.ltAll change

The Times Educational Supplement,
12 August 1955:comment

When the historians come to decide what marked the change from Victorian days to our own they will probably point to something like the growth of monopolies or the waning popularity of elastic-sided boots.  But the nub of the business, of course, is the disappearance of the Victorian head of the house.  Once paterfamilias was Olympian.  Now he is underprivileged and most probably undermined.  Once housemaids bobbed and the children trembled at his glance.  Now there are no housemaids and the children borrow his cuff-links to go dancing into the night.
  
This eclipse of the breadwinner is best seen in the evening when he returns to the bosom of his family.  Take the Victorian parent first.  As he descended from his carriage the children would run to lisp their sire's return.  There would no doubt be quite a crowd.  It might even be difficult to remember all their names.  But they did not so much clamour about him as impinge for a moment on his attention.  They certainly did not detain him.  Patting a head or two of golden curls he would make his way into the house.  As he combed his dundrearies he would ponder the homily that he would address to his brood during dinner.  It was the same when the victualling was over.  The whole household waited on his will.  And parental duties were light.  A rebuke to Bertram who had torn the aspidistra, a reproof to Beatrice who had neglected her embroidery and his part in the domestic scene was over.  Properly relaxed he retired to his meerschaum and the latest novel of Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
  
How mean by contrast is the picture today when the captain of industry alights from his petrol-assisted bike!  The children, it is true, are not so thick upon the ground.  But that will not prevent him from barking his shin on a pedal-car left carelessly in the porch.  A junior hand plucks away his evening paper, eager for news of the Test.  "Is that you?" calls a voice from the kitchen.  "If it is, you might bring in the washing off the line."  Majesty is indeed deflated.  And the rest of the evening is no better.  The Victorian father might tap the barometer.  He might join his wife at the piano in "Come into the Garden, Maud."  But once he had gone to his study silence was the order of the house.  Nowadays he never gets there.  Parity of esteem for the rest of the family has meant a levelling down for him.  He must help with the dishes.  He may even be expected to feed the cat.  Indeed, he will be lucky, these light evenings, if the children do not drag him out to something even more strenuous like badminton on the lawn.  

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.llFamily: A woman's place
Timeline: 1950
Family: Fathers
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tline:9501
WR04:WR04_04S
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