That one makes me see red too. In my family women worked, but that was on the farm, which, because of all the lies we were fed in school, made me grow up thinking that it was a farming thing. It was a big deal that when we were little my mother *didn't* have to work.
One of my first jobs out of university was working for a psychiatrist to the elderly in a working-class part of Yorkshire, and I did a lot of transcriptions of patient histories. Without exception, all the women had worked in the factories all their lives, or until they shut down. That led me to do some research, so now I can rant about the middle class housewife myth at length.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 06:17 pm (UTC)One of my first jobs out of university was working for a psychiatrist to the elderly in a working-class part of Yorkshire, and I did a lot of transcriptions of patient histories. Without exception, all the women had worked in the factories all their lives, or until they shut down. That led me to do some research, so now I can rant about the middle class housewife myth at length.