created by lj0zh123 on 05/02/2025 at 18:32 UTC
13 upvotes, 103 top-level comments (showing 25)
I was wondering if the women who married and had kids in that era, ever re-entered the workforce either full-time or part-time? And if they did, what would be the most common jobs they would go work at?
Comment by AutoModerator at 05/02/2025 at 18:32 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See this post[1], the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, lj0zh123.
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Comment by hipmommie at 05/02/2025 at 18:39 UTC
34 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Nursing, teaching or retail.
Comment by sbsb27 at 05/02/2025 at 18:51 UTC
27 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Accounting. My mother went back to work (she worked during WWII) in the 60's as my dad was drinking his business into the ground and that place really needed an adult in the office. She ended up divorcing my dad and buying the business from him. She turned it into a raging success.
Comment by Kali-of-Amino at 05/02/2025 at 19:02 UTC
10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Dunno about the 50s, but during the 70s inflation almost every working and middle class housewife was forced back into the workforce.
Comment by asil518 at 05/02/2025 at 18:50 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Both my grandmothers worked. One taught elementary school and the other one had various jobs, such as a book keeper and even selling cars.
Comment by musing_codger at 05/02/2025 at 19:22 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It varied. A lot of women never left the workforce. In the 1950s, about a third of all women were in the labor force. For the women that did work, the most common occupations were: secretarial or clerical work, teaching, nursing/healthcare, domestic work (maids, cooks, nannies), retail, factory work (often textiles), social work, librarians, and flight attendants (stewardesses back then).
One weird fact is that the overall (men and women) labor force participation rate hasn't changed all that much since the 1950s. It was about 59% back then and it is about 62% now. It was up to 66% or 67% in the 1990s, because so many more women started working, but it has drifted down since then. The male labor force participation rate has decreased from almost 90% in the 1940s to 67% today. The reasons are complicated, but it's hard to improve the average standard of living if fewer and fewer people work.
Comment by Turbulent-Watch2306 at 05/02/2025 at 18:42 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My experience is those women who married around 1955ish did end up going to work after the oldest child turned around 12- this is when we started the term “latchkey Kids”. I remember my Mom hated working but was so excited to get her own credit card in 1974- before that women had to be on their fathers or husbands account as an authorized buyer. I grew up middle classish , but we had a bunch of kids, so she had no choice.
Comment by JoyfulNoise1964 at 05/02/2025 at 18:47 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Women entered the workforce in huge numbers during WW II
Comment by 44035 at 05/02/2025 at 19:19 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Women were always in the workforce. If you were in an American hospital in 1948, there were tons of women employed as nurses, secretaries, managers, etc. It's not like the full workforce in the country was men only. That's never been true.
Comment by MrKahnberg at 05/02/2025 at 18:57 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
My Ma went back to school to get a certification in residential landscape design.
Comment by oldbutsharpusually at 05/02/2025 at 19:08 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mother was widowed in 1950 and left to raise five kids on her own. She was a stay at home mom until the life insurance money ran out and social security survivor benefits weren’t enough to sustain us. She went back to work as an office manager in the late 1950s and worked until she retired in the late 1970s. She was one of the few neighborhood women that had a job.
Comment by Necessary_Half_297 at 05/02/2025 at 19:09 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mother raised 8 kids, born between 1949 and 1963. She went back to work in the early 1970s, as a sales rep for a candy company. She once sent my kids a Christmas gift of a doll house packed in marshmallows.
Comment by ggwing1992 at 05/02/2025 at 19:18 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I’m black and American my mom had 2 kids in the late 60’s she was a teacher. She kept on teaching through my childhood and retired after 40 years.
Comment by BKowalewski at 05/02/2025 at 18:46 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mom was a SAHM when my bro and I grew up. That was in th 50s and 60s.. later in the late 70s she took up full time nannying as my dad had retired and she couldn't stand having him under foot all the time, lol!
Comment by wrenskibaby at 05/02/2025 at 18:53 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
After the youngest child in our family entered 2nd grade, our mother returned to work full time because she was bored, primarily. She became the secretary at a grade school in town, then the local high school. She had graduated from what was called a college of business before marrying Dad and I think she did secretarial work for a year before the years of homemaking began. Some of the kids I knew had mothers who worked outside the home, others had moms who were home all the time. I never thought one was better than the other, or that one was good and the other bad, or thought anything about it at all! I was a kid.
Comment by ansyensiklis at 05/02/2025 at 18:57 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
My mom didn’t. She was a Rosie the Riveter(welder actually) and model during the war and had, had enough of men and work from that time. My dad was a business owner and supported his family in fine fashion. She was way out of his league and looking back I have no idea how he landed her. I feel as time passed she thought this too as they didn’t have a good marriage.
Comment by RedditWidow at 05/02/2025 at 19:02 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mom was born in 1952. Her mother, my grandmother, left her husband in 1968 and got a job to support herself because he was an alcoholic. My mom was a teenager at the time. Grandma worked as a bookkeeper and also got a pilot's license. I don't think my great-grandmother (my grandma's mother) ever had a job after raising kids, but before she got married she worked as a census taker.
Comment by ABelleWriter at 05/02/2025 at 19:03 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My grandmother got married in 1952 and never had a job after that. She had kids in the 50s and 60s, and one kids had some issues, so she dedicated a lot of time to that kid, then grandkids in the 70s and 80s and then she was in her 60s.
I think before she got married she worked in a store of some kind.
Comment by SmokinHotNot at 05/02/2025 at 19:11 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Mother used to be a home typist for ARB American Research Bureau. She'd prep and stuff envelopes with diaries for people to keep about TV and radio stations they watch or listen to. My brother and I helped. When older, she got a secretarial job outside the house.
Comment by Maltipoo-Mommy at 05/02/2025 at 19:15 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mother became a waitress, and moved up to assistant manager at a Howard Johnson’s.
Comment by OilSuspicious3349 at 05/02/2025 at 19:20 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mother, like most of the other women in my family, stopped working when we came along. My mom was a teacher, which was one of the "acceptable" jobs for women.
Depending on the means of the family, they may have gone back to work, but in my social circles, they all stayed home. Born in 58, so my comments represent 60s and 70s situations.
By the 1980s, first wave feminism had come to fullness and women like my wife got a job - a decent one that used her degree - and has had a career. We saw the rise of two income households then. I think some of it was a response to the economics of the time, which persist to this day, but part was also that women felt they could actually have a career if they chose, not some temporary employment until babies came along.
I'd expect others have seen different things and that's fine. I can only relate my experiences.
Comment by Aware_Welcome_8866 at 05/02/2025 at 19:23 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mom married in 1950. Sometime in the 60’s, she got an evening job as a receptionist at the Catholic Church. That job was my parents’ discretionary money. They saved most of it for Xmas. By the time I was in middle school she got a daytime job as a medical secretary. I became a latchkey kid.
Comment by starkcontrast62 at 05/02/2025 at 19:31 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mom went back to work full time in 1962. I was six. My brother was eight. We learned responsibilities very early on, as we readied ourselves for school, walked there (about a mile), walked home. Latch key kids. Got a snack and watched TV until the folks got home from work. Mom went to work out of necessity. My parents' first house cost $12,600. Different times, for sure.
Comment by 2020grilledcheese at 05/02/2025 at 19:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Yes. My grandmother got her bachelors and masters degrees in her 50’s after raising 9 kids.
Comment by Single-Raccoon2 at 05/02/2025 at 23:28 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My mom didn't. She took college classes, painted and sculpted, hobnobbed with her artist friends, went to seminars and retreats, and traveled (with or without my dad).
She had a very full and interesting life. I know people often think that those who don't work are leading boring lives, but that isn't necessarily true. My mom was always the most well-read and the best conversationalist in any group of people.
My dad made a really good living, so an additional paycheck wasn't needed.