Reply to how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You have got me thinking, OP.  I had thought that women didn't start working outside the home until about the 1970's.  But my mom, who would be in her 90's if she were still alive, worked at some point in her life outside the home.  My stepmom, who would be over 100 if she were still alive, worked outside the home at some point in her life.  My MIL, who is in her 80's and was born in a foreign country and doesn't read English very well, also managed to find employment outside the home.  Even my Grandma, born about 120 years ago, worked outside the home at some point in her life.  
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Women of a certain class didn't work outside the home much until then.  But there were plenty of other women working to support themselves and their families for decades before then.  But it wasn't out of choice, it was a necessity.[/quote]

My grandmother (both in 1914) was upper middle class...went to college during the Depression, did a grand tour of Europe, had household help...and she worked outside the home before she had kids and again after they grew up. It was definitely a choice, they didn't need the money. She specifically made a point of working enough quarters to qualify for her own social security benefits and was annoyed that the value of those benefits ended up being less than the value of her spousal benefits because my grandfather had earned so much more than her.  She believed that people should be active and to her, full-time parenting or full-time volunteering or full-time paid work were all equally acceptable choices (and at times she did each of those), but sitting around drinking coffee with the other housewives was not. Protestant work ethic and all that....[/quote]

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