I think it is so true that Taken In Hand is a 21st century thing, not a 50s thing, I'm sure you are right that more people were conventional in their thinking about sexual matters back in the 50s, and you would be much less likely to get your desires fulfilled back then if they were in any way unorthodox.

I think it is also a mistake to imagine that all wives were docile and obedient back in the 50s, my own mother was a 50s housewife, and she was anything but docile.

I've noticed that quite frequently people bring up 'I Love Lucy' as an example of a 50s wife living in a Taken In Hand relationship, but I've never been able to see it at all. Although lip service is sometimes paid to Ricky being the head of the household, Lucy runs rings around him most of the time, and although she occasionally gets spanked, it never stops her going ahead and getting what she wants, mostly she pays no attention to Ricky's authority at all.

"For once in my life I'm not going to do as Ricky tells me" she says to Ethel in one episode. "For once in your life!" Ethel cries "You never do as Ricky tells you!"

I strongly suspect that many fifties housewives, even if they did pay lip service to the idea of their husbands as head of the household, probably paid about as much attention to their wishes as Lucy pays to Ricky's.

This is the Golden Age of Taken In Hand, not the 1950s.

Louise

You're so right. I think of the 1950s and I think of women bored at home on either G&T or addicted to tranquilisers, forced out of the work place they'd been welcomed into in the war years into splendid isolation and completely boredom at home. The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s was borne of that unfairness and unhappiness felt by some many women and I'm so please we got rights to equal pay etc.

I have not been out with a dominant man who hasn't been interested in and glad I work and they specifically say I'm interesting because of my career plus the femininity and submissiveness. I don't think I'd be such an attractive partner if I were chained to the sink. My core belief if all people are created of equal value, albeit different from each other, that we need equity/fairness at work and at home and in relationships but that that can sit perfectly well with a D/S choice. That's the key point. It's a choice. I would hate to live in Pakistan where some of my neighbours send their daughters back to be married. I would hate to live in Saudi where I wouldn't be allowed to drive or vote. I also think it's inherently wrong and morally repugnant to say all women even thouse who are dominant and even those who have no interest in submitting should be in a relationship where they're takeninhand, particularly when large numbers of submissive men exist and also many couples where both want a very different kind of relationship from that which appears inherently satisfactory to me. So to have the choices we have and the political and domestic frameworks that exist in the UK/US leads to a much better backdrop for takeninhand relationships for those who are that way inclined and above all is a matter of free consent....to the extent I do consent which is another interesting separate point given I have an innate response to dominance.

Amen Louise! I barely have time to get around to my many interests. By the way, I hate to add to the age old argument, but housewives DO work. They just don't get paid in the same way. For that matter, I have never been married to a house, but to a man. Unfortunately, my house often shows this,:) but our marriage is still steamy after all these years, even if I do wish he were more dominant.

My mom was a homemaker for many years. She did not work until we were in Jr. High. Like "clock-work" our home was clean, organized - set dinner, bath & bed times. When she did go to work my grandmother was there to meet us after school and she aways had a "yummy" snack. To this day I still recal her warm puddings and happy smile.

Fast forward to today and both my mother and I work outside our homes and I will admit the balancing act can be challenging. My daughter and I still make my grandmothers pudding and "clock-work" is breakfast every Saturday at our favorite diner.

There are many Pros & Cons to homemaker versus career but in the end we are all women making a difference and I commend both groups for the exceptional job and the men who support our choices.

Well, there seemed to be a lot of resentment over the housewife role of the 50's that exploded into the second wave of feminism in the 60's and 70's. And those women were claiming to be bored, bored, bored!

I said the 50's, not WWII. During WWII the men were off at war so there was deliberate propaganda to get women into the factories to keep things running on the home front. Films like "Rosie the Riveter" showed women in the role of working outside the home.

But at the end of the war, the men came back and women were pushed back into the home, and there was reverse propaganda pushing the joys of being a housewife with all the new gadgets to make the work so much easier.

Yes, SOME women worked, but that was hardly the majority, and I do remember hearing men say, "My wife doesn't HAVE to work." They were very proud of this. My memory of childhood is that all the mothers were home. I don't remember a single one of my friends who had Moms who went out to work.

Also, the jobs that were open to women weren't the greatest. "Working in stores" isn't necessarily a great, high paid job. Even in the seventies, when I was in college, I remember a conversation with a young man who wanted to date me. He asked if I was going to become a secretary, teacher, or a nurse. Those were the roles for women! When I said I was going to law school, he said, "Oh, you're one of THOSE," in surprised tones.

My mother worked when I was older (over 12) but she worked part time and she was generally home once I got back from school. Latchkey kids were a rarity.

So that's what the culture was...and I do remember it.

Now that doesn't mean that all the women who stayed home were unhappy about it, but, for a LOT of women it wasn't the choice that it is today. If you were a woman and wanted to work outside the home you had to fight for it. Another friend of mine, who is in her mid-sixties, went to college and became a teacher. But she had to go to a tuition-free university, because her parents' viewpoint was that a girl was just going to get married and pop out babies...so why waste college money on her?

I'm well aware of what the culture was at that time..women who were able to go out and work nonetheless fought an uphill battle and there's no denying it. Staying at home was the expected, prescribed way to go, and for most women, the path of least resistance.

Just because I have chosen to stay home until my son was 15, does not mean I would fit happily into the 50's culture that demanded it.

"Pat"

Perhaps there is "retro 50's fetish" as Carl suggests, represented by a longing among many men and women for an earlier time when things "were less complicated" and "men were kings of their castles". No doubt there has been a certain mythologizing of that era by many people, but feminist are just as guilty of mythologizing the 50's for their own reasons. Caitlin Flanagan, formerly a contributing editor for the Atlantic Monthly and now a writer for the New Yorker has written several excellent articles concerning domestic life in America. In a long essay published in the Atlantic Monthly titled, "Housewife Confidentials" (Sept. 2003) she exposes the mythologizing by a feminist elite who contemptuously refer to wives of the 1950's as June Cleavers. Mrs. Flanagan (oh excuse me, Ms. Flanagan) convincingly offers a very different view on this era.

She contradicts the idea made by the "Betty Friedan generation that was implied in countless nitwit books and articles", and elsewhere in popular culture - especially on the college campuses. "The idea was that housewives were prisoners, but that women gained liberation as shift-work riveters in World War II munitions factories. Then, after the war, they were kidnapped by a bunch of rat-bastard men, deposited in Levittown, and told to mop. This mythology was largely the work of professional-class feminists who never set foot on a factory floor".

Ms. Flanagan argues in part, "that the success of the women’s movement depended on imposing a certain narrative of boredom, of oppression, of despairing uselessness, on an entire generation of women. This narrative has left people with a skewed and rather offensive view of those derided as housewives". She, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, refers to herself, not as a housewife, because that would be politically incorrect, but rather as a "stay-at-home-mom". The word housewife has come to imply servitude to house and a man whereas stay-at-home-mom is somehow more ennobling. Recognizing their error, feminists will reluctantly admit it is OK to stay at home if one is taking care of children, but not a husband. Heaven's no!

What Ms. Flanagan does so well in her article is demonstrate that these "oppressed" housewives were very good at what they did. “What I remember most clearly about those housewives, was not their ennui but, rather, their competence.” She points out that beyond the skills they developed while taking care of a home, children, and their husbands, they also made real contributions to their communities. These were not women who, according to the myth, numbed themselves into oblivion with "mothers little helper", but were active members of their communities and quite good at what they did. So let us put to rest this mythology that falsely argues that women of the 50's led a miserable existence. Considering the working mothers of today, we could equally say that for many of them theirs is truly a miserable existence. These same women are worn out by work and torn between the desire for a fulfilling career and the wish to be home taking care of their family.

Then there is the myth that women in the 50's were too uptight to enjoy sex. It could be argued that married couples had more sex then than now. In recent years there have been countless magazine articles and talk shows dedicated to the subject of sexless marriages.

I'm not sure if I totally agree with Carl's thesis that women are so much better off now. I agree, it is a good thing that women now have more freedom. But it would be more myth making to assume that the freedom to choose has given women a happier and more content life. There are demographic studies that show large numbers of well educated women, women who were supposed to wrestle top level positions from men, who have instead, returned to their homes to take care of their children and husbands. Not because they must due to financial reasons, but because this is where they believe their needed. Then there are the countless women sitting in office cubicles that wish they were home, but financially don't have any other choice. Although Carl does not say it, I think he and I would agree that nostalgia for the 1950's is a hopeless fantasy simply because we can not travel back in time. The 50's are gone, just like all the epochs of the past, never to be revisited. But the one thing that does endure is the values that center on family and home. These values are ageless and in need of some refocused attention by society. At the risk of having a 50's "retro-fetish", it is my contention that women, among many things, are the center of a happy home.

And Stephen there are also a lot of housewives who wish they were back at work. There are lots of web sites for stay at homemothers in the UK and lots of publicity and articles from those who thought it would be great and find it mind numbingly boring. Some people are never content. Anyawy women have the vote, rights to own property, rights over their own children and rights to equal pay which not very long ago at all they did not have.

I really do find this hard to accept - the connection between submission which for me is a sexual orientation like if I were gay and nothing at all to do with if I work or don't work and women as housewives. I think it just muddies the waters to mix the two issues. Men and women should each have a choice as to whether it makes sense for either of them to stay home and care for their children when young (children need fathers as much as mothers of course) or whether it's better they both work or one or neither. I think I've always been the centre of a happy home and large family here even though I've always worked and mostly been the principal wage earner.

Good dominant loyal men who aren't staying town in the week to go to bed with their mistress, try to get home to see their family, play with their children and help ensure there is fair contribution of effort in the house.

My own mother who had worked for nearly 15 years and indeed supported my father through his medical studies before her children were born was unhappy not there could have been lots of reasons for that but I remember all those lunch times when my father would talk about his work and my mother would sadly say... "and I did 4 loads of washing but you're not interested in that..." Then she drank. For some women staying home was not what they wanted. Now there are more choices for men and women.

(I'm reading through the archives) And absolutely I agree with you. I stay at home and take care of the house and I don't think of myself as needing a career to be interesting. I'm happiest at home. It gives me the time and space in which to write.

I also don't feel that one need be cut off socially if they stay at home. Most of the time during the day I don't go out a lot, unless it's to the coffee shop a block away, but I have friends and social interaction on a regular basis.