now 90, says: “We would go to the pictures but not with women after they got married.” While Patricia says going out, “would have meant that my husband would have had to stay in on his own.” There’s a sense that men were hapless creatures who should not be allowed to fend for themselves. As Marjorie says, “[my role was] looking after my husband. And he didn’t half need looking after.” When women did go out, they favoured outdoor pursuits such as walking or, in Marjorie’s case, hockey. They rarely went to pubs or bars. “I sometimes had a snowball when my husband and I went to dinner,” says Lillian, “but I could never do it as a single lady.”

Popular culture was just getting started. The pop charts were launched in late 1952 and women read magazines such as Good Housekeeping and My Home. Designer clothes seemed a million miles away. “I never had the money to follow fashion,” says Lillian. “I bought my clothes from C&A until I was humiliated at a dance when a woman was wearing the same dress.” Elizabeth’s mother would make her clothes using Vogue patterns. “The few pieces I bought were a luxury. I remember a yellow beach coat my husband gave to me for our honeymoon. It was in a Harrods box and I was sure I’d keep it forever.”

So how far do these women think we’ve come? “It’s much freer now,” says Patricia. “Girls can all go out together. I would never have dreamed of doing that.” But the Fifties did have its advantages. There was none of this pesky waxing business for a start. “We liked having hair on our arms and legs,” says Marjorie. Women are now deemed able to ‘have it all’, but perhaps it’s the strain of managing all this which leads us to yearn for a simpler time. Elizabeth describes modern life as exhausting, “We’re petrified that something – our career or our self image – might slip and the entire pyramid will come down.”

The pressure can seem overwhelming but it’s only the nature of that pressure that’s changed – women have always had unreasonable expectations foisted upon them. Would you rather play pregnancy roulette with the first man you ever had sex with, too scared to leave him alone lest he break the kitchen, or have your own career, money and freedom, and an indoor toilet?

How we live now is by no means perfect and we have a long way to go to achieve equality, but at least we can have a snowball or six on a Saturday night (and be the one who pays). Hurrah for feminism, I say.

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-way-women-were-60-years-ago#image-rotator-1

You are damn bloody right men are being excused their responsibilities - that is my point.

Object all you like to the idea that things should not be so but the fact is there are children suffering now who would not have suffered as badly then because the situation leading to their suffering now simply would not have been allowed to happen then.

Yes I know there are children who are not suffering now who would have suffered then but are you contend to swap one group for another?

How about looking a what worked and did not work at both times and using all the bits that worked so that suffering is reduced to a minimum?

Again behave the amount of children between single and couple groups is minimal no matter how poorly you try to exaggerate, even more to the point, that within both groups the vast majority raise their kids well, something that is lost on you and again you use extreme situations or the lesser numbers. That means work needs to be done to help prevent more future problems in both groups.


I have looked at what worked then, which was little in the case for women, children, ethnic groups, religious groups, victims of crime etc, the list is endless of which you fail to grasp. What you point out can be worked on, what could not be different or better in 1945, is everything I highlighted and more, thus showing today is way better than the past

The point of the OP was whether life is better or worse in general for most people. It sure as hell isn't about how many more one parent families we have. Would I go back to a time when women were doing washing by hand, as my Nan and Mum were, and running it through a mangle to get the worst of the water out, while trying to dry it on a line in winter. No bloody way.

Sassy wrote:The point of the OP was whether life is better or worse in general for most people.   It sure as hell isn't about how many more one parent families we have.   Would I go back to a time when women were doing washing by hand, as my Nan and Mum were, and running it through a mangle to get the worst of the water out, while trying to dry it on a line in winter.   No bloody way.

its not about technological advancement you simpleton its about how much worse society has become due to fascist LW interference and their insane fanatic religion of multiculturalism

 

smelly_bandit wrote:

Sassy wrote:The point of the OP was whether life is better or worse in general for most people.   It sure as hell isn't about how many more one parent families we have.   Would I go back to a time when women were doing washing by hand, as my Nan and Mum were, and running it through a mangle to get the worst of the water out, while trying to dry it on a line in winter.   No bloody way.

its not about technological advancement you simpleton its about how much worse society has become due to fascist LW interference and their insane fanatic religion of multiculturalism

So people having no protection within the law in certain crimes, women treated like doormats and the countless other points which has been stated and ignored by smelly, was a better time for these people?


DOH


Today is far greater than life was for people in 1945

In regards to the OP

of course it has.