THE NOT SO SWINGING SIXTIES
When a younger generation looks back over a record of my life the thing I expect they will find so different from their own was the expectations that marriage brought to men and women when I married Stewart McIver in 1960. At this time in Australia a married woman was still expected to leave her paid employment to become a wife and mother. Often, it was also impractical for country women to take paid work away from their farm homes because they didn’t have any form of transport. The family car or utility vehicle was possessed by the man of the family.
My parents gave me a substantial dowry when we married, on condition that Stewart’s parents would assist him with an equal financial contribution. This enabled us to borrow additional money and purchase a mixed farm – dairying, grain, pigs and beef cattle at Walker’s Creek near Bell.
The first farm
This large square hill was in the centre of our property at Walker’s Creek. I took this photo when visiting the area a year ago.
The prevailing attitude of the time was that the husband was the provider and the wife’s role was to meet the needs of her husband. Below is a copy of a text that was still taught to high school girls in 1962 as to how they should greet their husband on his arrival home at the end of the working day.
FROM A 1962 HOME ECONOMICS TEXT
Get your work done. Plan your tasks with an eye on the clock. Finish an hour before he is expected. Your anguished cry, “Are you home already?” Is not exactly a warm welcome.
Have a nice meal ready. Plan ahead, even the night before to have a delicious meal on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home from a hard day at work and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome they need.
Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. This will also make you happy to see him, instead of too tired to care. Turn off the worry and be glad to be alive and grateful for the man who is going to walk in. While you are resting think about what you can do to make him happy. When you rise take care of your appearance. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. Remember, he has had a work weary day. Be a little gay and a little interesting. His boring day may need a lift.
Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the house just before your husbands arrival, gathering up school books, papers etc. and put them away for sorting later. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached heaven of rest and order and it will give you a lift too! Having the house in order lets him know you work hard to please him. Planning for the homecoming lets him know you care.
Prepare the children. Take just a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and face, comb their hair and, if necessary change their clothes. They are his little possessions and he would like to see them look the part.
Minimise all noises. Especially give heed to this if your husband has to join rush hour traffic. At the time of his arrival eliminate noise of washer, dryer, dishwaher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet at the time of their father’s homecoming. Let them be a little noisy beforehand, to get it out of their system.
Some Don’t’s: Don’t greet him with your problems and complaints. Also, never complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as a minor problem compared to what he may have gone through that day. Don’t let the children rush at him with problems or requests. Allow them to briefly greet their father, but save demands for later.
Make him comfortable. Have him recline in a comfortable chair or offer that he take a nap before supper. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange the pillows, offer to massage his back, take off his shoes. Speak in a soft, soothing, pleasant voice. Work to allow him to relax.
Make the evening his. Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or other places of entertainment. Instead, understand his world of strain and pressure. He needs time for you to make him feel relaxed. If he is cross or irritable, never fight back, but try to understand his world of strain.
The Goal. Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself. If you apply yourself to this application of all the principals of womanhood, your husband will want to come home.
Some things to say when your husband is discouraged: Suffer with him. Feel with him. Try to understand what he is going through. Some things to say: “Life is so hard I don’t see how you men put up with it.” “You poor dear I know how you feel.” “You have every reason to be discouraged.” “You are doing fine considering the problems you face.” Don’t let his gloom rub off on you. Restore his confidence by pointing out his masculine qualities and achievements. Be patient and remember you’re there to serve his needs.
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According to Myers/Briggs temperament and personality types, I am one of the rare ones – an Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceptive, which I will later refer to as INFP. I discovered this understanding of myself only in 1986 after my marriage to Stewart had ended. This knowledge allowed me to better comprehend what happened during those twenty-five years.
INFPs are particularly idealistic and altruistic. They have strong core values based on morality.
Equality to Stewart meant that I did half the work, without the status of being a property owner. I still remember the shock I experienced the first time we sent some livestock for sale in Dalby and I announced my intention of going to the sale yards to see them sold. In no uncertain terms he told me that that was his role, while I attended to the grocery shopping or paid accounts. Naturally, this meant that he also had sole use of our vehicle and I wandered the streets awaiting his return.
Soon I had two infants, Rodney and Carol, needing my care while I continued to milk cows, grow a productive garden, raise poultry, cook the meals and do the housework. During this period of my life we had no electricity. I had to boil water in a copper for washing clothes and cook all meals on a wood burning stove. This was my first attempt at becoming Superwoman and by the fourth year of marriage I suffered constant fatigue, verging on depression. I had been warned, “Marriage is give and take. Men take and women give.”
There was no time for relaxation in my life. Stewart was engrossed in his work and determined to become successful. “We will make our own breaks,” he would say. “All we have to do is work hard!” If Stewart saw me reading, he would quickly point me in the direction of jobs that needed doing, or send me to town on an errand. Nonetheless, my mother saved all her magazines, like the Australian Women’s Weekly, and passed them on to me.
Our only outings were on Sundays when we attended Church and visited with our families for lunch or afternoon tea. Alternately they visited with us on Sundays, leading me to undertake a flurry of baking on Saturday to be able to set a fine table with at least two varieties of biscuits, two slices and two cakes.
Unable to physically manage the work of milking cows twice a day, plus care for my children, I insisted that Stewart hire a lad to help him on the farm. For the next six years we were never without one or two lads sharing our house. I then had to provide their meals and wash their clothes. The employment of these lads allowed Stewart to undertake more farm work and we began to prosper. He constructed a large piggery on our farm, but this necessitated the buying in of grain.
We borrowed again and bought a second farm with more agricultural land to allow us to grow grain and moved house. This farm was closer to the Bell school, which our children would attend, traveling each way by bus.
Bell to Kingaroy Road
Our first year provided an excellent wheat harvest and Stewart spent the money constructing grain sheds and more piggeries. We sold the dairy cows to graze more beef cattle.
Then the notorious droughts of the sixties began and year after year our income did not match our expenditure. These were hard years, debt ridden years. Stewart avoided our creditors by always being at work from dawn to dusk, leaving me to answer the telephone or receive a court order from our local policeman. I found this humiliating. These accounts were for farm costs which Stewart had incurred in his role within our partnership. One man accosted me at the grocery store and in front of customers said, “You women want equality. You’re a partner. Now, you write my cheque because I can’t pin down that husband of yours!”
Unable to earn money, I attempted to save money by frugally sewing clothes, growing vegetables, making butter and practicing the skills I now teach as self-sufficiency. I had an Olivetti portable typewriter and at least twice a month I would receive a letter from my pen-pal, Margaret Arnott, in Canada. No house work would be done that afternoon as I pounded off a letter to Margaret.
Mailbox gate
The mail was delivered three times weekly to a cream can mounted on this post at the farm entrance as our mailbox. The mailman also collected any letters I had placed there and posted them for me.
The Sixties became known as the Swinging Sixties as women became liberated from the fear of an unwanted pregnancy by the arrival of the ‘Pill’. For me personally being able to control my fertility was a relief, but I saw little other change until Merle Thornton, the mother of actress Sigrid Thornton, with another woman friend chained themselves to a bar in a Brisbane hotel and demanded the right to drink lemonade. Women were allowed to drink alcohol, but only in the hotel lounges, not in the bars, then the precinct of the male population. After a lot of kerfuffle these two women won the right for all Queensland women to front the bar and order whatever drink took their fancy.
The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine ran a feature story about these two intrepid women and asked for readers to send in their stories concerning equal rights. Ten dollars would be paid for the best story and five dollars for any additional stories printed. My story won the ten dollars and my writing career was launched.
To be continued next week.
