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Irish Times

Remembering Housewife of the Year, deadbeat husbands and patronising Gay Byrne

For many of us who lived through the era covered by the recent Housewife of the Year documentary, the viewing was always going to trigger a dull, throat-constricting ache. A film about a 30-year old television show that ran for just 10 years would provoke less predictable responses in younger viewers. Some sat down to sneer but left it deeply unsettled. The cameras panning over the huge audiences in their Sunday best revealed glimpses of a deeply unfamiliar Ireland: shy, minimally made-up faces with uniformly dark hair, neglected teeth, unshowy clothes modestly buttoned up to the neck. This was Ireland in the 1980s, the country Gay Byrne correctly diagnosed back then as 'banjaxed'. I watched the film twice in an effort to distinguish the television show from its dapper host. Byrne was celebrated for the rare quality among chatshow hosts of a genuine curiosity about people. [ At home there's an apron with the slogan 'Calor Housewife of the Year 1985′ Opens in new window ] Introducing the first televised Housewife of the Year in 1982 he welcomed the fully-grown competitors as people who 'sing little songs for us and they write little poems and they do all sorts of quare things ...' READ MORE The women smiled desperately, often rictus-like, conveying the glassy look of rabbits caught in headlights. The questions – intercut with images of the 'simple' meals cooked by competitors – were eerily repetitive. How did you meet your husband? What did your husband do for a living? Did you make your own dress? Give us a twirl. Show us what you cooked. How have you taken to motherhood? You're a mother of 14, is that the end of it now Angela? (And coyly) would you go again Angela? Six children was the least of it. Where there was an evident gap in baby production, he asked what happened. He held hands with the women, doubtless to encourage them, and called himself Uncle Gaybo while leaning into a woman's pregnant stomach. A still from RTÉ's Housewife of the Year All this was expressed in Byrne's cheery light entertainment tone. None of it was said or done unkindly. He knew better than most the oppressive patriarchal depths of that Ireland and its calamitous impact on girls and women. His HOTY years ran alongside some of the nation's most tumultuous events, which in turn generated the agonising first-hand confidences that animated his daily radio show – the divorce referendums, the Eighth Amendment, the contraception battles, the death of Ann Lovett . These must have colonised some part of his brain while he perpetuated the same old patronising stereotypes on HOTY. But the ever-curious Gaybo was entirely absent. Perhaps it wasn't the time to ask the remarkable Lily, who had 13 children by the age of 31, how she was surviving physically or mentally. Or for a quick question about Miriam's life, a nurse who had loved her few carefree single years in London and had plans for Australia until called back to rural Cork to help care for her father. Or to ask Patricia – who said she loved not having to go out to work – how she squared the 'housewife' label with being the breadwinner, working as a 'postman' while rearing hundreds of turkeys 'and still had the housework' to do. Even the Roses of Tralee were asked about their hopes and dreams. The Housewives were never asked if they envisioned themselves as something other than 'housewife' – as the farmers, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, craftswomen some already were – because aspiring to anything beyond wife and mother would amount to betrayal of the script. From the film we learn that Lily, mother of 13, had a husband who 'receded further to the pub' with each new baby while she fed her children from a food charity. That Ellen's husband walked out on her without a word soon after the competition, leaving her destitute but bouncing back to found her own business – 'It was my money. No one was going to smoke it, no one was going to drink it ...' That Miriam, the nurse who had to give up her dream of travel and then her job on marriage, was rewarded with a dearth of pension contributions. Do we need reminding of all this, you might ask? That the national broadcaster and its national treasure were in cahoots with commercial interests to sell this society's idealised vision of a woman back to women on prime time TV? That the birth agony, care and maintenance of eight, 13 or 14 children were made to sound like a breeze. And that fathers were mentioned only in the context of their jobs or illness, copper-fastening the myth that the men could or would always be faithful providers to their women who stayed in the home? Just as de Valera's Article 41.2 continues to imply. But in the eyes of the State and society back then, those treasured mammies were just dependants on their welfare-dependent husbands. So perhaps the true marvel is that these women mustered the courage to enter a competition on prime time TV, dreaming of a break and public acknowledgment of their many labours. And perhaps it was the certain knowledge that Gay's questions would be kind, swift and superficial that encouraged them to step up to what for some – such as the extraordinary Lily – was a life-changing shot of confidence. But for others, the damage caused by the televised myth of the perfect and perfectly happy housewife is incalculable. In an era of backlash, we always need reminding. That dull ache will take a while to abate.