Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

[LizzieMaine]

Did your woman drive? And did she have access to a car? Transportation--or lack of--would have had a huge impact on what she was able to do during the day. My grandmothers each had their own cars in the 1950s and that was RARE.

Good point. It was common in much of suburbia for the husband to commute by train to the city for work, leaving the family car in the hands of the wife for the day, so two-car families weren't as common or as essential as they are today.

Families who lived in town as opposed to the suburbs were much less car-dependent than modern people -- neighborhood grocery stores and such were still common in the fifties, and most of what town-dwellers needed was within walking distance.

[Stanley Doble]

Maybe it was rare for women to drive in cities but in small town and rural areas it was routine. Among my older relatives some had a driver's license, some didn't. Entirely their choice, or inclination. One had a driving license but never learned to drive. She got it in the thirties, at the police station, by paying a small fee (I think it was 25 c) no test. She only used it for ID.

Another always drove the car because her husband never learned how. She had a series of Studebakers, I remember a Starlight coupe in the early fifties and a 2 tone 1956 Hawk coupe. From the thirties through the early fifties Studebaker was the style leader. Later she had a Chrysler hardtop. She was quite a stylish dresser too, and there were rumors of a rather "sporty" past.

On the other hand, having a second car was considered extravagant until the seventies.

[Stanley Doble]

As to the question of whether women had bank accounts. In most families I knew the women handled the money or at least, had shall we say a very strong influence on how it was spent. It would be a very brave, or very foolish man indeed who made a large purchase without consulting his wife. I knew a few such fools, they seemed to run in the family. It wasn't long before the wives took control and made sure it didn't happen again.

[Stanley Doble]

Re: grocery shopping. Many things were delivered then like fresh milk, bread and baked goods, dry cleaning and laundry.There were drivers who covered a regular route. Houses built in the fifties often had a little trap door beside the side door, this was for the milk man to deliver the milk. Otherwise it was left on the step beside the door.

It was still possible to place orders over the phone to the grocery store and drug store and have things delivered but this was going out. You could also visit a department store, clothing store etc, buy what you wanted, and have it delivered.

As cars became more common and housing more spread out people dropped the delivery idea and did their shopping at the mall or down town.

In the fifties the most common way of doing the shopping was to go down town once a week and do the shopping, and depend on the bread man and milk man for fresh bread, pastries, milk, butter and cream. If you ran out of something you could send one of the kids to the corner store.

[Stanley Doble]

There is another thing I just thought of and that is the frozen food locker.

Before home freezers became available in the fifties, every town had its frozen food locker. This was a building with a giant refrigeration system in which the public could rent lockers for the storage of frozen food. You could buy a side of beef and store it, or take your fresh garden produce and freeze it, or buy frozen foods cheap in bulk when they were in season.

Whenever you wanted (during business hours) you could go in and get your frozen foods, usually take out what you were going to use for the next 2 or 3 days, take it home and put it in the refrigerator.

I don't know how many people took advantage of this service but there must have been a lot. Every town and city had them, and every one had room for hundreds of food lockers.

This all ended in the sixties, by that time everyone had their home deep freeze. A lot of the buildings may still be around, converted to other uses.

[Stanley Doble]

Mrs H I think your impression of "Suzy Homemaker" or the typical American housewife is a caricature and bears as much resemblance to reality as Bugs Bunny does to an actual rabbit.

Now that is blunt talk. I do not say it to be offensive, I want to make the point that if you want a real understanding of the period and its people you will need to do a lot of research and discard a lot of preconceived ideas.

[MrsH]

Mrs H I think your impression of "Suzy Homemaker" or the typical American housewife is a caricature and bears as much resemblance to reality as Bugs Bunny does to an actual rabbit.

Now that is blunt talk. I do not say it to be offensive, I want to make the point that if you want a real understanding of the period and its people you will need to do a lot of research and discard a lot of preconceived ideas.

Wow Stanley,
If your first post was a bit condescending, and the intervening were founts of exceptional information, then this post shows that you really need to learn to read for understanding. I mentioned early on that I was basing off of pop culture, because that is all I had.
I am young enough that to speak directly to a woman who lived through this period (and wasn't a young child), I would have to speak with my grandmothers. Sadly, none of my grandparents are with us any longer, the last one we lost roughly a month ago. Of my husband's grandparents, there is one left, and she is not in a condition to converse at length on this subject.
I do want as much accurate information on day to day life as is possible to get. I don't need the modern day commentary on whether it was right or wrong.
Stanley, forgive me, you give the impression of being a male bent to be trying to protect me from oppression. If this is not the case, if you'd be willing, I would like to get your direct perspective, in the form of an interview....

[Angus Forbes]

Although there were plenty of chores to keep women busy, and lots of work involved, there was also a social aspect -- stay-at-home moms had some time to visit each other for coffee or lunch, or to read or go to the library, and so forth. Younger, more affluent women played some golf or tennis, perhaps at a country club. There were various church functions and charities to be staffed. Bigger cities had working public transportation systems which helped those without access to the family car or a second car.

[Stanley Doble]

Actually I am a man trying to protect you from bad information. I got the impression you had an inaccurate, superficial view of the period and tried to correct it.

On reflection, I suppose I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. The prevailing view of women in the past as weak, stupid and powerless is an insult to the women of that time. I don't like having my mother, aunts, great aunts and grandmothers insulted.

I apologize if I offended you. I find writing on the internet, it is difficult to be clear about something. So I tend to go overboard in directness or frankness at times. This is not a knock to you. I understand you are seriously trying to understand something which it is difficult to get information on. And that the information you do get, is incomplete, slanted and politically correct.

This is why I suggested going to the library or second hand book stores and looking for books written by or about women at the time. This is the only way to get a halfway accurate view of any period. I know I have been shocked and surprised, on going back to original sources, to find the past was not at all like it has been presented.

[LizzieMaine]

This social aspect also worked to the advantage of families with children -- it was very easy to find a place to park your kids for the afternoon while you went to the store or whatever. In most neighborhoods everyone knew everyone else, and it was nothing to leave your kids with the neighbors for an hour or two --- they'd leave their kids with you just as freely, knowing it all worked out even in the end. Same with supervising kids playing in the street -- even if they were out of your sight, you knew they were in someone else's sight, and that someone wouldn't hesitate to discipline them if they needed it, just as you'd feel free to put the neighbor's kid in their place if they got out of line. The whole atmosphere in a typical neighborhood was far more collective than individualized.