Comparing 2018 and 1918...Are we happier?

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Go back farther in time and people worked even less. Small-scale agriculture is hard work for about 3-4 months a year.

Not precisely–animals have to be fed every day.
And caring for them when they’re sick or injured or birthing.
Cooking food without modern conveniences takes hours every day.
You have to produce clothes–shearing, dying, spinning, weaving, fitting and sewing. (Hobbyists say the process of creating a linen shirt takes about two years from seed to shirt)
Then you have to wash those clothes.
And make your own soap
And make your own candles
And make your own furniture.
And fix anything that is broken.
And care for your own sick, and the neighbors’ sick.

I think that was part of why they clung so closely to the old Sunday work prohibitions

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s funny how ultra-American this site is. I just wrote that I live in a country where half the population are still practicing small-scale farming. It is also a country in which women still don’t court men their fathers disapprove of, and where women still don’t go out and live on their own. And you know what? It seems that our women are kinda happy that way.

Added: By that I mean they are happy to live with their parents and extended family until marriage, and they are happy to involve their parents in choosing a spouse.

You are way off topic, buddy. Flagged as off topic

 

[DarkLight]

The point I was making:

My parents would never approve of any faithful Catholic man as a spouse. That would kind of cause problems for a woman like me if I wanted to get married and was still expected to get my father’s approval.

A lot of these systems really do not work well if the woman is not of the same faith as her parents.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

100 years ago my four sets of great grands:

1. Prosperous farmer
2. Clerk in an office
3. Hopeless alcoholic, so his wife took in occasional piecework
4. Knocked up teenager living with her parents after the boyfriend took off

Only one farmer

 

[Xantippe]

There was and is more to farming than crops. People also raised animals.

Right. My family is in small scale farming (around 60 mama cows plus calves and around 300 acres per farm) and the winter months are in some ways more labor-intensive, because you need to feed the cattle hay every day, whereas during the time of year when grass is growing well, the cattle just eat grass. (Hay harvesting is the most intensive time of the year for their farming, but that’s only about a week.)

And that’s beef ranching, which is relatively hands off. Dairying would involve milking multiple times a day, virtually year round.

Any sort of subsistence farming with multiple types of crops/multiple types of domestic animals would create a more complex and demanding schedule.

Please don’t lecture us about how the US is so insignificant as that’s not what this thread is about.

Right.

I’d also note that many of us have fairly solid information on our family histories in the US, but are less qualified to talk about other parts of the world. Hence, we talk about what we know.

 

[JanetF]

I’d also note that many of us have fairly solid information on our family histories in the US, but are less qualified to talk about other parts of the world. Hence, we talk about what we know.

Yep…

 

[Pup7]

100 years ago my grandfather’s father was dead and my grandfather was 11 years old, but his father had worked on ships down at Currituck Harbor. NE NC was pretty rural back then. His mom worked in the cotton mill. My grandmother was only one year old, but her father worked for the railroad and her mom, with six kids by this time, obviously stayed at home.

My dad was from Philly, and his mom and dad lived in the city (and were 12 and 14 in 1918), but the relatives who lived in very rural upstate PA at the time worked mostly for the PA Railroad and the growing factories in Coatesville and Downingtown.

 

[alice24]

In 1918, my great-grand parents were:
-poor factory workers with additional very small scale farming at home to add some extra food (france)
-persian merchants from rather poor background
-middle class sudetenland germans
Interestingly, after 1800 it didn´t changed to the good with my family. Not our centuries
I really hope to improve a little bit.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I know in 1918 my grandpas (I’m old and my parents were old when they had me, so it was grands, not great-grands) were a railroad engineer and a construction worker, respectively. Before that, one of the great-grands was a cop and another one was a Protestant elder or minister of some sort (he may have also farmed). Don’t know what the others did, but at this point we’re back in the mid-1800s, which is more than 100 years ago.
Pretty sure Mom’s side of the family quit farming after the potato famine in the 1840s-50s made them all emigrate.

 

[Roguish]

It’s […] populated by mostly Americans.

How do you know this? I ask you this sincerely. Let’s just suspend the attacks and counterattacks for a minute, and please tell me honestly if and how you know that this website is populated “by mostly Americans”.

If there is a stats page or an article or something that backs your claim up, please link to it, and I will read it and acknowledge it.

 

[Pup7]

Just reading posts and talking with others answers this question.

Did you not read that it is KNOWN as an American Catholic website? Wiki is not wrong here.

Funny how everyone wants a stat, when all you have to do is read posts and get the contexts.

 

[DarkLight]

Actually, @Roguish, I’m curious now. Are convert women a thing where you are? Would a woman have an option if her parents ordered her to either practice their religion or leave the house, and would she have prospects if her parents didn’t want her to marry a man of her own faith?

That’s my main concern with that sort of family system. It can work very well when the parents are good and want to support their daughters, but it can work extremely poorly if there is conflict and the parents want the daughter to go down a path against her morals.

 

[Pup7]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

If a site were started elsewhere, it’s pretty easy to assume it’s mostly comprised of people from that country. At least, in 22+ years of being on the internet, that’s what I’ve learned.

 

[Roguish]

Just reading posts and talking with others answers this question.

How can you tell from a post that the poster is American? Everyone posts in English here, so that doesn’t mean anything. And I haven’t seen many posters disclose their nationality or location.

 

[Pup7]

Hmmm…experiences, spelling, cultural references, comments. The fact that the site is designed by and for American Catholics. Syntax, slang. Comments for and/or against American culture. User names, avatars.

This isn’t truly difficult. And it’s not from a single post.

Why is this sidetrack necessary?

 

[alice24]

Actually, @Roguish, I’m curious now. Are convert women a thing where you are? Would a woman have an option if her parents ordered her to either practice their religion or leave the house, and would she have prospects if her parents didn’t want her to marry a man of her own faith?

That’s my main concern with that sort of family system. It can work very well when the parents are good and want to support their daughters, but it can work extremely poorly if there is conflict and the parents want the daughter to go down a path against her morals.

This!!
My own family had never existed if children asked for their parent´s permission to marry.

 

[goout]

If you measure happiness by rates of stable relationships, addiction, and suicide, and mass murder, western culture is very unhappy.

 

[Pup7]

All of this went on back then, though. Opiates were available mail order through the Sears catalog, people were still alcoholics, murder happened (and was easier to get away with), people divorced or stayed together and were equally miserable.

You have social media and mass media in your face in 2018, and that makes a big difference. And yes, you have different things going on, but I would rather be alive now - if the stories of my grandparents are indicative of anything.

 

[DarkLight]

Hard to tell, actually. There’s some major issues tracking suicides over the centuries, especially as there was a strong preference to report them as accidents. Addiction has always existed - that was a major push for the temperance movement, that men were addicted to alcohol. People may have stayed because they had to, but not necessarily in happy relationships.

This was even later than 1918, but my grandfather would go out drinking and come home and beat my grandmother. She stayed because that was just what you did then.

 

[Roguish]

Hmmm…experiences, spelling, cultural references, comments.

So basically: from what they write. Of all users on this website, how many (percentage-wise) have you had exchanges with? Do you know how many users there are on this website? Did you know that I was not American before I revealed it? If yes, what gave it away?

The fact that the site is designed by and for American Catholics.

Do you understand that who designs a website has no influence on who can access it? This website is just as easily accessible to people on the other side of the world, as it is to you. They too will find this website immediately if they Google for “catholic forum”, and there is nothing in the sign-up procedure that suggests to them that it is more for American Catholics than for Catholics of the rest of the world. The word “American” does not appear during the sign-up procedure, or on the website’s front page, or in the website’s name, or in the forum rules.