Back in Time for the Weekend -50s misrepresented?

Smashing up playable pianos this week! That can't be right, surely.

We certainly never smashed up the piano, Nobody played it and it was never tuned. It had suffered bomb damage in 1945 and my parents sold it when they moved in the late 80s.

J52 I can't help wondering where your g'parents lived as that doesn't ring a bell with me at all.
Sunday School yes and a leisurely day with only small local shops open.
In most of the bigger towns and cities of Scotland things were not so puritanical!
By 1957 my mother was studying to be a teacher, certainly had a washing-machine and shared household chores with my very open-minded dad - in fact he was the better cook.

We only spent two years in England during the fifties but we went to church every Sunday morning, home for a roast lunch then spent Sunday afternoons (in the summer) watching Dad play cricket.

Once a month my brother had an exeat from boarding school so we had picnics in Windsor Great Park or Burnham Beeches.

I can't remember what we did in the winter but I probably had my head stuck in a book.

Didn't see the first one last week but I hope to be able to watch it tonight.

Growing up in the 50's in England, Sunday was ok, yes,we went to church in the morning for an hour, but then the day was our own.A cooked breakfast, and a roast lunch about 2 and tea at 7pm.The local grocer always opened up shop on Sunday, but was restricted in what he could sell.The radio was always on! In fact, it was a good day for programmes,all sorts of things on,
Songs, comedy shows.We could play outside to our hearts content.

My mum trained as a hairdresser but never went out to work. She did her friends' and relatives' hair (and mine). I often came home from school to the stench of perming lotion. She had a cleaning lady several times a week and we had a car - 1936 Morris 12 until 1955 when my dad succeeded in acquiring a new Wolseley. Church followed by roast lunch on Sundays. We came home from school for lunch every day. Not many of the wives around us went out to work, the exception being the minister's wife who was a doctor and stood in as locum at various practices. My single aunt worked in the office at the factory where my dad and her fiancé worked in the labs, until she married and they moved away to Dumfries. I don't claim that we were a typical 1950s family, but we were fairly representative of the neighbourhood in which we lived.

Yes, Annie when I went to stay at my Scottish Grandparents Sunday's were very different.

In London we had Sunday School, in Summer a trip to Littlehampton or Brighton and in Winter we often went to the Museums.

When in Scotland, nothing was open, I had to wear a 'best' dress. We read or if the weather was good, we went on a long walk. It was years until they had TV because the reception was so poor.

Not much changed there until the end of the 60s!

x

Perhaps depends where one lived, I lived in The Manse in a Welsh mining village, my mother didn't go out to work, no shops opened on Sunday, no pubs but the miners club was open. We went to chapel every Sunday morning and Sunday school in afternoon, when old enough also chapel in evening. Card and dice games were not allowed on Sunday , no playing out doors, if weather nice most families went for a walk after evening chapel, most irritating part was having to change into Sunday clothes three times a day . We did jigsaws, read and listened to radio and gramophone or played pencil and paper games with parents. Week days we had fantastic freedom , played in the streets, built dens on the mountain and in the wood . My mother didn't go to work but made rugs, knitted and baked for those in the village who needed help

My mother used to make putting on lippy into a "thing", too. Although it was a kind of very bright coral, but in one of those glamorous cases. One of my abiding memories of being little is the smell of mam's powder, Coty l'aimant and fags, combined with the smell of double decker bus.

We always had to go upstairs on the bus so she could smoke.

I feel nauseous just thinking about it, even now. .

Sorry - I meant last 40s.

My mother was a working mum in the 50s and early 40s.

I used to like watching her getting ready for work and putting her lipstick on. She gave me a real work ethic and I worked as much as I could while bringing up 3 children.

Most of the mothers (round my way) did go out to work, usually low paid work to fit in with child care.

Early 1950s I was in bed by 7.00 so saw little of the evenings. I think my parents listened to the radio, did the Daily Telegraph crossword or read. After about 1955, when I was allowed to stay up later, we had a television and watched tv in the evening.

There was no piano playing, in the communal sense in any household I knew, although most houses I went into had a piano, usually it was only used by the junior piano learner in the family. Nor did we do jigsaws

We certainly didn't spend the evenings playing the piano and doing jigsaws because we always had the radio on! Take it from Here, Paul Temple, Journey into Space, Dick Barton and, of course, The Goons. My mother and I went to church sometimes and I usually went to Sunday School. My mother didn't work outside the home till I was about twelve, but she worked at home making lampshades and painting canvases for people to work tapestry on.

I liked the first family better too, mainly because they did everything asked (couldn't decorate a Christmas tree though!).

I didn't like the mother walking out of the church at all. I'm not religious, but it was downright disrespectful to the other people and surely she could have put up with it for an hour or so? She could have let her mind wander and just go through the motions. The daughter was far too precious and it says something to me that she's now at the BRIT school (basically stage school). The Dad was OK, but the boy was great (the boy in the first series was annoying).

In the first series, we spent the whole of the programmes on the 60s, 70s and 80s say it wasn't like that for us, but it was still a bit of fun to watch.

We'll still watch the other programmes, but it's just light entertainment.

I was one of three girls, saturdays were like hildajennij descibes them. We were like the boy in the program. We had our roast on Saturdays, cold on Sunday, shepherd's pie Monday every week!
Sundays we went for a walk in the afternoon or early evening. Dad helped with washing up, my sisters and I sometimes helped wash the clothes that had been boiled in the copper but mostly mum washed them on Monday when we were at school. We helped with the ironing. We had the radio on all the time evenings and weekends, played cards a lot, and always on saturday evenings the whole family played one game or another round the dining table. Dad had made a shove ha'penny board and that was one of our favorite games - plus toasting crumpets on the fire. We were sent to Sunday School when small because our uncle was a lay preacher, but when we got older we visited our gran and bought sweets with the collection money instead - neither she or us told our parents!

We were three little girls in the 1950's. Saturday's were for playing, roaming the countryside, climbing trees, messing about in the beck in the park. Sunday's on the other hand were boring!! My parents were Methodists. We went to Church in the morning and Sunday School in the afternoon, and sometimes to Church again in the evening. We had Sunday best clothes, and were only allowed to play in the house or the garden. The small town we lived in closed completely. No shops were open, the paper shop didn't open on a Sunday until the mid 1960's. The programme rang true for me!

Although the programme for me was so different to our lives, as my mother never worked, but I do remember her with the first washing machine and we did have to go to church every Sunday.
I also can remember trying to avoid the cinema on Saturday morning when the kids used to sit right in front of the screen, chating and laughing etc But other days the awful smell of smoke in the cinema, which in the end put me off going.
I know it was extremely difficult for families in those days as all I could hear was:
'We can't afford that,'
This all stopped when Prime Minister Harold Macmillian brought in many social reforms and in his speech in 1957 he remarked;
'You have never had it so good'
With the hired purchase people could now afford items that they never could previously.
We did have a home but it was a hotel, which of course gave us kids some great amusement. So I do remember, every Saturday night, the dancing we had at the hotel, which, as they mentiioned in the programme, was very popular.

I have given up watching these programs about life in the 1950s, they irritate me so much with their sweeping generalisations. My middle class DM and DMiL worked, they were both teachers. In fact all my friends had working mothers.

What is more my parents had a marriage of absolute equality. No doling out housekeeping or my mother having to ask if she needed new clothes. They had a joint bank account and my mother kept the cheque book in her handbag. I cannot remember my father ever sitting down and taking life easy while my mother was busy doing housework. If she was working in the house when he was home, he helped (sometimes she wished he would sit down and let her get on with it on her own). DF was one of the oldest in a large family and was an excellent short-order cook and adept in the care of small children. He did wonderful cooked breakfasts.

The problem is that all the research for these programmes is based on averages. For example 60% went to church, 65% of men gave their wives housekeeping etc etc and the significant proportion of families who did not conform to the average are ignored - as the posts on this thread show so clearly.

Part of the reason I dont take much notice of it.

I often wonder how far out what we think we know about history is. We cant manage to get 60 years ago, so what hope 600.

It's these wide spread myths that get me. I was always outside playing and like Granarchist didn't spend much time in the kitchen. I do remember my Gran taking me to an Old Time Dance class, but it was nothing like the one they showed. It was a jolly, noisy affair. mostly women but a few men. I was happily pushed through a Military Two Step and the Gay Gordons, all very relaxed. I agree about the family. Oh and how come the daughter kept her eyeliner? In the 50s-no way!

I really liked the 12 year old boy - I thought he was a jolly little bright lad.

I haven't seen it yet, but I can imagine how unrepresentative of the period it is. Like others of its ilk, it has been researched by 'social historians' who necessarily didn't live through the '50s and have only a rather blinkered understanding of what it was really like. If you ask one person what it was like in the '50s, you'll get one view; ask 100 and you'll get 100, widely differing responses. These 'back in time' programmes always seem to me to be very narrow in the portrayal of the period. Take 'Back in Time for Christmas' in the '80s, for example. Frozen sprouts, frozen carrots, and a frozen turkey for Christmas dinner? Just because these things had become widely available, and more and more homes were investing in chest freezers, it doesn't mean the average household would have had frozen veg for the Christmas dinner! I certainly didn't, and I don't know anyone who did.

I saw the family being introduced on The One Show the night before and was disappointed as I didn't warm to them, but I decided to give the new series a go on Tuesday. However, I gave up about 3/4 of the way through too. For all the reasons others have stated, the family just didn't come across as so likeable. I do think Mrs Robshaw (think that was the name of the first mum) would have been more gracious about church. I also felt that the ladies who came to reminisce about the Coronation were actually patronised. Not very comfortable viewing. To hear people writing here about very different experiences also makes me realise it was rather sweeping. Shame as the first series was so enjoyable.

I agree POGS, I really liked that other family.