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What Makes A Modern Mum?

16th April 2009

The way mums used to live – have we never had it so good?

If you think being a mum in the 21st century is hard work, spare a thought for the mums of 100 years ago. Like us, they had their hands full. Unlike us, they had little social freedom and no household gadgets to ease the gruelling manual labour of housework. Things have changed a lot in 100 years, but just how different is our own experience of motherhood from that of our own mums and grandmas?

A significant three quarters of women agree that the responsibility of household chores has been lifted from them over the past 100 years. Yet only 34% of us say that these responsibilities in the home are now shared between partners more than they had been between their parents.

The report published by Persil to commemorate its centenary reveals that 72% of modern women think the washing machine has afforded them the most time in their day.

While we have moved forward towards equal rights and greater freedom, it seems some of us would like to take a step back in into domesticity (although maybe a more modern version). A quarter of us genuinely enjoy our roles as homemakers and over two thirds (63 per cent) of women who describe themselves as stay-at-home mums cherish the role. We are increasingly attracted to spending more time at home yet a fifth don’t feel we have taken on traditional homemaking skills as well as our mothers. We now even cite the likes of Barbara Good and Nigella Lawson as role models and hanker for the status of ‘domestic goddess’ our mums and grandmas enjoyed.

There is, of course, much more to the story of how women’s – and mums’ – roles in society have changed over the course of the last century. How well do you know the history of the British mum and what’s next in their evolution? In the 1950’s Persil asked the question ‘What is a mum?’ in their first TV advert and mums have remained a key theme over the decades.

Click Here to learn how major events have helped shape women and modern mums during the last 100 years.

For more information visit www.persil.co.uk

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