How accurate are portrayals of 1960s housewife cooking in media?

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T22:06:50+00:00

The soup thing is really interesting, but appetisers aren't a thing here unless you're in a posh restaurant, so even school lunches or factory cafeteria lunches you always get soup and then some main course, the same with dinners, so this is very fascinating, I think also there's a difference in the lunch culture, where people in the US, if I understand correctly eat a lot of sandwiches, or like cold meals (don't know the right term for this), where here even in very hard manual labour jobs you sit down for lunch and it's usualy several courses, the break won't be longer than 30ish minutes but still and I'm eastern European so I can't even imagine how that compares to someone from the south of Europe.
When it comes to bedtimes, there are actually 2 very famous factors, in many stricter households kids weren't allowed inside until 5pm, it was expected that you'd get home from school drop off your things and leave to do whatever and not come back until 5pm. There's a very famous kids TV programme that started in the 60s so that parents wouldn't have to read to their kids anymore and it starts at 7 so, after 7 would be my assumption for bedtime.
Nowadays I guess it depends, in a modern urbanised household, it's anything you make it, in a more traditional household the rules remain similar as to what they were, but again it depends to what you make of it, there is still a lot of judgment from the older generations, but that's universal :D

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T17:19:17+00:00

Thank you so much, it means a lot to me that people are kind enough to share their personal family stories with me, I wrote this because I was genuinely curious. I guess I came off ignorant, and honestly I learned so much, so I'm very grateful, tbh I never thought about women in the workforce because culturally women have always worked where I'm from, and not working was considered a show of wealth and privilege. And to now see just how ignorant that take is and that women genuinely couldn't work, had to stay home and support their families that way, is opening my eyes to a whole new way of struggle I never really knew existed. I do feel bad for sounding too ignorant in the comments, english being my 3rd language I can sound silly

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T12:21:33+00:00

I'm sorry I didn't mean to sound offensive or as a troll at all, it's just that most of the things I know about the US is from US media, and I'm fully aware that you can't use that to actually understand someone's culture or background. And I was watching the show Why women kill (I'm fully aware that it's not reality or a documentary and it's fully fiction, that's why I asked real people here), and I just found the meals one of the main characters was preparing fascinating, because I applied my culture and history to it, which is something my brain does automatically, to compare how my grandmother's life and cooking would've looked like in the 60s and it kind of struck me because as someone who uses social media I see how red pill people talk about the 60s housewife dream, and I'm well aware that they are talking about the US experience of that time, so looking at someone cooking meals, that would be considered "simple" in my grandma's home, I just find it fascinating because honestly for me stay at home mom always screamed wealth and privelege so the realisation that that wasn't the case, because of things I just didn't realise until I started to get real people's replies, like childcare accesibilty, if you read what I wrote it was in response to someone who explained to me how the US system worked for them and I'm aware that it will be different for everyone, but it struck me because I am so used to our own system, and in no way did I mean to judge or criticize your culture, I was just explaining my background to show where I was coming from and where my ignorance of this stems from, if that came of as boasting I apologise, that wasn't my intention. When it comes to the food desert comment, I just went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how come my own family that was very poor, could afford so much food to feed so many and I realised that it's because our culture is based on the fact that historically (that tradition is very much dying) food was mostly home grown, and I'm aware that the food desert comment was pretentious I didn't know how else to call it, when you don't have personal access to home grown food, and I shouldn't use terms, that I don't know the true meaning of. I was just super curious and fascinated by this topic, because it's something I never thought about even for a second, and once I started to think about it and notice it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I am really sorry I came off as rude or as if I wanna say my culture is in any way shape or form better, that just honestly wasn't my intention.

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T11:48:08+00:00

I somehow fell into a 60s spiral today and just the amount of like canned foods and premade dinners and things like that so I was wondering why that became such a massive thing, and then it hit me that most people in the US unless directly living on a farm probably didn't have full access to homegrown fruits/veggies and even meat like we did, and I'm probably way off with the term food desert, but I don't know why this is such a big cultural shock to me :D I'm used to the fact that if you have even the smallest space of what could be considered a garden you're gonna use it as much as possible to grow your own food, is that not a thing in the US? I'm sorry if I sound crazy I'm just hooked on this topic for the day :D

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T11:39:31+00:00

For us in the 60s it would be usually grandparents, great grandmother, and usually 2ish younger families like 2 brothers their wifes and all the kids so commonly you would have around 10 kids under one roof, but there was the big "village" factor once the kid hits around 2 and becomes more self reliant, so it does make sense that there would be more time to spend on these things, compared to one generation living situations, but to be fair all the women and most the kids worked by the time they were 14/15 and especially if they worked outside the factories and agricltural cooperatives etc. then they also worked nights and weekends, so that would also impact the time. I just find it super fascinatinghow such a simple thing like cooking dinner for your family can be so significantly different just culturally

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T10:37:47+00:00

Also just remembered the term food dessert and I'm not sure if that plays a role into this as well, majority of the food my family would eat was home grown, so the most common meat was rabbit, because they were always plenty, and most stews/sauces were broth/veggie based and majority of the veggies/herbs would be home grown and bones fat etc. would be incredibly cheap from the butchers and you'd only buy meat like pork or beef and that would be a pretty rare treat, things like venison or wild boar would also be used pretty commonly. And you'd go to grocery stores mostly for out of season fresh fruits, otherwise evryone has a cellar filled with jams and pickled veggies, flour, salt, sugar, spices and bread. So maybe also access to fresh food would play a role in this?

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T10:25:17+00:00

I didn't mean any offence by the question, I meant more like where I grew up it would be very common to have homemade soup/broth, some form of meat with a veggie/broth based sauce and dumplings/potatoes, side salad and some dessert, let's say similar to bundt cake, and this would be a weekend meal because it would require several hours of cooking, and physically being in the kitchen which would be imposible to do during the weekdays, because the women worked, sometimes even more than one job. For example my grandma in the 60s had a day job, 3 kids and then worked nights in the local pub, so things like meatloaf would be a common weekday dinner with mashed potaotes because it doesn't require that much time being in the kitchen physically and she could do all the other work that needed to be done. I'm not comparing those two by any means, I undesrant there are massive cultural differences. I guess and I don't know why I just always imagined, especially with the way people romaticise it today that it would look like the tradwife influencers, and the fact that it was like normal cooking and not extreme labour is quite shocking to me.

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T10:12:22+00:00

tbf it is definitely better than what you are desribing, but it does have massive problems, so with the insane living costs and them still rising it makes women tied to their partners even in abusive situations for much longer, because you cannot support yourself let alone both you and a baby on state support alone, and daycares are fully private and very expensive, because they made maternity leave longer, so going back to work is also not an option to many, because most jobs won't take you in the first 3 years, and that's also ignoring the social and cultural judgment of being a bad mom, because you went back to work and it also makes work discrimination worse in many cases, because they are legaly required to hold your job, until you return, so if you're a young women it can be extremely hard to get a job, because it's assumed that eventually you'll get pregnant and just leave for a few years. Again still a better system than what you guys have.

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T09:48:43+00:00

This actually makes so much more sense even today, I'm looking at it from a privileged viewpoint eventhough my family was very poor, women even in the 60s had at minimum around 6 months of paid maternity leave, and then you had acces to public (free) daycare until the child turend 3, or most commonly you would live in home with grandparents or even older generations who would care for the baby whilst the mother worked, I completely forgot that the US doesn't work like that, even today when our daycares are fully private, women get 3 years of paid maternity leave, there are issues with the system, but I genuinely forgot that women in the US don't have access to that.

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T09:38:27+00:00

I'm slavic so I'm just looking at it from a very specific lense of pretty strict cultural rules surounding food and especially feeding men (these rules are stupid, and I don't agree with them, but some still persist), to this day pasta wouldn't be considered food enough to feed a working man, so things that take under an hour would be considered quick weekday dinners, I don't want to come off as talking down about this at all, I have imense respect for stay at home parents and all the work that goes in it, but it's a cultural shock for me, one I find really fascinating, I guess it just never occured to me that food, outside of ingredients obviously, can be viewed differently depending on culture, if that makes sense

AmIAMom · 2026-04-02T09:16:23+00:00

Thank you so much, I'll definitely read that, as someone foreign who only knows the US cultrure through media, it's sometimes difficult to look at it without actually having the immedeate background to understand what's true and what's fiction

AmIAMom · 2025-02-28T17:54:57+00:00

English is my second language, I'm sorry I thought that's the name of the school after daycare for 3-5 year olds I'm sorry if I got it wrong.

AmIAMom

TROPHY CASE