Part-time opportunities

Part-time work for mothers (generally of older children) became increasingly common, especially in factories, hospitals and local authorities.

Women have always worked outside the home, especially working class women.  The marriage bar, which required women to leave their jobs in, for example, teaching or the civil service, began to disappear in the ’40s.  Part-time options, particularly aimed at married women, were generally designed to meet the needs of the employer.

For an indepth and highly readable account of how expectations, societal pressures and engagement in paid work developed for mothers from the Victorian age to the present day in the UK, see Double Lives; a history of working motherhood (2020) by Helen McCarthy.