Women and Families An Oral History 1940 - 1970 [Paperback]

This is an account of three English working-class communities in England from 1940 to 1970. The story is told through the words and memories of those who lived through it. The book is at once vivid, moving and eye-opening.1. The Context.

2. Homes and Houses.

3. Growing Up - Relationships with Parents: Getting a Job.

4. The Opposite Sex.

5. Family Planning and Role Relationships in Marriage.

6. Marriage - For Better? For Worse?.

7. Married Women's Paid Employment.

8. Changing Attitudes to Child Care.

9. Attitudes to Social Conditioning and Education.

10. The Extended Family.

11. Neighbours and Neighbourhoods.

12. Conclusion.

It is difficult to praise Elizabeth Roberts' Women and Families too highly. It confirms her reputation as one of the finest social historians and most perceptive practitioners of oral history techniques working in Britain today. This book is more than just a sequel to her path-breaking earlier work, A Woman's Place; it is a superb study of a period which brought revolutionary changes to how people live their lives in Britain: 1940-1970. Sensitively using interview material gathered in Barrow, Preston and Lancaster, Roberts has written a book which should become standard reading for anyone interested in recent British social history. It is full of fascinating and often surprising insights, is careful in its judgements, and is a pleasure to read. Dr Richard Bessel, The Open University, UK

Many oral historians succumb to the temptation of allowing quotations from interviews to 'speak for themselves'. Roberts supports the rich detail extracted from approximately one hundred oral history interviews with a thorough use of social statistics, public records and the voluminous secondlã‡