ABSTRACT
Window-cleaner's wife: 'So long as my husband can give the children more than he
had, he's satisfied.'
Many other differences which the mothers mentioned were clearly related to this basic economic factor. It is widely recognized, for instance, that today children of every age enjoy a great deal more personal freedom in all sorts of ways than did their parents. Some of these mothers thought, however, that this was at least partly due to very practical considerations bound up with higher standards of living. Nowadays, parents literally can afford to let their children do more as they please. If a child has several changes of clothing upstairs, it matters so much less if, on occasion, be gets thoroughly dirty; and, when this happens, it is no longer necessary to put him to bed while his clothes are washed and dried again. Similarly, the cost of replacing clothes is no longer quite such a nightmare to most mothers, so that they are able to worry less about the damage and wear caused by crawling, climbing and enjoying an occasional rough and tumble on the ground. When it is not quite so necessary to save shoes to pass on from one child to the next, scuffed toecaps are no longer a major calamity. Perhaps an additional factor in this freedom is that the general standard of children's clothing is so high that the difference between 'ordinary' and 'best' clothes is not now so great; nor should we forget that today's frilly petticoat is something to be worn every
day, rinsed through and dripped dry over the sink at night, whereas twenty years ago it might represent half-an-hour's solid work in washing and ironing.
