There’s still a few separate boys’ and girls’ high schools in metro Chicago now, though many that were around in the 1980s when I went to high school have closed or gone co-ed.
Until the early 2000s, there were two, Holy Cross and Mother Guerin, literally next to each other but (as I recall) completely duplicating their facilities (library, gym, cafeteria, etc.).
Until a few years ago, my old alma mater St. Patrick (still around) was about three blocks from all-girls Notre Dame – not to be confused with all-boys, still-extant Notre Dame several miles away – and (again as I recall) the only shared activities were cheerleading and drama.
The only thing I wish I had been taught to do home-ec-wise, (instead of feeling confident that I could pick it up via the Internet these days) is sewing. I once tried to sew my own popped buttons but they repopped off frequently enough that I didn’t want to risk embarassment, instead building up a pile of buttonless pants until I felt it was large enough to take it to a professional sewer, and by that time most of them no longer fit me.
My maternal grandmother married at fifteen a man three times her age under the stipulation that he not prevent her continuing with high school after they married. She was a frustrated doctor who couldn’t go to college, poor thing–after her first husband died she met and married my grandpa and settled down well enough to being a wife and mother but she always had that yen for more education.
My parents inherited a Great Aunt when her mother died (at 99, no less, having outlived her other two daughters) around the time I was born. She was from Lancashire. None of the three sisters married, just the brother, so there were no married sisters to move in with. My Grandparents were in pretty poor health (in fact I’m not 100% sure on the timing, due to being a foetus/newborn at the time- Grandpa may even have already died), so Auntie moved in with the only other option, a nephew.
I remember her telling me that she was really good at school; one of the teachers thought she should teach, but her mother said it ‘Wun’t for the likes of us’ so she dropped out of school and went to work in’t mill instead, and stayed there until her mother declared ‘tha’s done enough’, at which point she retired.
She never dated, only went on holiday (always to Southport- never Blackpool, that was common) with the family, read Mills and Boon novels voraciously, never so much as spent a night on her own in the house, kept to a rigid weekly timetable and generally had the most boring life that could be contrived.
She always had versions of everything ‘for best’, which were treated like treasures. Most of them eventually got sold for a few quid at a car boot sale, but I think I still have her - slightly wonkily printed- silk hankies somewhere.
There were three categories of “maiden aunt” in the past that I’m aware of (although there might be more).
A woman was, for whatever reason, unable to find a suitable husband and wound up living with relatives, as in your family. This may be down to a lack of “suitable” men. There might have been some issue with the woman, such a infertility or deformity that might not be apparent when clothed. But, for whatever reason, she never found a mate.
It was a long standing tradition in some parts of the US (and the world) that one of the children would be the one designated to take care of the parents in old age - usually younger and/or female (but not always). This child would be discouraged, sometimes strongly, from marriage (we’ve had mention of at least one such family in this thread).
Lesbian women. Obviously, it’s only recently that lesbians could marry, and not that long ago that they had to remain deeply, deeply closeted. There weren’t a lot of options for such women, but other than becoming a nun (although most nuns probably weren’t lesbians) being a “Maiden Aunt” was one of the few choices out there.
The had to be a socio-economic factor with the “front parlor”, “good room”, etc. because you had to have a certain wealth to have a home large enough to leave one room mostly unused.
In my earliest days my family had the parents in one bedroom, four siblings in the other bedroom, a kitchen, and combined living/dining room. We just did not have the space to leave a part of the home unused in case “good company” dropped by. By the time we did achieve that level of wealth that practice was largely gone.
This was/is new to me - not something I was aware of (UK). Is part of the suggestion here that, when the cared-for parents died, the carer would then be “eligible” to be “adopted” as a maiden aunt into the family of one of her siblings?
My late spouse had a cousin who fell into that role - perpetually unmarried caregiver. When her last parent died she was just… adrift. She lost her residence. She was in her late 40’s with absolutely no job skills whatsoever, having never worked outside the home a day in her life. Had not completed primary education (she was “needed at home”) and was functionally, although not completely, illiterate. Had no “government issued ID”. Had no money and no income. Had never handled money. Had no living siblings. Absolutely no provision had been made for beyond the day the last of her two parents died.
I was born 1964 in Spain, my mother was German, my father Spanish. I had the Spanish nationality until 1974, when the laws in Germany allowed the nationality to be passed on progeny by the mother (since then I have both). The mother alone was not enough to confere the high status of German-ness before this change of law under Willy Brandt. Although you usually know who the mother is but not always who the father is…
My mother could not open a bank account on her own without the written permission from my father until the same year: 1974. I wonder how she managed alone in Spain before she married my father. She worked and all, were did she put her money? Too late to ask now…
Joschka Fischer, later to become Germany’s Minister of Foreign Relations, caused a scandal in 1985 when he was sworn into post as Minister for the Environnement in the state of Hesse: he wore white sneakers. In an interview 2017 he still said the sneakers were embarrasing (“peinlich”). The sneakers even made it to the cover of Der Spiegel, although the cover was just before the swearing in, they did not know he would wear them during the ceremony. The sneakers are kept today in the Deutsches Ledermuseum in Offenbach (German Museum for Leather).
And some day you will not have to worry when crossing a border if you happen to have a nice piece of dope in your pocket. I hope.
Was this in Spain or Germany? Because I know that women in Germany for a long time after the war weren’t allowed to open their own bank accounts, but as I remember that must have changed earlier, sometime around the late 50s/early 60s. I’d have to ask my mother, she was born in 1939, was still unmarried and owned her own money at that time. What I also remember is the fact that a married woman needed the allowance from her husband to do work and own money.
I looked it up: German women were allowed to open their own bank accounts in 1962, and to work without the allowance of their husbands as late as freaking 1977! Unbelievable.
One I’ve just remembered, which I don’t think has been mentioned yet:
The custom of referring to a married woman by her husband’s first name, i.e., when Mary Jones married John Smith, not only would they be referred to, formally, as a couple, as “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith,” but when she was referred to, by herself, she was “Mrs. John Smith,” as though her own name had ceased to exist entirely.
When computer use became a thing, the Davis CA school district changed the name of the class from Typing to Keyboarding, to encourage more boys to take it. Boys hadn’t been forbidden before, it was just in case they thought typing was a girls’ thing.
How about dressing up to go to Disneyland? I remember that being a thing.
The discussion of women having bank accounts leads me to a question. In the U.S., there were plenty of unmarried women living independently (not with parents or as live-in servants) and working from the 1890s onwards, and women were legally recognized as able to own property, form contracts, and sue by that same timeframe. Cite.Cite.
I understand that married women (1) were routinely expected to give up their jobs before the 1960s or 70s, and (2) weren’t allowed (by bank practice, not by law) to open accounts or credit cards in their own names until about the same time frame,
However, were American single working women allowed (again, by banking practice) to open and manage bank accounts before the 1960s or '70s?
Well, MAD Magazine itself has gone the way of the dodo*, but even before that, there were some things about that sacred rag that changed over time.
Years ago, “Mad’s Maddest Artist”, Don Martin, got into a disagreement with publisher Bill Gaines about royalties. MAD was publishing collections of Martin’s strips in paperback book format, and Martin was incensed that he wasn’t seeing any money from those. Gaines countered that Martin had sold the strips to MAD, and thus they were no longer his. Martin quit; what’s more, he took his talents across the street to MAD’s goofy imitator, Cracked.
These days, owner-created properties in TV and comics are pretty popular. Martin’s MAD cohort, Sergio Aragonés, has peddled his hilarious Groo the Wanderer to at least three different publishers that I can think of off the top of my head.
Also … advertisements! While he was alive, Bill Gaines swore that you’d never see advertising (except for MAD’s own worthless garbage) within the pages of MAD magazine. For decades, the magazine subsisted on sales and subscription revenue. Five minutes after Gaines passed away, MAD was crammed full of ads and sucking up that sweet ad revenue … and continued to do so until the very end.
* - Yes, I am aware that you can still get MAD, but there is no new material. It is but a shell of its former self.
Mom was born in 1922 or so, one of 4 sisters. None of them was given a middle name. That was so their maiden name would become the middle name. All 4 did marry.
When I started high school (class of '67), I didn’t know it was still illegal here in Indiana to marry someone of another race. It hadn’t been enforced in years, but the law was there. The SCOTUS changed that, and I didn’t find out until later.
If a girl got pregnant or married, she had to drop out of school. I think they started allowing girls to wear culottes to school when I was a freshman.
As late as the early 2000’s I had an aunt who would NEVER use my name - I was always and inevitably “Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName”. Even though I told her MULTIPLE times about this.
So, she sent me something and didn’t get a thank you note. My mother called me and asked, basically, what the hell, she raised me better than that. I told mom the aunt had sent the package addressed to MY HUSBAND instead of me, I had been over this many times, and I wasn’t going to take the insult of her refusing to use my legal name. Mom said something like, oh, she’s old fashioned and that’s what used to be proper. I said HELLO, IT’S THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOW! I wasn’t going to answer to anything other than my own name anymore.
The things people argue about. The things people are stubborn about. >sigh<
According to my grandmother and mother, before the 1970’s an UNMARRIED woman was allowed to work without needing permission and have a bank account (although apparently owning property was somewhere between problematic to impossible, I’m not clear on that) but when a woman MARRIED, THEN everything was in her husband’s name, she needed his permission to work, and so on.
My paternal grandfather disappeared for a time, why I don’t know (it was one of those Big Family Secrets No One Speaks Of). I don’t know the logistics of what happened, but grandma worked as an accountant (same work as the men but paid less, of course, despite supporting her two sons and her widowed sister). Not sure if she was legally divorced (being Jewish that was more an option than for her Christian neighbors) or grandpa was assumed deceased or what.
Grandpa did eventually show up again, which scared the hell out of dad and his brother because they’d been told he was dead. Yeah, families can be messed up.
