Mum's The Word

"No Alice, Mr Brady and I don't like 'backdoor action.'  Why do you ask?  

Many children of the 1970s bemoan the fact ‘modern kids’ don’t show enough respect for their parents; that the generation of parents that followed us is far too beholden to its own children, thus unwilling or unable to instill discipline as we did.  Yet the discipline we show our own children, is in turn a watered-down version of what our parents showed us.

One of the best changes of recent years though, and in stark contrast to the childhood I remember, is that children are now more openly loving of their parents.  It’s become cool to declare to the world  that you love your mum; to have a PDA with your Dad.

Yes, mothers and daughters used to wear matching dresses.  Really.

In my neighbourhood in the 1960s and 70s, working mothers were a rare thing.  The stay-at-home mums – an absolute majority – often regarded working mothers with pity or derision.  Even into the 1980s, we still heard women in non-traditional female roles referred to as ‘lady doctors’ and ‘female pilots’ and ‘policewomen.’   (Having said that, the term ‘male nurse’ is still in far too common usage!)

Around half of all mothers in Australia now are working mothers, and since the 1990s, there is sometimes an unpleasant tip in the pop-culture scale that sees the ‘stay at home’ mother being scorned as somehow too ordinary.  Which most are not.

Mothers of schoolchildren now come in a larger range of ages.  During my childhood, almost all my friends’ mothers were in their 20s or 30s, with not much variation beyond that.  Today, first-time mothers range in age from early teens to late 40s, meaning we see a vast age-range of mothers standing at the school gate. 

Apart from advances in reproductive technology and women gaining a bigger foothold in the workforce, social change has also contributed.  As anyone who was an Aussie teenager in the 70s knows, a girl who became pregnant while she was still at school, or under 18 and unmarried, had only two options: abortion or adoption.  (The latter being the only choice if you were Catholic).   Most pregnant young girls were so deathly afraid to tell their parents, that often it became 'too late' to do anything other than have the child.   There were special homes for these supposedly ‘wayward girls’ to spend the last months of their confinement, before giving birth and surrendering their baby.   And yes, even in the 70s, families created stories about the girls ‘visiting relatives interstate’ or ‘spending time in the country’ in order to hide the fact the girl had ever been pregnant.

Society has changed so dramatically in this regard that I won’t explore the myriad reasons or outcomes.  I remind myself this is essentially a light-hearted blog, and instead look to the mums (or more likely, ‘moms’) who were our TV role models in the 1970s.

Most were (of course) stay-at-home mums with pleasant, attractive children, living in impeccably decorated, impossibly tidy houses.  Seriously, did you ever once see a pile of homework on the Brady Bunch kitchen bench?   Marcia’s undies lying on the bedroom floor?   Toothpaste smears on the washbasin of a bathroom that was allegedly shared by six children?  Never!

To be fair, they had a housekeeper (Alice) who appeared to do everything.  Mrs Brady apparently spent her days reading magazines, talking saucily to Mr Brady (ah the irony, knowing what we know now) and drinking coffee.  Must have been quite galling to the ‘real’ mothers of the 1970s.

So if Mrs Brady (Florence Henderson) wasn’t the uber-mum of the 70s, who was?  “  Ma Ingalls” (Karen Grassle) from Little House on the Prairie, was way too goody two-shoes for my taste, but she got to shag Michael Landon, which, to be honest, was the only reason I watched the show.  (Not that they ever showed them making out, but my pubescent imagination went there anyway).   Matriarch of the Partridge Family, Shirley Partridge (the beautiful Shirley Jones) was very appealing and could drive a bus (an extremely funky bus at that)  but no mother was more wonderful than Mrs Cunningham (Marion Ross) from Happy Days.  She hit ALL the right notes. 

Single mothers featured in 1960s and 70s TV shows were always single because they were WIDOWS of course (Divorced? Hush now!).   Lucille Ball created her third hit show as a single (working) mother in “Here’s Lucy” and Doris Day had a titular show, in which she was a widow with a farm, a career, and looking glamorous through all of it.    “Julia” followed a single mother (played by Diahann Carroll) who not only worked, but was black: a show heralding a maturity in TV programming.   By the 1980s we’d progressed to Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) on The Cosby Show and the working mother became the norm, rather than the exception, on most TV shows.

Please do share your memories of any other 1960s and 70s mothers we loved (or loathed!)