It’s not often we find something to watch together in this house. Especially since my daughter had the cheek to grow up and move out leaving me with all these boys. I’m not one for sweeping generalisations and sexist stereotypes but I think it’s fair to say that boys are mostly brutal at picking decent things to watch.
I like chick flicks and comedies.
They like Star Wars and Marvel movies.
So the usual and obvious compromise is watching the football.
Last Monday, however, Liverpool weren’t playing, and having been all Skywalker-ed out that weekend, I took control of the remote and scrolled to see what was on. I could, of course, have just chosen to watch the telly in peace, but it’s a thing you see; watching something together as a family, at the weekend or during school holidays evenings. With popcorn and a drink and erm ... fishfingers, sometimes.
Anyway, as I scrolled, Housewife of the Year popped up. So I set a reminder. “Sure it’ll be like Reeling in The Years, or Don’t Look Back in Anger,” I thought. “The lads will enjoy it,” I figured. “And aren’t I the very woman who tweeted something mildly amusing about Housewife of the Year once, and had it read out on the Rose of Tralee, no less?” I reminisced. They were playing my song, I decided.
The evening’s viewing was sorted.
And so I herded as many boys as I could, which ended up being roughly half of them and we sat down to watch the telly together. It was like a scene from the Waltons, if the Waltons had a telly and only the boy Waltons were present. There were a few quizzical looks as it started, with some of my children initially unconvinced of my choice. “Is this real or made up?” one teenager asked sincerely, unsure of the premise.
“Oh, this was a big show when I was growing up,” I explained, imagining it would be like a little trip down memory lane. The kind of fond ones where the sun shone the entire school summer holidays and no child ever complained of being bored. My kids would get a glimpse of the good old days.
And it was all going well, with one child even recognising Gay Byrne, though really he was too young to know who Gay Byrne was, and large families like ours turning up on the screen as if it was normal. A teaching moment, I thought. Once upon a time, other people had a socially unacceptable number of children too, and it wasn’t even socially unacceptable then. The good old days, you see.
Until you realised, as you watched, they really weren’t all that good. And the choice made here to have a big family was in sharp contrast to the lack of choice around family planning then. “No contraception?” one teenager asked, shocked by what he was hearing.
Though not as shocked as when they heard the story of the woman sent to the Magdalene laundry. “But what did she do wrong?” one boy asked, his face visibly troubled by what he was seeing. “Nothing,” I replied. “The women sent to the Magdalene laundries never did anything wrong. But that didn’t matter,” I said trying to explain the grip the Church had on the country and what that had meant for women in particular.
The walk down memory lane was taking an unexpected and darker turn.
When the conversation on Housewife of the Year turned to women having to give up work, and often jobs they loved, after they married, one boy was incredulous. “You mean Gran and Nana had to give up work. They didn’t want to?” he asked. Followed by an indignant and somewhat shocked, “were Grandad and Grumps okay with that?” As if his grandfathers could have overturned the system. Though it’s a reasonable question in the wider context, why indeed were men okay with all of this?
Every generation faces unique challenges in rearing children. Ours, undoubtedly, is the insidious influence of social media and algorithms which seem at times determined to convince our boys and girls back to the past. Where tradwife accounts try to convince our daughters towards a traditional and submissive female role in life. And where toxic influencers try to convince our boys that disregarding women’s rights is not only desirable but essential.
Because control and power is everything.
There was silence in the room as the programme ended. When shown against the backdrop of society at the time, it didn’t so harmless or, at worst, cringey any more.
Nor did it seem like the good old days.
It wasn’t the amusing TV I anticipated.
But there was another invaluable teaching moment for me and my sons; that raising feminists still matters.
