I was watching a documentary about supermarkets, one had a training video from the 60s.
in it all the cashiers were women, but so were all the customers. all the costumers were either women alone or women with their kids.
was it deemed shameful for men to go shopping back then, like it was assumed only bachelors and widowers did their own shopping?
I don’t think it was shameful as much as it was impractical. When I was a kid, most stores including supermarkets closed earlier than is common today. Large supermarkets in my area are open until midnight seven days a week. Smaller supermarkets are typically open until 8 or 9 pm. When I was a kid, the supermarkets were open until 9pm one or maybe two days a week. The other days they closed around 7 pm - and I don’t think they were open at all on Sundays. So if your family was one where the husband worked outside the home and the wife didn’t (which was more common then) , she would be the one doing the grocery shopping.
I don’t think it was shameful. I just think that anyone who worked went on their lunch hour, first thing in the morning, or right after getting off work, so grocery stores were very crowded at those times. A lot of them were opened on Saturday, as well, and that’s another time working people could go.
Homemakers/housewives/SAHM, whatever you want to call them, knew to go during the less “peak” hours. I remember vaguely being taken along when I was too young for preschool, so I would have been just under three to just barely about three, and she always did several things around the house, then bathed me, and dressed me, after my father had left for work, then we went shopping, so that meant we went at about 9:30 or 10am.
And when husbands did go to the grocery store, it was only on the way home from work to pick up something the wife desperately needed for dinner that evening. Wives/homemakers were expected to know which piece of meat looked best in the butcher case, which produce was at its peak and which was past its prime, and they were expected to keep an eye on the teenage bagger to make sure they didn’t put the eggs at the bottom of the bag under the canned goods.
Not in my lifetime, and I’m in my 60s. My parents both would go together on a big weekly grocery shopping excursion. All my friends’ parents too. That was in West Texas.
I was born in '46 and grew up in New York City. When I was about 10 or so I remember my Dad and I going to do the grocery shopping on Saturday while Mom did chores at home. Both parents worked full time. I did not think it was unusual at the time.
My parents married in 1955. My father almost always did the grocery shopping because (1) my mother hated doing it (2) my father could easily stop off on his way home from work (3) my father enjoyed hunting for bargains, and (4) for much of their marriage my mother was stuck at home with multiple young children, and packing them all up for a trip to the store was a major operation. If she needed something quick she could call Dad at the office to pick it up on the way home, or she could send one of the older kids to one of the neighborhood shops. I realized from a young age that in other families it was more common for mothers to do the shopping, but it never occurred to me that it was taboo or even unusual for men to do it.
I’m old enough to remember when grocery stores – at least in my area at the time – kept pretty much regular business hours, meaning they closed at what I believe was 6:00 PM daily. Not sure about Saturdays, but those were also the days of strict Sunday closings of just about everything. So as a matter of practicality, it was indeed difficult for a working person – man OR woman – to go grocery shopping. But those were the days when relatively few married women worked, so at least for married couples, it wasn’t a problem – the wife did the grocery shopping. This was all during my childhood. By the time I got married, it had long been typical for women to have careers and the world had adjusted accordingly. But I can’t recall any time when it might have seemed odd for a man to do grocery shopping, unless perhaps you go way back to the 40s, which is way before my time.
When I went shopping with my mother, it was in Manhattan, and not necessarily before the days of supermarkets, but back when there were still plenty of specialty stores for everything, especially in big cities. We walked down the block, and stopped at each store, instead of going into one big store, and stopping in different areas. We went to the green-grocer, the baker, the butcher, the stationery, the 5-&-dime, the dry cleaner’s, and other places as needed, like the shoe repair, the tailor, the hardware store. Everything was within about three blocks.
Usually, we went to the park first, then stopped at the stores on the way back home.
I’m trying to remember if we saw many men in the stores, or if it was mostly women. I suspect it was mostly women, although, there would have been men who drove buses or cabs, worked second or third shift, did custodial work with hours that were more like 10-6 or 11-7 instead of 9-5, as well as men in management positions who could get away for an hour to do errands.
I don’t think it was taboo for men. My father went to the store on occasion-- and sometimes even took me. He was a professor, so there were days he wasn’t teaching, and was home: spring break, winter break, what have you, and he might run errands then, and I remember a couple of occasions when my mother was sick enough that he stayed home-- usually, I went to my aunt when my mother wasn’t feeling well (which is where I went most afternoons, because my mother was in school part-time), but there were odd days here and there.
I very much doubt it was taboo. Of course, we were in New York City. It could have been taboo in more conservative areas.
This was Switzerland when we moved here in 2000. It was only after the Ikea was being built that my town added evening shopping hours twice a week. Even now, shops close at 7:00 Monday-Friday and at 5:00 on Satudays. Sundays they are closed.
Not taboo, but practical, due to the restrictive hours and the fact that many women stay home with the children as child care costs are prohibitive.
Until this year it was quite common for a couple to go grocery shopping together, and as the children came, then the entire family would go together. Grocery shopping is social hour here.
In mine, they are open 24/7.
I’m not sure if I have this memory right, but I seem to recall that, growing up in the country, in New Zealand, in the 70s, we had a couple of local grocery stores where everything was on dusty wooden shelves and the shop assistant would gather the groceries from the list you gave them (like we were the Waltons or something).
We didn’t have self-serve, or supermarkets in my local town (a half-hour’s drive away), until around 1978.
Anyhoo, it was always my Mum who went shopping, never my Dad.
I offer as evidence the film, Mr. Mom released in 1983, a mere (fuck me) 37 years ago, in which the character Jack’s first foray into grocery shopping is a Lucy-esque disaster, only to be saved by the Magic Female.
Not taboo, just uncommon. I grew up in the 60s and Mom did almost all of the grocery shopping. When school was out (summertime) she took us with her. My sister and I stayed in the car for an hour or so while she went in the grocery store. Like most cars of that era, ours had crank windows so we could adjust as needed for ventilation or rain.
As an oldster, the abundance of working aged men in stores on weekdays was surprising to me. Noticeable enough that I made an entry in my journal about it – as one of the unexpected elements of retirement. Having spent weekdays at work for the last 45 years, this slow change had gone unnoticed.
FTR: No value judgement, just one of the many things that was noticeable after I retired.
It was pretty uncommon, but when I was twelve or so, my parents got separated and I lived with my dad. And out of necessity we men had to learn how to get around in grocery stores.
So I’ve basically been grocery shopping 45+ years. I also learned about housecleaning and going to the laundryomats at that age as well, so I guess I was prepared for life as a single guy early in life.
Remembering grocery shopping in the 50’s and 60’s, and agreeing with pretty much everyone else here: not taboo; just in most families more practical for the women to do the shopping, partly because they were less likely to be working full time and partly because they were more likely to be doing the cooking, and therefore more likely to know what they wanted to buy.
There was a general assumption that if there was an adult woman (or female teenager) in the household that she was doing at least most of the cooking and housekeeping, and grocery shopping was part of the housekeeping; but men sometimes lived on their own, or did the shopping on the way home from work because that was who had the car; and occasional households just did things differently. Nobody would have looked askance at a man doing grocery shopping.
My father hated it, probably partly because my mother loved it and took forever – when he did the shopping he went through the store fast and grabbing things, my mother read all the labels and considered individual produce and meat items. We’d usually go shopping on Friday nights, when the stores were open later, and he’d wait out in the car. But other families were doing the same thing and the men sometimes came in; and my father would often stop and pick something up on days my mother wasn’t going into town.
My first job was bagboy at a Safeway, 1960. I really don’t remember for sure but yeah mostly mothers coming in. A lot of older ladies also - many knew me and my family (small town). I especially remember when I was a young tyke my mother talking me into the city (Dallas, Tx) for shopping. We’d go to the five and dime and eat at the soda fountain.
When I was eleven, I started doing the grocery shopping for the family. My mom didn’t drive. My dad would give me $60 (3 twenties) and drop me off at the Market Basket, and I’d do the shopping. He’d go off and do other errands (including having coffee and jawing with the waitress at Ships). I had to pay attention to prices and such, because once I went over my budget and had to pick out things to take off. It was so humiliating that I got really good at keeping a running total in my head and never went over again.
My stepdad did most of the market shopping in the 70s. My mom was a school teacher and he mostly was, um, between jobs. I would go with him often. I never thought that there was anything strange about it.
A couple of pop culture items prove it was not tabboo: on the TV show Happy Days, set in the 1950s and recorded in the 1970s, Fonzie recommended going grocery shopping as a way to meet women and pick up chicks, and secondly, in the opening credits for “The Rockford Files” TV show, (1970s) the star, James Garner as Rockford, was shown grocery shopping. Neither of these instances were considered at all remarkable at the time.