This was a really entertaining and informative look at the British family just after the end of WW2.
The original footage & public service broadcasts were hilarious & sometimes it was just shocking to see how things really were back then, for example the advertisement explaining the benefits of a new style of cooker & how it would make life easier for the woman of the house in the kitchen “which is, after all, where a woman spends most of her time”!!!!
We learnt how the Marriage Guidance Council were trying to promote the idea of ‘companionable marriage’ (i.e: actually having a relationship – going out for walks, discussing things, doing things together) with your wife, rather than just seeing her as your cook, cleaner & children’s nanny!
It also charted the rising number of and gradual acceptance of divorce, after men, returning from the war, found it hard to accept the new role of main bread winner that his wife had taken on in his absence.
But was all this the dawn of Girl Power, of women finally realising their worth & their full potential, or was it the beginning of this throw-away lifestyle so many of us now lead where if it’s broken we don’t fix it, we just chuck it away and get a new one?
