I have been going through some old historical photos from the 1920s to 50s and I keep coming across pictures of children, its extremely disturbing but it also gives me a glimpse of what life was like for these families. We are a family of homeschoolers and I try to teach my children that we have so much to be thankful for. Just the ability for them to be "kids" is a huge thing to be thankful for, the very thing that they are supposed to be! So many families had to send their children to work in order to eat, money was not available nor food like it is today. To send a 6 year old off to shuck oysters all day breaks my heart, I can't imagine the pain that the parents must have endured knowing the only way to eat would be to make the kids work as well. I can't imagine how tired their little bodies must have been when they came home. I am so very thankful that I am a stay at home mom, I can take care of my kids and teach them and not have to worry about whats for dinner. We have so many things we take for granted, I realize its a different time but it is necessary every once in awhile to reflect on the lives before us and see how blessed we are.
What a lovely post. Those were indeed hard times. I've been reading a lot of books set in that era, what we call here 'clogs and shawls sagas'; mostly set here in Cardiff, or Liverpool, Tyneside or the East End of London. The conditions the families endured, the lives the children led were absolutely heartbreaking. And yet families were much tighter-knit than they are today, people were contented with less and seemed to have more time for one another than we do today. NOT that I'm advocating a return to such grinding poverty!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. It seems back then families were a lot closer, I think because they really had to stick together, they worked and did everything for one another. I love the closeness but it breaks my heart the work they did. My family is from the southern United States and I have heard these stories through the years, I am so blessed to never know how they must have felt sending their babies to work.
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