The magic washing machine | Hans Rosling

A factor I think gets left out of this conversation is that the 50's housewife was an aberration, a home-based adult in an age of washing machines, electric ovens and small gardens at most. There used to be so much housework you basically needed a dedicated person to do it all[1]. '50s housewives didn't need to do most of that BUT they were also the primary mental health caregivers for a generation of men who had just come back from something like the second-most brutal war in human history. Typically with support from a member of the clergy but they were on the front lines. It was an enormous but unacknowledged responsibility. And given that we didn't have a repeat of what happened after WW1, on average it must have been pretty well handled. Today we have memetic warfare [2] instead, and given the social media nature of it, I would expect more women on the frontlines of it than men. Maybe we'll have a lot of 'tradmen' who spend a lot of time fishing, writing poetry, and providing mental health care for their partners working in social media. [1] [this video] [2] [link]