Sorry about the errors, "I remember hearing men...both blue collar and..." and 'to take care of his family....' At least those were two of biggest errors.

Jennifer ( Harry Crane's wife ) is a telephone operator. She is also pregnant.

Most teachers ( at least at the elementary level ) were married women. Also nurses and realtors ( including my mother ) when I was a child in the 60s. Our pediatrician was a woman. There were also moms who were crucial to running family businesses. There wasn't any stigma attached. Although I think, by and large, most mothers were stay-at-home.

The more affluent would focus around "the club" and Bridge. Middle class moms ran the PTA and Brownies. Not as many women worked outside the home, but in the early 60s, they were beginning to emerge.

Well, my mother was a working woman from 1959 (when I was 5) until her retirement in 1992. She worked until she was pregnant with my brother (1950), and resumed after I turned 5. I was a latch-key kid from 8 years old on with my brother being the babysitter. We would've never made it on my dad's paycheck alone, and in fact, it was more due to my mom's job that we ever got a house, that I had braces or even went to college. So, at least in our household, the income from my mom's job basically saved us as my dad was "disabled" (couldn't work due to heart disease) from 1972 until his death in 1976.

I often wonder why I never got a husband who refused to let me work?? All the ones I have had were like,"Here, don't forget your lunch."

You guys. (remember when saying that was a comment in itself?) I know there were lots of women in the workforce, my mom was one, both when she was married and as a divorced single mom. There were women doctors, lawyers and such. I remember it was unusual to have a female in drafting class, or planning to be an architect, but it happened. But, I stand by what I said. I remember men saying that their wife was a reflection on them and if she worked, it was saying he wasn't a good provider. I remember those same men accepting any inheritance or extra money that came by way of the wife, as long as no one thought she needed to work. Women sometimes had jobs for spending money (isn't that a funny term?) and could work as extra help at stores at Christmas. Men were the breadwinners, though. That was the reason given for not having equal pay for equal work. A man, it was said, had to support a family and needed more money than a woman. II didn't understand that explanation then or now. Thanks for telling me about Jennifer Crane. I really need to rewatch the entire series...and I don't feel that way about most movies or TV.

flowerpower...
LOL!!! you gave me the best laugh of the day! I did a spittake blowing raspberry lemonade all over my coffeetable! Good post!
Were we married to the same guy?...LMAO

Ah yes, working for spending money - also used to be called "pin money." What it meant was working not because you had to, but to buy the little extras. It was largely assumed that if women worked at all it was for pin money, not to support themselves or their families. Single women had their fathers (or brothers) to support them, married women had their husband, and widows, their grown children or still-living parents or siblings. Growing up in our neighborhood in the 50s and 60s, most women were housewives but some worked outside the home. My mother worked as a phlebotomist drawing blood for the local lab (with a BS in Chemistry); one neighbor was a piano teacher, another worked as a waitress. That about covered the field. I knew of two female doctors, one a surgeon like her husband but there were no policewomen or female firefighters or postal carriers. The local drycleaner, butcher, pharmacist, mechanics were all male.

I've come to understand that my father was one of those "I am the provider for my family" types, so I can remember my mother taking only a few waitressing jobs outside the home while we lived in Nebraska in the '50s. (I remember being the one who counted the coins that filled her apron pockets when she returned home from these little jobs.) Once we moved to California in 1960, she was always a housewife.

We were the only kids we knew that ate hot breakfasts at home, walked home for lunch on school days and ate from steaming bowls of food for dinner at 6pm every day. Lastly, she made sure we were inside the house when the streetlights came on.

We kids hated it! She was always there. Little did I know how often I would reach for that anchor and miss her just being there.

Because she didn't work outside the home, she didn't understand the business world and the standard courtesies of conducting business. So many housewives of that day allowed their husbands to control everything, and allowed a certain naivte to cloud their knowledge of life and business. It made it hard caring for her as she aged. Women are not near as naive as the previous generation. We've attempted to move toward changing women from acting as a dependent partner to being a co-partner in their relationships.

Remember when Harry saw Ken's paycheck and said he should get more because he was married? I think that was a common idea back then-more people to support, so more money for the same job. The wife was expected not to work or if she did, she would quit when she started having children. So quaint.

I think the ideal back in the 1960's was the working husband and the domestic wife happy to be at home raising the children. Most people tried to get as close to the ideal as they could. Women considered themselves lucky to stay at home and you often heard the comment "I didn't have to work." But remember a of of these women did know about the nature of work. When the men went off to fight the war in WWII, it was the women who filled their jobs in the factories (remember Rosie the Riveter?) But the dream was for the men to come home and be the breadwinners and for the women to put away their tools,don their aprons and start making babies. That was what the baby boom was all about ( and it lasted from 1947 to 1963.) Then these babies began to grow up and they wanted more than the dreams of their parents and the economic bliss of the 1950's gave way to the harsh realities of the new world. The Vietman War, the drug culture, the energy crisis of the 1970's, Women's Lib, Civil rights and so many more issues made everyone rethink their values. Women needed to be reevaluate their situation and contribute to the new system. Education, job training, and work for women became extremely important and once they got their feet wet many women proved they could get the job done and very often valued their work. As the economy sped up most people realized that they needed two jobs just to get by and the idea of the uneducated happy housewife became as far from the ideal as it could possibly be. Times have changed.

What I remember when I started community college in the early 70's is that they had "courses" for "Displaced Homemakers" who were either being dumped by their husbands in large numbers or were dumping their husbands or were on their own for some reason.

Alot of housewives hadn't worked for years, and were suddenly thrown into the workforce without skills or a work history background. Obviously, it addressed a specific need if it was showing up on the college curriculum. I don't know how much that had to do with wives of Vietnam vets who were either MIA or mentally incapacitated by the war. Of course, alot of my classmates were Vietnam vets, too.

@flowerpower: that was a good laugh! At least you got a couple!

My mother was a secretary in an ad agency who took a job for a chemical company at war time. After the war, in the 50's she climbed to the glass ceiling in an executive position with that company. My father returned from the military to an account executive position at an ad agency. My mother continued her career commuting to NY until retirement.
My grandmother, who had been a teacher, was my caregiver. All of my peers had mothers at home, and at Brownies, PTA, etc., except for two. One was a teacher, the other a nurse.

My family wasn't living the norm of the day.
Many things on Mad Men are familiar to me.

When I married and became a mother in the 60's I was a stay at home mother.