15 comments

Paula Hendricks

Womanhood in the 1950s . . . It's All About Stuff!

Posted on 04.12.12 by Paula Hendricks | Twitter: @PaulaWrites678
Topics: Womanhood

Any history buffs out there? If so, here’s a free three-minute history lesson on the 1950s. After three decades of devastation (World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression), all people wanted was a little normalcy. Add to that brand-new mass media, and you were left with consumerism galore:

Tupperware! Ovens! Floor wax! Electric washers! Vacuums! Polyester!  . . .

The message of womanhood in the 1950? You’ll be happy when you have your stuff.

No wonder Betty Friedan reacted against that message when she asked what would bring women happiness and fulfillment! She asked the right question, but came up with the wrong answer. Hear about her biggest regret at the end of her life on this video, and you’ll know what I mean.

What stands out to you from this clip? Are you living the 1950s lie that stuff will make you happy? What do you think the right answer is to Betty Friedan’s good question? What will bring women happiness and fulfillment?  

Each Thursday, we’re featuring a short video from the True Woman 101: Divine Design series here on the blog. These are clips you won’t find on the True Woman 101 DVD, but they're simply too good not to share with you! (Watch the final twenty-three-minute video for week six, “Hear Me Roar,” here.)

Comments

  1. This is the one thing I see in so many people today, is not putting God and family first. I grew up with the "ME" generation and that is what we see, sad to say. It is making for so many disfunctional families. I am glad that God has placed this on your hearts to confront and address. God bless all of you!
    posted by Teresa Broos
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 7:27 am
  2. My husband and I actually grew up in the 50's and lived our married lives accumulating "stuff". As we approached our 60's we decided to let go of our stuff and focus on how to end our lives well. We had an estate sale and moved to a two bedroom house with no basement! I kept some items but even sold things like my parents wedding china.

    During the time of our move we had a visiting missionary preach one Sunday and he said, "Everything we see here on earth is only kindling...it will all burn up one day." That statement caused me to let go of all the stuff without regret or feeling of loss.

    My heart feels heavy for Betty Friedan. Her statement says it all, she ended her life with such sorrow over her choices.

    The group of women I'm attending TW '12 with will soon be doing a Facebook group study of Divine Design in preparation for September. I look forward to watching all the videos this summer!
    posted by Julie
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 8:10 am
  3. I have been trying to get rid of "stuff"! I have what is left of my family home in my home. Mother moved in w/us and brought all that remained of our family home. She died in 2008 and I still have not been able to move her "stuff" out. I know there is value in some of it and want to sell it, but haven't been able to in this economy.
    My parents went through the Great Depression; WWII; and had the mindset to be prepared by getting and keeping "stuff".
    I too have accumulated "stuff" in an effort to please my parents, especially my mother. I don't entertian with all the crystal, china, etc. I need to let it go.
    This post reaffirms what I am trying to do. I am praying for the correct avenue to rid myself of the "stuff". I have taken things to the community thrift store; a local consignment store which did not sell anything. A friend has told me that she will help me try ebay.
    I know I will be happier when this is done and we are surrounded by simplicity instead of the confusion and clutter of stuff!
    posted by J Adams
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 9:01 am
  4. Though there was some overlap between their values, my folks (both born in the 20s) presented to me two different worldviews on stuff. My dad himself summarized the difference in their values in a story of how the living room coffee table (made of pine wood) got two small teeth marks in them. As the story goes, when I was learning to walk, I fell near the table and came down on it with my upper teeth leaving the beautiful imprint that I found as an adolescent. My mother supposedly cried, "my table, my table!" But my dad said, "the heck with the table, how are her teeth?!"

    But being presented with two sets of values, I'm grateful for the good aspects of both of them - they taught me to buy quality, if I can afford to do so, but not to go into debt to buy anything. They taught me to take care of everything I have, even if it isn't the best of quality and to always try to leave things in better shape then when you acquired them - a concept of ecology. My dad, in particular, taught me a skepticism that mitigated against the consumerism of the age, namely that new ain't necessarily better. Overall I absorbed more of my father's values than my mother's, and this has freed me on the mission field to be able to live a more minimal lifestyle. And having been single well into my 40s and living often out of a suitcase, this was a good thing!
    posted by Coleen S
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 9:54 am
  5. My mother is a terrible hoarder! It has negatively affected me my entire life! I kid you not, she has literally filled up FOUR places. It has plagued our entire family and caused an incredible amount of shame, embarrassment and frustration. The terrible thing is, she doesn't think she's doing anything wrong and has never sought help. She's 84 years old.

    I'll be 50 this year, and I always have felt like my mother values her stuff more than me and our family. She won't let go of the most insignificant things or sell something of value when she needs money for necessary things. My grandmother's house became blighted from sitting for decades because she filled it up and wouldn't let anyone live in it or buy it. Her stuff took precedence. The house I grew up in was so bad, there was just a path to get from room to room. Eventually, the path caved in with surrounding stuff and things got trampled. Needless to say, it was AWFUL!! It burned down in 1999 and I was actually relieved. It was rat-infested anyway. She refused to acknowledge that even though the local borough was fining her for neglect and public nuisance.

    The past few years my mother filled up a small trailer purchased by my older sisters. While she filled this up, she was living with me and hauling stuff in there. She was cluttering my place as well which caused me strife and frustration. She wouldn't help me pay bills so that she could continue to keep that trailer and pay lot rent. My sister is now in the process of remodeling the trailer for her since the pipes froze and broke, the walls molded over, and the roof leaked since it was just a storage facility for several years. I'm only afraid that she'll fill it right back up again once it's done. It already has way too much stuff in it and most of the stuff is being stored in the bedrooms. You cannot even get into the two bedrooms right now. They are chock FULL of mostly clothes. It angers me that my sister fails to see that she is just enabling my mother to continue in her addiction to stuff by giving her this trailer and fixing it up to let it get filled up again. My sister is afflicted with stuff-itis too. Her basement and garage are very FULL. But her main living areas are very neat.

    I've been praying for my mother for many years. She needs help but she won't get it. She grew up during the depression and she believes she's only doing what she was taught. No matter what it is, once something is in my mother's possession, she never let's it go. The most perplexing thing about my mother is, she is an extremely religious person. She has never missed going to church a day in her life. So her obsession with things is sure confusing !
    posted by Barbara Davis
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 10:48 am
  6. I've been a single mother for about eight years now. The worst, most extremely frustrating thing for me has been over the years: I've been without housing more than once in the past, while my grandmother's house has just sat since the mid 1970s deteriorating and full of stuff so I've had to pay strangers rent for my housing. And now my young adult children have had to do the same. It's incredibly angering and frustrating when there is property within your family that cannot be utilized for human enjoyment all because of JUNK and STUFF!!! No amount of begging, pleading or arguing by me or my sisters over the years has ever been able to penetrate my mother's stubborn refusal to get rid of things that have caused such severe chaos in our family. I believe there's a stronghold in her mind that makes her cling so tightly to inanimate objects or something. Therefore, please pray for her (Jean) and me, too. This issue has been a huge source of pain and shame for our family for a very long time.
    posted by Barbara Davis
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm
  7. My mom finally got an automatic washing machine in 1984 after dad died, and she finally was able to determine how the money was spent. In the mid 90's she remodeled her kitchen and got a dishwasher. Happy days!
    Now, so many moms are distracted by the magnetic pull of the PC. No longer stuck spending an entire day running clothes through a wringer washer, and then hanging all of the clothes by hand in the basement (bad weather) or outdoors, taking breaks to go upstairs & hand wash & dry all of the dishes, after making the meals from scratch, many younger women burn countless hours posting & pinning, and i don't mean writing letters & sewing.
    I love the community that the internet affords, in balance.
    posted by Becky
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 12:32 pm
  8. Yes...I've been affected by the "1950's" stuff lie...I wasn't born until 1971 but my mom and dad was born in the 1950's and my husband's parents were born in the 40"s. My mom and grandmother and my mother-in-law all hoard stuff. I grew up with stuff and I bought into that lie (my husband too).

    I have since tried hard to rid myself of this but I don't really know how to get rid of stuff. I don't know what I'm supposed to keep and what I'm supposed to get rid of. I wish I could get someone to help me...Just how many pairs of shoes does a woman need to have...really? I'm not kidding..I wish I had someone (who wasn't a hoarder) tell me exactly what I should have and what I should get rid of.
    posted by Jodi C
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 1:05 pm
  9. Ironically, I just read this in my email. I receive an RSS feed from Justin Taylor's "Between Two Worlds" blog from The Gospel Coalition. This is very relevant to this topic:

    You know, when a voice whispers in your ear, “You ought to always have your heart’s desires.” You can be assured that that voice always speaks with a hiss from a forked tongue. But when you hear a voice say to you, “You see that treasure? The thing that you want more than anything else in the world? You can’t have it, but I’ll give you Me instead.” You can always be assured where that voice comes from. It’s just like you, Lord.

    Jesus was battling idolatry in the garden (not my will, but yours be done).

    - Ligon Duncan

    Just as alcoholics should avoid bars, shopaholics should avoid stores. My mother spends way too much time frequenting the local thrift stores, collecting more stuff that she definitely does NOT need. But how do you make someone like her stop? Believe it or not, she doesn't even have a car, she walks to stores, and then eventually finds someone she knows in the stores, and asks them to give her a ride home if she has bags of 'treasures' that she can't carry. People don't even realize they're enabling her either. I'm sure they think they're being a Good Samaritan to a little old lady.
    posted by Barbara Davis
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 1:16 pm
  10. I think this would be an excellent topic for an ROH series. You could call it..."Just What Do You Need To Keep" and I'm not kidding. Jodi C.
    posted by Jodi C
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 2:06 pm
  11. AMEN, Jodi! I struggle with keeping unnecessary things, too. But not the extreme like my mother. I think it comes with living with her influence all these years making me fearful that if I get rid of something today, I'll need it tomorrow. It's a terrible feeling that I constantly battle. Billy Graham said it best : "God is not opposed to us having possessions; he opposes possessions having us."
    posted by Barbara Davis
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 2:30 pm
  12. Don Aslett's books are getting for motivating on getting rid of clutter. They helped me alot. Anne Ortlund's The Gentle Ways of a Beautiful Woman for the wardrobe clutter.
    posted by Heather
    on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 3:19 pm
  13. One other good book is, It's All Too Much, by Peter Walsh.
    posted by Julie
    on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 7:02 am
  14. Dear Barbara,

    I remember you sharing some of the struggle with your mother's habits on this blog previously (several years ago). I thought it might encourage you to know that the Lord has often brought you to mind since then and I pray for you, your family, and your mother when He does.
    posted by Sandra S.
    on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 11:26 am
  15. Wow, her regret at the end there really made me sad to hear. I'm grateful that my husband and I are starting our life together with eyes open to divorce rates, and knowing that we both are willing to work for an enduring marriage through any discontentment and worse trouble.
    http://www.katiewithoutrestrictions.wordpress.com
    posted by Katie @ Katie Without Restrictions
    on Monday, April 16, 2012 at 6:24 pm

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