The myth of hard work and older generations

[Beeman]

You hear so many talk of the "old timers" and hard work. In reality the older generations had a lot more down time and family time. Don't get me wrong, work was physical and time consuming but usually it was a smaller portion of their life. The checkerboard at the country store wasn't for retirees or welfare recipients. All of the drive to tourist attractions and motels weren't for the rich and famous. Sundays were always a day off and in many places Wed. was a half day. Sat. was go to town day.

[deaconjim]

The old timers did work hard, and they enjoyed their down time as well. They didn't have to work every waking moment to buy the trinkets and toys that today's generations consider 'necessities'.

I used to be on that train, working 70 hours a week and running a business on the side. When my DW died, it was obvious that the time spent at work could have been much better spent with her.

Now that the good Lord has blessed me with a new DW and three absolutely wonderful children, I put in my time at work as needed, but my time with the family is more important than making extra money. We don't have as many toys, but we have more of each other and I'm much happier now than I've ever been.

[EDDIE BUCK]

Some of the jobs were with family as well. Worked on the farm,in the woods cutting firewood, in the garden and carrying farm products to market, and to church on Sunday. I doubt that checkerbord got a lot of use from hard working folks. In other words, if you wanted to hire a good worker, in MY opinion that checkerbord operator would be WAY down on my list, but I have been wrong before. Eddie

[ErinP]

They didn't have to work every waking moment to buy the trinkets and toys that today's generations consider 'necessities'.

Like food and housing?
An average house takes a greater percentage of a couple's household expenditures today than it did 50 years ago...

[big rockpile]

Maybe some Jobs but most I had was 7 days a week and long hours.Very Hot or Cold with heavy lifting.

big rockpile

[deaconjim]

Originally Posted by ErinP

Like food and housing?
An average house takes a greater percentage of a couple's household expenditures today than it did 50 years ago...

Take a look at what the "average house" was 50 years ago. It took a lot less to build and had fewer frills (I know, I've looked at a lot of old houses while real estate shopping recently). The same thing goes for our cars. The stuff that goes into new cars today compared with the cars my parents drove is amazing. While the safety and fuel economy features are a good thing to have, we did manage just fine without them. In fact, folks used to (and the Amish still do) get along just fine without cars at all.

Also look at the food people buy today. How many people can even cut up a whole chicken and fry it, let alone butcher and pluck it before hand. Food comes from the grocery store rather than the garden, meat comes prepackaged and precooked. Beverages have to be sweet, fizzy and fruit flavored. A lot of people wouldn't have a hot meal if it weren't for the microwave.

[Mid Tn Mama]

I firmly believe that one of the biggest causes of the high incidence of diabetes, heart disease and obesity in this country is the sedentary lifestyle we lead. The second cause I think is the secret and not so secret sugars that are put into processed food-- but that's another thread.

Most folks who can afford it don't do any physical labor for themselves. If they do cut their grass, it's with a riding lawnmower. They don't paint, carry things, hoe, mop, etc. etc. and I think we are slowly killing ourselves. No amount of expensive medicines can counteract a totally sedentary lifestyle.

So many are on mood-altering drugs, yet research has always shown that the best way to improve how you feel--physically and emotionally is to be active.

[crafty2002]

The Myth of hard work and older generations????????
I am only 53 years old and can still tell you that isn't a myth.
I grew up seeing it and doing it. I was raking muke out of a ditch and pouring water in the well casing when I was 6 years old.
By 8, I was cutting grass for 50 cents a yard. I could run the well machine when I was 10 years old. Was head cook in a burger house when I was 14. That was only because I had to go to school so getting up at 4 am to go to work wasn't an option.
Everything I learned about hard work came from a few men that grew up doing hard work.
Daddy could work anyone here that is my age under the table and that includes me.
I know a man now that is 80+ years old and it was all I could do to keep up with him 10 years ago.
A MYTH??????
You don't know what the meaning of hard work is and you acll it a myth.

Dennis

ETA::::: If I might add, I truely think the reason for the younger generations to not be able to work as they did 50 years ago, is the diet we have today.
The bull S--- doesn't have any octane in it. It is like trying to race an Indy Car on kerosine. It just don't work!!!

[mnn2501]

My Grandfathers house had 2 rooms, an outhouse, a hand pump outside for water, wood stove heat, an oscilating fan and windows were his air conditioning. True, my house takes up a greater part of my income than his did, but compare the 2 houses. I have 11 rooms, central heat and air conditioning, 3 bathrooms, 2 car garage, shed with electric, etc

and you know what else, the same number of people live/lived in both houses.

I'm 52 and trust me, my parents and grandparents worked much more than I currently do, family time was usually spent working, yes it was together as a family, one example of family time: My Dad would cut down the tree's and my Grandpa and older brother would split them
here's another, my Grandma would wash dishes and Mom would dry - I got to put them away -- good family time.

To the OP...have you ever washed clothes in a wash tub with a ringer?
Heck I would guess most American kids have never even washed dishes by hand.

[belladulcinea]

I just re-read the Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pa heads across the street to see what is going on at the store and who's playing checkers. Those were the places to gather information in the community. What else does a farmer do when he can't work the fields and it's winter time, the chores are done.

My mom and I just talked about her mom and grandmother during the depression. They owned farms and everyone worked hard all day except on Sunday and they still had farm chores. Mom said that during the day her mom did breakfast and depending upon the season and day, went to work in the garden, figured out what to do for lunch which was their biggest meal of the day, looked in the pantry and garden to see what was available and started baking bread and fixing lunch for the men in the family and whatever crew was there. Around 3 p.m. she would sit for a minute on their back porch to watch the men folk then she went back in to do what ever else needed doing.

Dishes by hand, washing in the tub or wringer washer, gathering eggs, tending a garden, making butter, canning with no a/c, beating the rugs, constant dirt patrol if you lived in the dust bowl area, hauling water, walking to town, one run-on long sentence of just endless daily and seasonal chores just to eat. I'm tired just thinking about it.

And yes I know many how do that today but "we" do have choices in our lives they didn't have.

[RichieC]

Originally Posted by ErinP

Like food and housing?
An average house takes a greater percentage of a couple's household expenditures today than it did 50 years ago...

But food takes a much LOWER percentage than it did 50 years ago.

The cost of a gallon of milk in 1954 would equal about 8 of today's dollars.

[Maura]

How much work one did would have depended on a variety of things. Where one lived, if one had to gather or chop wood to keep warm, or just to cook. How productive the land is. How many clothes was one expected to have and how often were they washed. How many small children, how many children who could really help and how soon do they leave to get married. Were the taxes light or heavy. Is the family hunting, herding, or farming. In many cases, hard work was seasonal. It's hard work to scythe a field all day, and do it again the next day, but it's really only a few days out of the year. And, people worked closer to the family. You could sharpen your scythe while talking with your spouse. You fed the animals with your kids, etc.

[Callieslamb]

I guess I am in the older generation then - darn, I would have liked to have put that off until I was at least 50! I worked like a horse when I was a kid. We did enjoy our down time! Twice a summer we got to go canoeing. And once or twice my dad would play baseball with us or we might get to go swimming in the creek. Of course, this was after the cows were milked, the calves fed, the garden weeded, the hay stacked in the barn, and no emergencies and we had to be back before it was time to start it all over again. I am so glad I had that lifestyle now, but back then it was so hard to have to tell my friends, "I can't come, I have to haul hay." Hiring help was unknown and with a family of girls, we had to do it all. I learned how to drive a stick shift when I was 10 - hay trucks need drivers. There were cows to brand and de-horn. House work - that was for sissies like my younger DS. I can't imagine how tired my dad must have been after milking all morning, baling or hauling in the afternoons and then milking again in the evenings - even with teenage helpers - at least we often got to take turns. When I was 14, my dad went to AZ for a funeral. My sibblings and I were left at home to milk 90 cows and do all the other chores and still get to school. The oldest one couldn't even legally drive us to school. But that was how things went back then.

We also didn't have little league, mighty-might foot ball, dance lessons, and all that to get to. I remember we went to a drive-in movie once. Now I really feel old!

[Freeholder]

My grandmother married in 1931, and was raising a young family on a farm during the Depression. She has told me that from the time she got up in the morning (early) until she fell into bed at night, she had forty-five minutes in the afternoon where she could sit down and rest. The rest of the day she was busy, and had to stay on schedule or she wouldn't be able to get everything done. They didn't have electricity or running water, and by 1938 she had four young children. At some point Grandad was able to buy her a gasoline-engine washing machine, and since he had to run the thing, that gave her a little more time. Grandad was busy, too -- even in the fall and winter when there weren't so many farm chores, he was running a trap line (which brought in most of their cash income).

Kathleen

[Mel-]

myth, baloney!

my parents both grew up incredibly poor (both born in the early 30s). netiher had elec or running water inside. they wanted heat, they had to chop and bring in firewood, they wanted water, they went out to the well and brought in a bucket of water (my mother had to go to a creek). they wanted light, they used a kerosene lamp. they grew or bartered every bite of food they ate including the corn ground into flour. 70 or 80 hour work weeks would have been a vacation for them. my mother lived with 6 other siblings in a 2 bedroom house with no elec, no running water or indoor bathroom. my god, just washing clothes by hand for all those people would have been a full time job.

and their lives were easy compared to my grandmothers. 6 children ranging from 15 to newborn when their mother died. only son was 2 years old. father going blind. lived in a part of tennessee that is still incredibly rural today. a creek for water, bushes for a bathroom, mule for transportation. my grandmother was 10 and her younger sister 8 were responsible for growing their food. all of it. with a mule. with a hand spade. with a shovel.

....omitted by Cabin Fever.....

and o yea, in the 60s when my parents were raising us 4 kids in a 2 bedroom house my father always put 10% of his pay into treasury bonds. if they couldn't meet their bills, he still always put that in there and didn't touch them. they needed more money, he went and got another part time job. most of the time I grew up he worked 2 full time jobs and a part time job. he never used a credit card and always paid cash for cars.

you need to get out more and talk to some of the senior citizens around, dude.

[Aintlifegrand]

Originally Posted by ErinP

Like food and housing?
An average house takes a greater percentage of a couple's household expenditures today than it did 50 years ago...

Compare the houses... I grew up in a 1100 sqft house with three bed rooms and 1 bathroom for a family of 6...no way that would be acceptable to most families today...-

[EDDIE BUCK]

My Dad always said you can't work if you don't eat something to give you enough strength to work. Boilled meat and potatos or beans and corn bread and no sandwitches less you won't going to have to work hard. Eddie

[ladycat]

Originally Posted by ErinP

Like food and housing?
An average house takes a greater percentage of a couple's household expenditures today than it did 50 years ago...

Today: houses are getting bigger and relatively more expansive, cars are getting fancier, people buy $100 athletic shoes for their kids, they have to have wide screen TV's, cable or satellite, computers with internet, cell phones for every member of the family, wii's, iphones, all the latest appliances, half their meals come from fast food places, designer dogs, the latest fashions, thousands of dollars debt on credit cars (and not for necessities!), and on and on.

50 years ago only the very richest had such a luxurious lifestyle. Now everyone has to live that way.

Originally Posted by RichieC

But food takes a much LOWER percentage than it did 50 years ago.

The cost of a gallon of milk in 1954 would equal about 8 of today's dollars.

Somewhere recently I saw a chart for the last hundred years showing how much % of income in the USA went for food.

I won't bother looking for that chart right now, but a quick search turned up this:

Orshansky knew from the Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey (the latest available such survey at the time) that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax money income on food in 1955.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/HPTGSSIV.htm

(2006) Americans Spend Less Than 10 percent of Disposable Income on Food

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/j...ices_71906.php

Each decade less and less percent of the income has gone for food.

[culpeper]

A myth? You've got to be joking. Fifty years ago, things were tough enough, but the generation before me had things much tougher even than that.

I think of my grandmother, born in the 1880s, who worked like a slave all her life. No electrical appliances at all, not even electric light. She rose at dawn, and worked right into the night. Her day started with chopping wood for the wood stove and the lounge-room fire, and baking her daily bread. Throughout the day, chores varied, but were constant. All clothes washing was done by hand, or with an old pump-action washing machine and hand-mangle. Ironing was done with flat-irons heated on the stove. Very heavy work. She made all her own soap and candles, using fat collected from her cooking, in a wood-fire-heated copper in the laundry. She never owned a fridge - the best she got in her retirement in the 50s and 60s was an ice chest - with ice delivered once a week.

She was retired by the time I was born, so I never saw her working in her younger days, before retirement, and when she was raising her large family. But I know that as well as doing her household chores, she helped her husband on their farm - helping to look after the poddies (orphaned animals), with the slaughtering and butchering, crutching and shearing and all else involved in farm work, and in the vegetable garden. She never owned anything like a vacuum cleaner or a jug to heat water, or a fan to keep her cool.

She spent much of her time making jams and preserving fruit and vegetables. She cooked 3 full meals a day, every day, from scratch. She never had the luxury of a family car in her life, and walked several miles to do any shopping. In her younger days, it would have been with a large family of children in tow - men didn't help with the kids in those days!

She never even had the luxury of an indoor toilet, or of using toilet paper. Instead, it was a hole in the ground with a small building around it for privacy, and newspaper and magazines cut into suitable sizes.

No rest for her in the evenings. Then it was knitting or sewing or darning socks or other 'repair work'. She made all her own feather mattresses, starting with the killing of the birds. Making a bed began with stripping it down, and tossing the mattress to fluff it up again.

There was never a day off in her entire life. Sundays were amongst her busiest days. The obligatory family attendance at church, followed by the preparation and eating of a large family dinner, and still the farm chores to be done.

I could go on and on about the hardships of her life. I know for a fact that she didn't regret leaving it. Yet of course, she wasn't on her own - her entire generation lived very like that!

My other grandmother, even older, lived a different life, in town various towns, and they were much better off, but still her day was filled with the same household chores, wood-chopping included. She, and other women like her, spent a lot of their time baking cakes and standing at street stalls, raising money for local charities. Today, this would be called Voluntary Work, but back then it was one's social duty, and it was the only social life they actually had. Even though it was hard work making cakes by hand and walking with them, children in tow, to wherever they needed to be. Then to stand all day selling them, and getting home in time to cook 3 solid meals a day in between.

It's not surprising that the majority of families attended church in those days. It was the only time most people had the opportunity of sitting down for a rest!

As a child, I used to enjoy sitting down and listening to my grandparents talk about their lives. It wasn't until I grew up that I realised it was all about hard work - there was never a mention of fun times, probably because there weren't many of them. Even before she married, my grandmother had the care of her numerous younger siblings from a very young age.

It didn't help that both grandmothers had to live through TWO World Wars, with the extra hardships brought on them by the departure of the menfolk who left to fight for their country - 4 years in the first war, 6 years in the second. And the losses they suffered in the consequence. Not to mention the Great Depression in between.

Hard work a myth? I don't think so!

[Tiempo]

I don't think it's a myth either.

When I was little we lived in a house with no bathtub and only an outside toilet.

Bathtime meant filling a tub in front of the fire, or making the walk to my grandma's house, she had a plumbed tub.

Not many people live that way anymore, but it was common in my neighborhood back in the day (and this was only the 60's- early 70's.)