Married at 21, mothers at 22 and fantastically unconcerned with waxing – life for women in 1952, when Elizabeth became Queen, was very different.

When the Queen ascended to the throne 60 years ago, rationing was still in force, Winston Churchill was at the helm of the good ship Blighty and, if you were lucky enough to have a television, chances are you’d be watching the test card. The women who had worked so hard for the war effort had been unceremoniously booted out of their jobs and back into the kitchen: the men had come home. Feminism was only just entering its toddler phase: Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex (published 1949), was kicking and screaming, but the women’s movement would not hit puberty until the Sixties. Despite this, it’s often looked back on with rose-tinted varifocals by baby boomers. But was it really the decade of ‘we’ve never had it so good’?

A woman's place...

In 1952, 75% of women were married, with the average age for marriage 21 years old. Their place was firmly regarded as in the home – something of a shock to those who had worked during and after the war. “It wasn’t easy,” says Patricia Staley, 90. In 1950, she had given up an office job at the National Coal Board to marry. “I was a wife and full-time mother to three boys under four. I wanted to be at work.” Access to contraception was extremely limited. “Men took care of that side of things,” she says, “that’s why I got pregnant so often.”

“I remember distinctly the talk that went around about the potential [for contraception],” says Elizabeth Smith, also 90, “but that came after. I opted for ‘periodic abstinence’ where you had to time it just right. The implant, now that would have been handy in my day.” It’s not surprising that only 3% of women who started having sex in the Fifties had 10 or more sexual partners. Nowadays, 13% of women have had 10 or more. In the Fifties, the average age for a woman to have her first child was 22.

Elizabeth, married at 21, had her first child when she was 31 which was very unusual in her day. “I was the oldest of my friends to fall pregnant and it came as a shock. A customer [she was a waitress at a restaurant in St Albans] noticed before I did. That was my last day at work for the rest of the decade.” She vividly remembers the coronation: “We were having a party and I heard the Queen say, ‘Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.’ I was wondering whether I could really cut it as a mother and those words really resonated with me.”

The way women were: 60 years ago