Things our mothers said...

[MoonRiver]

Anyone else remember these, or am I the only "lucky" one.

"An unmarried woman over age 25 is considered an old maid." Implication was that finding a husband after crossing that age line would be really difficult. All the guys would wonder why she's not married.

"A never married man over age 35 is considered a confirmed bachelor." Don't get involved with any man in that age category cause the relationship is going nowhere.

"Most women go to college to find a husband." Implication was that should be my primary, if not only, college goal.

I'm soooo glad modern young women don't get these messages. It really messed with my head, although I know my mom was only trying to be helpful. Those are the things she had heard from her mom, and she really believed it all.

[flor-de-jasmim]

1. "Do not get a divorce - you won't want to be a divorce."

[MoonRiver]

2. Yeah, I remember that one too!

Everything was about catching a husband!

[snowybirdie]

3. How about

No sex before marriage. Men want a virgin when they choose a wife and mother! Sex ruins your chance of getting marriage.

[MoonRiver]

10. And I'll put you in a home for unwed mothers if you do get pregnant!

[sunonmars]

4. Stop crying or i'll give you a good reason to.... was certainly one

[smirkymonkey]

7. Yep! That was more like it!

"The beatings will stop when your attitude improves!"

[rsdsharp]

39. My favorite was

I’ll knock your head up to a peak, and knock the peak off.

[Xipe Totec]

5. Get down from that tree so I can beat some sense into you! nt

[MLAA]

19. Lol

[frogmarch]

6. From my mom, a late 1930s college graduate:

Never let a man know when you're smarter than he is. Men don't like smart women.

[MoonRiver]

11. Oh, yeah definitely!

Both my mom and dad were very smart, well educated people but mom always made sure to say that daddy was much smarter than she!

[frogmarch]

21. Sounds familiar.

After Sunday dinner when we had guests, my mom would begin clearing the table and invite the other women to join her and my sister and me (she was around 12 and I was around 10) in the kitchen "while the menfolk discuss their politics." My dad always urged us all to stay and join the conversation, but my mom would have none of it, even when he and the other men offered to wash the dishes later.

As far as I could tell, none of the men I met as a kid disliked smart women, and my dad often engaged my sister and me in serious discussions about lots of things, including politics.

[raccoon]

8. I sincerely hope young women don't hear the ridiculous

And highly improbable message that some man is going to “take care of” I.e. support them.

It wasn’t true when I was young and it certainly isn’t true now.

[MoonRiver]

12. That's never been true.

My mom was very lucky. She married someone she was perfectly compatible with. They were married 52 years until her death.

[sunonmars]

9. Stop smirking because if the wind changes, your face will stick.

[MoonRiver]

13. That reminds me of the one about not crossing your eyes, cause they could get stuck!

Although I did hear that from other people too.

[csziggy]

14. I was lucky - my mother never said those things

But I did hear them from other women in our community. Mom told us - there were four daughters and no sons in my family - to ignore comments like that.

Mom should have gone to college - she won a scholarship but her family did not have the money to support her through college during the Great Depression. Instead she used her scholarship to go to nursing school and on graduation immediately signed up for the Navy Nurse Corps. She married Dad at the end of the war at 25.

The main thing Mom taught all of us was that we should never rely on a man to support us - that we should be able to make a living on our own without relying on anyone else.

The fortunate thing was that Dad agreed with Mom 100%. His mother had gone to college - her grandfather left provision in his will for all his grandchildren to attend college, boys and girls alike. She married straight out of college, which was a mistake. Apparently, her first husband was an abusive drunk. She left him, moving to another state, and supported herself for few years, then sued for divorce in 1916 on the grounds that her husband provided no support. The she worked as a school teacher for several years before she married my grandfather at the age of 34.

Dad and his brother were taught by his mother, who had nine granddaughters, that girls should be able to support themselves and that they should never put up with any abuse. Dad was very respectful of women especially independent ones. Unlike many men of that era he was not threatened by a smart, educated, independent woman.

My family was very usuual in the 1950s and 1960s and some people in our small town considered us oddballs with Mom & Dad putting away money to send four daughters to college and we all planned and prepared for it. Because many in that town made their opinions clear I absolutely know how incredibly lucky I was!

[SCantiGOP]

15. After I turned 25

My Mother would inquire about my unmarried male friends, “Is xx gay?”
She couldn’t understand how any man would forego the wonders of Matrimony.
I would just say No, and not explain that XX wasn’t gay, as evidenced by the fact that he slept with 5 different women a month.

[lillypaddle]

16. Yep, I heard all of those from my mother

plus a bunch of German "old wives tales," such as don't drink ice water after eating fresh fruit or you will get a severe stomach ache.

And both my parents used "humor" to impart painful images and feelings, with songs like "fatty fatty two by four ..." Or my dad would say to me (very self conscious of my ears), "When God gave out ears, Jackie thought he said 'beers' and said give me a couple of big ones." This was interchangeable with, "When God gave out noses, Jackie thought he said 'roses" ..."

My son and DIL, as well as myself, would never think of saying these things to my granddaughter. People were cruel back then, and I don't think they even realized it. They just thought it was funny.

[LizBeth]

27. Birthday spankings. Way little, i dreaded bdays because of bday spankings. Bdays are suppose to be

fun and all I thought about coming up to a bday was people are going to have an excuse to hit me. I think I threw a fit about it young, so they stopped when I was 5, 6, 7. But I was thinking that the other day. No way I would allow anyone to do bday paddlings. And what sadist came up with the idea to hit little ones on their bday.

[lillypaddle]

29. I don't have a specific memory of those ...

but that would be terribly traumatic for a little child.

[Ohiogal]

30. Yes I have also heard of birthday spankings.

Thank goodness it wasn’t done in my family, what a cruel custom it was.

[LizBeth]

35. Right? Isn't it? I think it is atrocious. Happy Bday, whack.

[Ohiogal]

32. My dad used to call my sister

“Cousin It” because she had long hair that often hung over part of her face.

[lillypaddle]

36. Yeah, my dad called my sister "slim"

which she was NOT. What on earth were they thinking?

I love poetry, and bought my granddaughter a children's book of poetry, not thinking much about it - it's a beautiful, hard cover book with illustrations. I was reading some of the poems to her and kept running into poems about fat people, dumb people, and the like. No wonder so many of us are screwed up!

[Ohiogal]

37. And that book was for children??

Good grief!

I think when a young girl hears comments like “Slim” or “Cousin It” from her own father, it cuts so very deep into her self esteem. My “Cousin It” sister was also the recipient of less than tactful comments from my father about her weight. Even in school. In 6th grade the gym teacher told my sister she made a good volleyball shot because “she put her beef behind it” .... in front of the whole class.

[lillypaddle]

38. "The Random House Book of Poetry for Children"

4 1/2 stars on Amazon.

[MuseRider]

17. I was only allowed to go to college

to find a husband. Education was wasted on women and since I had not done my job and scored a husband right out of High School I had to go to college.

I was a Music Major and because all the men in music were gay (to put it politely) I was only allowed to go if I could be accepted into a sorority. Me....in a sorority! I got in one after trying desperately not to so I got an education. I did not nail a husband down until I was 28. What a black spot in my family history! LOL!

[LakeArenal]

18. If you got it flaunt it. But if a boy wants to touch it....

You never do anything right.

It’s just as easy to marry a rich guy than a poor one.

Your brother is the successful one.

Get out of my kitchen. You don’t know how to cook.

My mother told my husband that he can come and live with her because I have a bad temper.

But the very best mother, my MIL, said to my husband every year

The day you were was the worst day of her life.

(She didn’t know she would have twins and he came out second. She already had four. Eventually there were seven)

We loved my MIL very much.

[MLAA]

20. I am so glad you got lucky with a lovable MIL, your mother sounds awful 💕

[LakeArenal]

24. Mentally ill. Try to forgive. Just not able to.

Thanks. And yes Mary Ann, my MIL, was a savior for me. She was an unconditional mother. But not keen on children. But adult children she really enjoyed.

Seven kids, seven in laws, never heard one argument. Never heard one bad mouth another. They all like each other. Christmas and Thanksgiving we’re a joy. Imagine.
I could not believe this family even existed.

[hunter]

22. I come from a matriarchal family.

The advice was the same for everyone, boys and girls. Don't get married until you can support yourself.

My great grandmothers were fierce women of the Wild West, and property owners. So were their mothers. They tended to marry dreamers. Sometimes it would work out, sometimes not. A woman had to know how to support herself. Bad men were disposed of. One of my great aunts had several husbands before she landed a good one.

One of my grandmothers was a welder who worked in the shipyards during World War II. She was one of the few woman who kept working when the war ended. (She drank and smoked like a stereotypical shipyard worker as well, which is what eventually killed her...)

My last ancestor to immigrate to the U.S. was a mail order bride to Salt Lake city. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran off with a monogamous surveyor who was passing through town. She was the boss and the owner of the ranch they homesteaded, not the property of any man.

My wife's family has a similar history. My father-in-law was born in a farm labor camp near a small orchard my parents used to own. It was my wife's grandmother who had insisted her children would be born in the U.S.A.. In a way she was coming home. Some of her ancestors had been forced off their native lands, across the new borders with Mexico, by the U.S. Army.

[Cairycat]

23. "Girls don't need middle names

because they can use their maiden name for a middle name."

I use my birth name, with a middle name I picked out and had legally added. Gave all my kids two middle names.

Sometimes I tell people that my husband and I both kept our maiden names

[Bayard]

25. Wow....

I never received any life advice from my Mom, only things like--You will sit there until you finish your dinner. She was a strict disciplinarian--Spare the rod, spoil the child. Of course, she married my Dad at 16, when he got out of the service. He was 11 years older.

We did not become friends until I was long gone from home.

[procon]

26. Debutant Balls meat market, T&A show, sex trafficking

Texas, 1962 and my socialite mother forced me to go to those degrading, humiliating and stereotyped affairs. Dozens of proud parents displayed there female offspring to prospective suitors. Think of pre Bachelor TV shows, or posh dog shows for well groomed bitches shown by the hoity-toity elites and essentially offered for sale to the right husband to be.

Girls weren't marriageable unless they had been presented to society. And what use were girls unless they married? I hated it. I always caused some hilarious kerfluffle or minor scandal in the hopes of being grounded and denied attending the next soiree. No luck in getting out of my mother's clutches, and thankfully no tobacco chewing, spoiled mama's boy fiancee either.

I fled, off to university, conspiring with my socialist great aunt to live in her commune, or farm, as my parents saw it. Burned my bra, tuned out, tuned in and turned on, as they chanted back in the day.

[LizBeth]

28. My mom was my best friend. She said she would be the one person I could unconditionally trust

and she would always be on my side and it was true.

She was 5'3" dynamo that took no shit from no one, ever. And she was the most caring, nurturing woman I knew. And the most honest. Detested liars. And a liberal and feminist without needing the titles up against my fathers conservative.

[Ohiogal]

31. "Why buy the cow

when you can get the milk for free” was a popular saying among mothers when I was young.

[Mossfern]

33. Become a teacher

so you can have something to fall back on if you don't get married.
Why can't you be like Michelle? (my friend - her friend's daughter)

[MoonRiver]

34. So I just want to say that despite some of her views, I really did love my mom.

Walking down the streets of my hometown, I always made sure I didn't step on a crack, cause, you know, it could break your mother's back, lol.

When I ignored her advice about only going to college to catch a husband (I actually loved learning stuff), and went on to obtain advanced graduate degrees, she was so proud, and bragged about me to all her friends.

I really think society has deliberately tried to limit women's options, since basically day one. We baby boomers broke the mold.