Fifites Women - The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail this week has been featuring extracts from a new book on fifties family life. This particular extract caught my eye. Though the piece is probably meant to draw attention to the changes in women's position and highlight how things have 'got better', the whole thing stinks of misplaced nostalgia. The scene is set in the opening paragaph when we are told about Britain in the fifties being a "country where doors were left unlocked, children played in the street and crime levels were low and falling - in fact, a Britain that has long since disappeared". The fact this is then followed by a look at women's position is perhaps now coincidence. Aren't the New Right guilty of looking back to a golden age which never existed, eager to claim a correlation between single/working mothers and juvenile deliquency?

Derek from Kent in the comments seems to have also picked up on the underlining messages promoted in this piece...

This article proves yet again that women should be AT HOME, not at work. It would solve the unemployment crisis instantly. Also a man will be happier at work knowing that there is a nice hot meal waiting for him when he gets home.

...and to think all we need to do to solve unemployment is to get women back into the home. Now why didn't we think of that?


Only in The Daily Mail.