The other night RTE once again aired its documentary about the Housewife of the Year competition, which was a rather quaint, twee contest that ran from 1967 until 1995. But it was also extremely popular for many years and was in sync with the mores of their time. That, of course, is a big problem from a modern perspective.

The documentary interviewed a number of women who had taken part in the competition and seem embarrassed now to have done so and wondered how they were so taken in by the values of Ireland back then. Only one woman interviewed seemed to be still proud to have won the contest.

The values of those days lauded the traditional homemaker. The marriage bar still prevented married women holding down a public service job and it was frowned upon if a married woman stayed working in the public sector. It was expected that once a woman married, she would soon have children and would then dedicate herself to raising the children and looking after the home. The man was expected to be the breadwinner. In fact, if the woman continued to work perhaps it was because he was not earning enough to keep her out of work?

The Constitution promised (and still does, of course, after the referendum of two years ago) to protect mothers from being forced out of the home because of economic necessity.

Interestingly, we have a very clear insight into how mothers viewed their role in the early days of the Housewife of the Year competition, because in 1968 The Irish Press commissioned an opinion poll to find out what mothers thought about being mothers, about staying at home, and about the state of their lives generally.

One of the questions asked them: ‘Do you consider keeping house the best career for you or do you fancy some other line of work if it were possible to get it?”

A huge sixty-six percent said they would “prefer to keep house”.

Another question asked them: “Do you think that married women should take a job outside the house if they want to or should they concentrate on looking after the home”.

Seventy-eight percent said it was fine to work outside the home if the woman had no children, but only 19pc said it was alright to work outside the home if she did have children. Eighty-three percent said she should stay at home.

They were asked if they would prefer to have been born a man. Sixty-seven percent said they would not.

They were also asked: “In general, how happy would you say you are, very happy, fairly happy, or not happy?”

Seventy two percent said they were very happy, 27pc fairly happy and only 1pc said unhappy. (Would you find those happiness levels today?)

Judged by today’s standards, those women were either lying, or else were victims of brainwashing.

Mind you, as we have seen, we voted by a landslide two years ago to keep the constitutional provision that seeks to protect the mother in the home. In addition, a number of opinions polls, including one commissioned by The Iona Institute, have found that a very big majority of women with children under 18 would stay at home if they could afford it rather than go out to work.

This is despite the fact that women are now frequently told that the best way to find fulfilment is through a flourishing career. The message has flipped over from what it was in the days of the Housewife of the Year competition.

In fact, either option (pursuing a career or homemaking) should be equally supported and socially validated.

In any case, perhaps we now need to replace the old Housewife of the Year contest with a Careerwoman of the Year competition? That would certainly fit with the current climate (the official climate at any rate) much better.

Then, in a few decades time, there could be a retrospective documentary interviewing past winners lamenting that they didn’t find their careers so satisfying after all and wished they had devoted more time to other things, including their families. (This could, of course, apply to men as well as women).

The point is that we can always find people who, in retrospect, will regret the values they lived by, and might resent society for instilling those values in them. Those values might promote home over work, or work over home, as the case may be.

Unfortunately, the RTE documentary about the old Housewife of the Year competition was too simplistic to see this, which is not a bit surprising.

(Image generated by OpenArt AI).