How Fifties women put the fear of God into British men

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the youngest of ten and himself the father of six sons, told the Mothers' Union in 1952 that 'a family only truly begins with three children'.

He was very much out on his own on this as the Fifties progressed.

'Our parents had too many children,' declared a young father more in tune with the times. 'We want to give ours a good start in life, so we shan't have more than we can afford.'

By 1956, four children was regarded as a large family, and two ideal.

It was more effective contraception and the widespread introduction of family planning clinics that enabled this to happen (though the Pill was a decade away). For women, the pull of the apron strings

The result was that, in the Fifties, more than ever was demanded of what the French writer Simone de Beauvoir called with savage irony The Second Sex.

Woman as embodiment of femininity, as dutiful, good-companion wife, as ingenious, cost-effective, uncomplaining homemaker, as strict yet loving mother - it was a daunting, four-fold role, though still essentially home-centred and man-focused.

The ideal - indeed, the indispensability - of feminine physical attractiveness was never questioned. How To Dress To Please Men was the expressive title of a magazine series in the early Fifties, with a special emphasis on personal grooming - 'He likes you to be soft and silky'.

'A woman won't get far without polishing up her good points and disguising her bad ones so that he's completely befogged by glamour!' advised Woman's Own in 1951.

Barbara Goalen was the British mannequin of the era, renowned for her haughty demeanour, delicate bone structure and wasp waist. For older women, the great exemplar was Margot Smyly, who posed in the pages of Vogue in her luncheon suits, cocktail dresses and fur stole.

One shrewd observer, the novelist Barbara Pym, was horrified. Women, she thought, 'have never been more terrifying than they are now - the paint and jewellery, the exposed bosom. No wonder men turn to other men sometimes.'


For wives, there were competing messages. At one level there was the wife as companion to her husband and producer of children, as given cinematic flesh by the stylish, witty Kay Kendall in films such as Genevieve.

Yet equally powerful was the pressure not to be too much of an equal. 'Don't try to be the boss,' warned Monica Dickens in her Woman's Own column in 1955 as she attacked 'the slightly abnormal woman who wants to have her cake and eat it'.

In other words: 'She wants a man to give her love, companionship, a home, children, and the wherewithal to support life comfortably; but she cannot bring herself to let her man be the head of the household.'

A woman's place was in the kitchen, declared the magazine. 'It is the heart and centre of the meaning of home, the place where, day after day, you make with your hands the gifts of love.'

This homage to domesticity was nurtured and spread across the land by Women's Institutes - at the peak of their popularity - while the strongly perceived need to pass on housewifery skills across the generations was summed up by a Bolton councillor, Mrs Heywood, pronouncing in 1953 on the importance of washday: 'If the laundry goes out of the home, a child will have no training in house management.'

Television ads for washing powder unashamedly equated the moral worth of the wife with the whiteness of her husband's shirts. Happily, for those afraid of falling short, help was at hand, especially as the range of consumer products rapidly expanded from the mid-Fifties.

The Good Housekeeping Institute offered advice on 'Easier Housework', 'Cooking Craft' and 'The Perfect Hostess', and women's magazines were suffused with practical tips and information. Here, the special emphasis was on making good the shopping and culinary skills that had been lost during the long years of austerity and shortages.


'The woman of the house is the most important person in it,' was Woman's Own's verdict in 1957. 'Her husband may be stronger and cleverer than she is. He may be a business tycoon, or a genius or famous. His wife may seem inferior to him - but there is one subtle way she can outdo him every time, and that is in her influence in the home ...'

Or, as a vicar's wife told the Mothers' Union in her parish, a mother's motto was: 'I serve.'

But, contrary to subsequent mythology, the Fifties were not bereft of ambitious, independent-minded women. Sheila van Damm was a leading long-distance rally driver who went on to run the Windmill Theatre. Rose Heilbron became a household name as an outstanding defence barrister of the era. Even Bethnal Green's singing Beverley Sisters (Joy, Babs and Teddie) had a certain pink-and-white chutzpah.

But for the vast majority of women, the issue of going out to work was a particularly thorny one in the Fifties.

The pressures NOT to was considerable. 'No two women have exactly the same capacities and I would never interfere with the right of the minority to prefer outside work,' conceded Evelyn Home, counsellor for millions of readers of Woman magazine, in 1951.

'But it is safe to say that most women, once they have a family, are more contented and doing better work in the home than they could find outside it.'

That same year, Woman's Weekly ran a short story about a mother renouncing her hateful career: 'Home-making is the most useful of all the talents. To make a man feel happy and comfortable and to make a child feel cherished. No woman's work is more important than these.'


Women's expectations reflected this. Four out of five women in a survey in 1955 intended to be full-time homemakers after the birth of their first child. Half had no intention of working again, even after their children were old enough to be left.

Pressure was applied not to work. One girl who wanted to keep on with her career after marriage found that 'all the people at work thought I should stay at home'.

But it was husbands rather than work colleagues who were the prime obstacles to a woman working. A Mass Observation survey in 1957 found less than a quarter of men approved of married women going out to work. 'A woman's place is in the home,' was the blunt reason given, 'bringing up the kids.'

Expert opinion backed this. The psychoanalyst John Bowlby relentlessly and brilliantly propagated his research findings about the crucial influence of mother-love on the formation of a child's character and personality.

'If she neglects him when he is small there will be trouble afterwards,' he wrote. 'A mother who stays at home is giving her children a surer foundation for mental health than costly equipment and an expensive education can provide.'

'Nothing Takes The Place Of A Mother's Love,' was the title of a follow-up article in The Housewife magazine in 1953. Three years later, a child expert said that 'for a mother of a child under five to have to leave her baby is a tragedy that can have disastrous consequences'.

An article in Picture Post included photographs of sad-looking children in the nursery at a Lancashire cotton mill. 'The sight of those desolate baby faces waiting for their mothers at the end of the day was heartbreaking,' said the report. 'Could you, would you, should you take the chance with your child's future?'

Inevitably, it was a debate shadowed by the question of guilt. 'A generation of middle-class mothers was made to feel guilty about "separation anxiety",' recalls Dr Ann Dally, a pioneer in psychological medicine. 'Though educated and trained, they stayed at home for years, some happily but many basically unhappily.'

In South Wales, factory worker Esme Williams remembered being made to feel guilty. 'People assumed that if you went to work you couldn't be looking after your children properly.'

For all this caution, the percentage of married women in paid employment rose steadily throughout the Fifties - from 26 per cent in 1951 to 35 per cent by 1961 - still a minority, but significantly less conspicuously so. However, the debate went on. In 1955, a Woman's Own survey on whether wives should work was equally divided between 'Yes, within reason' and 'Not in any circumstances'.

On one side was Mrs V. N. of Surrey, who argued that she was a better mother because 'I am not a harassed housewife, thanks to my labour-saving devices - none of which we could have afforded had I left my job.'

On the other was Miss Y. H. of Birmingham. 'If a man cannot support a wife, he doesn't deserve one. I don't mind cooking, sewing and cleaning for him - so long as the place he asks me to do it in isn't too small - but I will not go out and work for him, too.'

Among those who stayed at home, however, there were signs of discontent. Nearly half said they would like a part-time job. 'I'd see more of life,' said a mother of three. 'Getting away from the housework and the children just for a short time each day would be so refreshing,' said another.

However, the sort of work available to women remained limited. For working-class women, laundries were the principal employer. The Fifties was also the apogee of the all-female typing pool in offices. They worked for peanuts. There was no equal-pay legislation and average female wages were only 59 per cent of men's. Neither the Labour Party nor the trades unions pushed at all hard to increase the status of female work.


The prevailing assumption was that women worked for 'pin money', not a living wage, and working women themselves seemed to agree.

The majority attitude was that they did it for the extra money it brought into the home. 'We'd have been very poor sometimes if I hadn't taken a job,' said a factory cleaner. 'I feel I've been a real help to my man.'

A filing clerk said - and this was an increasing feature of the Fifties - 'We can buy all sorts of extras or a holiday because of my work.' Meanwhile, it remained a conviction among men that a husband's wages should always be higher than his wife's. This was hardly surprising given that differences in ability and potential had been entrenched in the sexes from an early age. 'What a pretty doll,' says Janet, in a Janet and John learn-toread book. 'One day I will go in a big ship,' says her brother John.

Or take Enid Blyton's Five Get Into Trouble: '"Dick! I'll make your bed," cried Anne, shocked to see it made in such a hurried way.' At her girls' grammar school, former student Mary Evans remembered the emphasis given to home-making and motherhood as a role in life - often by teachers who themselves were unmarried.

A school debate that 'A woman's place is in the home' was approved. 'Having a working mother was regarded as slightly peculiar and rather eccentric,' says Mary Evans.

As for higher education, in 1958 female students made up only 24 per cent of the whole university intake, the same as in 1920. But there was nothing remotely feminist about them. A 1957 survey of Wives Who Went To College concluded that 'the educated wife of today must be both feminine and masculine, but not lean too far one way or the other'.

So much depended on the husband - but 'with his love, his trust and his help, she will do great things'.

● Extracted from Family Britain 1951-57 by David Kynaston, published by Bloomsbury at £25. © David Kynaston 2009. To order a copy at £22.50 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1224829/Make-exposed-bosoms--talk-going-work-How-Fifties-women-fear-God-British-men.html

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Last updated 04/11/2009

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