Rare Photos Show What Life Was Like For 1940s Housewives
We’ve all seen the stereotypical advertising pictures of housewives from the 1940s: a domestic goddess in a perfect dress, smiling as she provides for her happy husband and kids. As this collection of wartime photographs show, though, this isn’t exactly what life was like for women back then. Rather, these images give us an up-close-and-personal glimpse of the reality of living, working, and raising a family in a decade defined by war — and it wasn’t always a pretty sight.
A decade that fractured many traditional marriages
At the beginning of the ’40s, family units were still very traditional, by and large. Husbands went out to work to provide for their families, while wives stayed at home to care for the children, cook, and clean.
This traditional view of a marriage — that wives were there to help their husbands and do all the “women’s work” — was about to be seriously challenged, though, when World War II broke out and droves of men went off to fight.
Saying goodbye to husbands
This heartbreaking photo was taken on September 23, 1943, in Detroit, Michigan. It shows three men saying an emotional goodbye to their wives and children as they board a train to Fort Custer to begin their military training.
You see, by this point, America had decided to enter the war following the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and these men had little choice but to answer the call of duty. It begs a question: we wonder how many of these wives were reunited with their husbands after the war?
A heartwarming reunion
This picture shows a young evacuee being reunited with her mom in Sussex, England. You see, when war broke out, millions of English children were evacuated from the big cities and relocated in the countryside. Many had no idea where they were going, nor for how long they would be away from their families.
Evacuees Reunion Association founder James Roffey told the BBC, “We all thought it was a holiday, but the only thing we couldn't work out was why the women and girls were crying.”
Happy families?
The war years caused an incredible amount of strain on marriages. While men were away fighting for their countries, their wives did more than just hold the fort at home; many women entered the world of work and found a new sense of independence.
It led some regressive thinkers to worry that the traditional role of a wife was being eroded. In practice, though, this often simply amounted to men not liking the idea of their wives searching for more out of life than remaining subservient to their husbands.