Colleen27
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2007
- Messages
- 24,190
I admit I have often thought about women in the past, like in my mother's time (1950's-1960s) and how they didn't work before having kids. But while I think that was a bit odd, I find it odder still that women don't work in our current time. We have so many more conveniences and just don't have the need to be housewives full time without children. So, I guess I would be curious. What do you do? I don't think that is such a strange question.
I'm not sure what conveniences have made life that much easier that adding 40+ hours of work doesn't preempt other tasks.
Something I've noticed, between my grandmother's generation and my mom's and my own is that very few of the women I know who work and have kids also have hobbies. My grandmother stayed home or worked part time. And she sewed, gardened, and tatted. I can't think of many working women of my mom's or my generation that have hobbies like that. They have work, family, and household responsibilities, and wish lists of books they want to read, crafts they want to learn, projects they want to finish "someday", when they have time. And each generation seems to socialize less than the one before, so much so that a lot of traditional social groups are teetering on the brink of extinction. I think, and a fair number of time use studies bear this out, that for most working women it isn't that modern conveniences have made working fit better into the day but rather that work has crowded out hobbies and other chosen pastimes. And there are definitely benefits to that shift, especially for women who enjoy their work, but there can also be significant downsides.