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Family finances in WW2 and their impact on food and essentials

The financial circumstances of married women changed significantly during WW2. This page explores how and why, and tries to answer the question of how far this affected what the women could afford in the way of food and other necessities for their families.

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By the webmaster based on discussions with people alive at the time

How family finances were affected by the war

Before the 1940s, married women did not go out to work. It was understood that their husbands would support them and their children.

However once the Second World War came, women were left alone to care for their families without husbands who had been called up into the forces. These women were accordingly without their husbands' salaries. Men in the forces were paid by the Government according to their military grade, irrespective of what their earnings had been before, and this represented a significant drop in income for many families.

Furthermore, servicemen's earnings were generally held for them until their next leave, although some servicemen were away for months and even years at a time. There were many stories of young children not seeing their fathers until they were around five years old when the fathers returned at the end of the war.

So family finances were significantly affected - for some families more than others, as the loss of the husband's income depended on the type of work that he had been doing. Certain jobs and professions paid much more than others.

An obvious solution was for married women to recover the deficit by returning to work. But there were problems. One was that these women, having left their old jobs to marry, no longer had jobs to go back to. Another was that women with children were hardly in a position to leave them alone while they went back to paid work.

The Government addressed these problems in several ways.

The Married Woman's Allowance

To put money into the pockets of married women and their families, the Government set up the Married Woman's Allowance, as explained in the following box:

For many families, the Married Woman's Allowance still represented a drop in the family's income. How significant was this?  In practice, it was enough for food, heating and essential clothing with a little left over for fairly local travel and visits to cinemas etc. Perhaps more importantly, because of rationing and shortages there was very little in the shops to spend money on anyway, and rationing limited how much could be bought. Furthermore everyone was in this together.

Married women start earning

In practice, it didn't matter that married women's old jobs had been taken, as new jobs were required as a result of the war. With the menfolk away in the forces, the women were needed to take over essential jobs on the home front. Suddenly, the tradition and expectation about married women's places being in the home was swept aside. Married women were not just allowed to work by the cultural norms, they were required to do so by the Government.

However, the problem of childcare was recognised. So it was only the married women without young children under five and below the age of retirement who were required to take the men's places in employment or do what they could in new war-related jobs. I am unsure what arrangements were made for these children's child care. Presumably older family members rallied round. It is important to emphasise, though, that another cultural expectation and tradition was not swept aside. Women were not paid as much as men, even for the same job. This too had implications for family finances.

It would seem that all women with a child under six were not required to take a paid job outside the home. This applied to my mother as I was born in 1939.

How far did the change in disposable income affect food and childcare?

In the research and collected information that I have gathered for this website, there was not a single comment about women on the home front not being able to afford something. The concerns were all for what to put on the table to feed families because of the limitations of the shortages and rationing, and the comments were that there was nothing in the shops to buy anyway other than basic essentials.

There were also numerous comments about how healthy the children were because they were fed enough but not too much and on almost entirely nutritious food. The numerous photos that I was shown, many of which are on this website, also show that children were adequately clothed, even if from hand-me-downs.

So my conclusion has to be that the change in disposable income did not affect food and basic essentials on the WW2 home front to any significant extent. What was affected was choice. It was a great levelling of society.

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If you can add anything to this page or give an alternative viewpoint, I would be pleased if you would contact me.

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