# In the dustbin of our cultural history **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 10, 2020, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703 "2020-12-10T00:57:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/21 "2020-12-10T19:34:13Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > When I was growing up in the far north of England it was common practice, even in modestly sized houses, to have a “Front Parlour”. This was the room kept in an immaculate state of neatness, where the best furniture was, where the best ornaments were displayed, and which was almost never used. If for some reason you had to step inside someone’s front parlour - the door was always kept closed - it was always the coldest room in the house, unheated - why would you heat a room you didn’t use? > > I guess you would say that it was a room set aside for “formal” occasions - which in my memory was pretty much restricted to births, marriages and deaths, but I suppose practice varied somewhat by household. Again, in my memory, if I found myself in someone’s front parlour it was almost always following a funeral service. My grandmother’s house had such a Front Parlor. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone in it. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing either of my grandparents anywhere on the nominal first floor of the house. They basically lived in the basement (there was a full kitchen down there), and slept on the second floor. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/22 "2020-12-10T21:31:43Z")
> [@BigAppleBucky](#): > > My wife’s piano teacher was a young unmarried woman back in the 20’s. She went sledding on a date. It was in a town some miles away from where she worked. My 7th grade teacher, who must have been in her late 20s or possibly early 30s at most, talked about a time when the principal called her into the office to speak with her. Turns out a parent had seen her at a restaurant enjoying a beer and didn’t think it was right for a teacher to be seen drinking in public. I was in 7th grade in 88-89 so this likely would have happened earlier that decade. ---
**Author:** ![Jane\_Elliot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jane_elliot/32/6166_2.png) [@Jane\_Elliot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jane_Elliot)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/23 "2020-12-10T22:27:57Z")
Bastards. I remember when being or having an illegitimate child was a huge scandal. Growing up, we had next-door neighbors (in a very liberal southern California community) who were not married to each other and had a child together. I saw her, at times, being treated like an oddity that no one quite knew how to deal with without being insulting. I can’t imagine anyone caring now. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/24 "2020-12-10T22:34:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > My grandmother’s house had such a Front Parlor. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone in it. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing either of my grandparents anywhere on the nominal first floor of the house. They basically lived in the basement (there was a full kitchen down there), and slept on the second floor. My great aunt and her husband had a very nice house with lovely furniture covered in plastic. Very tidy. I was only allowed to wear dresses or skirts and kept sticking to their couch in summer. I really hated that. It wasn’t until I was grown that my mother told me they kept that floor of their home just for visitors and they actually lived downstairs. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/25 "2020-12-11T00:05:33Z")
Having a “front room” was a thing in the UK as well. By the 1970s my parents turned theirs into a dining room cum homework room cum study. The latter was for my dad who, being a teacher, marked other people’s homework in there. The “living room” then went from being a dining cum telly watching room into a full time telly watching room. I think there were various factors at work some social but also technological. The appearance of the television overloaded the use of the living room but most importantly was the advent of central heating and cheaper energy - there was no need to save money by keeping that front room cold anymore. Now go back to the 1940s when my parents were courting. Dad’s family made the front room available to my parents a couple of nights a week. They were left to themselves and my auntie would knock on the door and leave a plate of sandwiches half way through the evening. Now there was a good use for that room 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/26 "2020-12-11T00:16:35Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Interesting. By contrast, at Hudson Junior High School in Hudson, Ohio, in 1978-1981, all students, boys and girls alike, were _required_ to take both Home Ec classes (Sewing and Cooking) and both Shop classes (Metal and Wood). Nor were they blow-off classes; the Cooking classroom had eight fully functional kitchens, and we were expected to prepare, cook, and eat a dish during each class. The final project for metal shop could be made with sand-casting, spot welding, arc welding, or other fairly advanced - for thirteen year-olds - techniques. > > Even then, though, I think I understood that Hudson’s school system was unusually progressive and well-funded. My grandmother was very conservative and old-fashioned, but she firmly believed that every boy should know how to iron clothes. I’m not totally certain where that came from; I would WAG that maybe it was because she was of the WW2 generation. I think everybody of that era would have learned that soldiers had to take care of their own uniforms. ---
**Author:** ![MissTake](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misstake/32/3189_2.png) [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/27 "2020-12-11T00:40:41Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > My husband’s grandmother wasn’t allowed to be trained in any sort of trade or career, because she “was needed to help her mother at home” My great-aunt, born in 1912, dealt with the same. Great grandmother had a late baby in 1928. When Aunt Libby became engaged in 1930, she was ordered to break up, as her job was take care of the kids and then take care of her elders. Usually, this role went to the youngest female of the generation, but since Aunt Libby was considered “unfortunate” looking and her fiancé did not have the best prospects, it fell on her. Her brother, my grandfather, tried the same spiel on me in 1988. Newly engaged. Youngest female _and_ adopted; therefore, I should be overjoyed to give up my life for The Family. Side note: Aunt Libby never moved out. Great grandmother lived to see age 95. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/28 "2020-12-11T03:09:54Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > One of my older cousins told me that when he had a summer job working in a drug store as a teenager, one of his jobs was to wrap each box of tampons in brown paper, with no identifying marks, other than the price. That’s how they were put on the shelves. When I was somewhere around 10 or 11, so around 1960, I remember my mother sending me to the drugstore with a note that I was to hand to the druggist, instead of just telling me what she wanted. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me to know that she needed such a product, it was that she didn’t want to have to say it out loud. It was Tampax (of course I looked in the bag, and it wasn’t wrapped in brown paper). > [@panache45](#): > > > [@Monty](#): > > > > I, a Caucasian, am now married to a Korean. It was not that long ago (actually, within my lifetime) that the United States Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage. > > My husband and I were together for 28 years before we were allowed to marry, because we’re both male. Only 23 years for us, but we are also a mixed-race couple. Congratulations to both couples on your marriage. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/29 "2020-12-11T05:34:26Z")
This is the exact description of my Portuguese friend’s parents’ house when I was in electronics school (mid-1980s). Kitchen and living area in basement; bedrooms upstairs. My grandmother’s house had a formal and unused “front parlour” as well; I suspect even the Queen would have to ask permission to enter it. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/30 "2020-12-11T07:32:56Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > My grandmother’s house had a formal and unused “front parlour” as well; I suspect even the Queen would have to ask permission to enter it. I recall a Mad Magazine comic on this topic of the front room never being used. It was one of Dave Berg’s “Lighter Side Of” strips. In the first panel, a kid is sitting in the living room. Mom: Billy! What are you doing in the living room? What do you think the living room is for? Billy: Um … for people to live in? Mom: Wrong. The living room is not for living. It’s for … company. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/31 "2020-12-11T13:44:43Z")
> [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](#): > > I think there were various factors at work some social but also technological. The appearance of the television overloaded the use of the living room but most importantly was the advent of central heating and cheaper energy - there was no need to save money by keeping that front room cold anymore You’re forgetting the most important technological factor - the telephone. In pre-phone days, “respectable” visitors would often stop by unannounced, and if you sat them in a messy room People would Talk. When people started calling in advance, suddenly there was time to tidy up, making an always-neat room superfluous. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/32 "2020-12-11T13:55:24Z")
Back in the day, if you wanted to buy condoms, you had to walk up to the pharmacist’s counter and ask for them. A bit embarrassing if you were, um, a first-time user and the person behind the counter was female. Also in the dustbin of history - wearing formal attire while traveling. There is a home movie my parents took while on a long car trip down South as newlyweds circa 1940. My mother wore a formal dress, my father a suit and tie. Hard to imagine that being comfortable while driving two-lane roads in Louisiana in June, without air conditioning. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/33 "2020-12-11T13:57:10Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > I recall a Mad Magazine comic on this topic of the front room never being used. It was one of Dave Berg’s “Lighter Side Of” strips. In the first panel, a kid is sitting in the living room. > > Mom: Billy! What are you doing in the living room? What do you think the living room is for? > Billy: Um … for people to live in? > Mom: Wrong. The living room is not for living. It’s for … company. There was another Mad piece illustrated by – I’m pretty sure - Paul Coker that showed a kid peering into the living room, filled with plastic-covered furniture, and his mother is saying “…you know the Living Room is for Nobody.” When I was a kid, I had a friend whose parents kept a plastic-enclosed living room like that. They got over it, in time, possibly because their house was so small that it was stifling to congregate only in their kitchen and very small TV room. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/34 "2020-12-11T15:08:14Z")
I’m interested to see how widespread a cultural phenomenon the Front Parlour (or indeed _die gute Stube_) was - it’s something which I had (parochially) assumed was largely a north of England thing - very Alan Bennett-ish. (Not sure how widely understood that reference will be, but I expect it will be _well_ understood by those who know it.) Something else from my northern upbringing, which I think fits well with this thread - and kind of chimes with the post by @MissTake, above: I had a Maiden Aunt. As I’m not sure how widespread the term is, I’ll explain. My aunt C never married; she lived with her married sister R and R’s family - husband and two children. The fact that quite a few women of her generation didn’t marry (and lived in similar circumstances) was, I guess, less to do with choice and more to do with the number of men killed in the first and second world wars (I guess C would have been born just before the first world war). So, a maiden aunt was an aunt who never married and (by extension) was “adopted” by the family of a married sibling (was it always a sister?) What’s more, I’m sure C didn’t work and was just supported by her sister’s family (probably with assistance from my father, but there’s family ugliness there that I was aware of but never made privy to). These days a woman who chooses not to marry (or cohabit etc) would (normally) work and be able to live alone - certainly it would have been less easy for aunt C to do those things, and presumably less socially acceptable. And of course there was never an issue if a man was unmarried. And so, you would assume, firmly in the cultural history dustbin. Except… a friend, who is just a few years older than me, had his wife’s sister live with the family. That lasted from the death of her parents up until her own (rather early) death - more than twenty years, I would guess. But I would peg that as an outlier and say that, generally, the Maiden Aunt is a thing of the past. Thoughts? j ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/22080_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/35 "2020-12-11T15:58:08Z")
My mother told me she had to argue with her father to be allowed to go to high school. Whyever would a girl need that?? Needless to say, college was completely out of the question, tho I know my mom would have loved it and done well. ---
**Author:** ![MissTake](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misstake/32/3189_2.png) [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/36 "2020-12-11T16:05:58Z")
With my great Aunt, it would’ve been different if she hadn’t any prospects. That she was forced to give up her life is what irritates me. I have her engagement ring, and whenever I see it, I’m reminded of her hurt and the hurt my grandfather inflicted on me. What made it worse - prior to that moment, I was a “Grandpa’s Girl”. By choice, I spent more time with him and my step-grandma more than I did with my own family. After that comment, I distanced myself and he passed less than a year later without any reconciliation. Our family currently has the “Old Maid” 60-ish cousin, with outside relatives joking about her never having married, etc. Ignore the fact that she’s had a the same female “roommate” for the past 30 years, they have a one bedroom apartment, and take vacations together. Her partner has never been invited to any family function, I think I’ve only heard her name spoken a few times. I think _many_ old maid Aunties and bachelor Uncles were not single by choice, but by societal mores. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/37 "2020-12-11T16:19:59Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Mom: Billy! What are you doing in the living room? What do you think the living room is for? > Billy: Um … for people to live in? > Mom: Wrong. The living room is not for living. It’s for … company. Upstate NY in the late 70s - through, well, today, actually. We also called the “good room” that was up front the “living room”. In houses that had it they only used it for Christmas presents, the piano, and occasionally a quiet room to read in. They had a separate “TV room” that was sometimes also confusingly called the living room since that’s where we lived. In houses that have this room, I, still today, rarely see it being used otherwise. The house I grew up in was different, because the front room was closest to the fireplace which we used for actual heat, so we spent the time there instead of in the central room which doubled as a corridor and piano room and occasional place for entertaining guests. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/38 "2020-12-11T16:31:25Z")
I think the posts are linked by expectations within families at the time, and the idea that women were either helpless or powerless, or even value-less. Certainly these are situations which a man would never have found himself in. j ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/39 "2020-12-11T18:22:40Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > In grade nine, 1976-77, in Whitby, Ontario, boys were not allowed to take “home economics” (cooking, sewing, household management), and girls were not allowed to take “auto shop” (how a car works, basic car repair, etc). Contrasting story. I find it hard to believe but in 1944 in Bala Cynwyd PA, both boys and girls were required to take home ec and woodshop. As a result I can sew a seam, sew a button onto a shirt, and bake gingerbread. But sometime in the 1920s, a neighbor of my wife’s grandmother in Louisville, KY came up to the grandmother and says she was horrified that her daughter (my MIL) was seen leaving the house while **still pulling her gloves on.** And in 1950s my HS, while not having any formal dress code, banned jeans. As a college prof, I’ve worn jeans for most of the last 50 years. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703/40 "2020-12-11T19:02:47Z")
I remember some people in the mid-1980s in my neighborhood near Chicago who still had the laminated 🙂 Front Room. And since at least half of us were on the cable by that point, I’m sure we were all on the telephone. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-dustbin-of-our-cultural-history/927703.md?page=3)