The changing experience of women at home in Wales and England

What do I need to know?

What was the role of women in the home in Wales and England in the early twentieth century?

o The traditional role of women (working-class women as home-makers pre-1914 household and family tasks and routine)

o Women in upper-class households (Edwardian 'High Society' and the role of the head of the household; 'Upstairs, Downstairs')

o Women in the 1930s (the role of women in the Depressed areas; the Means Test; 'making ends meet')

How did life for women at home in Wales and England change after the Second World War?

o The effects of government legislation (family allowances; National Insurance; the NHS and improved health care)

o Family planning and patterns (birth control and the reduction in the size of families; abortion; issues of divorce and single-parenthood)

How have changes in home and family life in recent times affected women in Wales and England?

o Improvements in housing (larger post-war housing; bathrooms and indoor toilets; central heating; labour-saving devices, energy-efficient modern homes)

o Increased free time (the impact of women's magazines; radio and TV programmes targeted at women; fitness and leisure advice)

The Traditional View of Women:The traditional view of women was that their place was in the home. They were kept far away from the public sphere and faced a lifestyle that was far different to that of their male contemporaries.

The notion of totally separate spheres for men and women emerged. A woman’s sphere was to be that of the “home and the hearth”, whilst the man’s was to be that of “business, politics and sociability.”

The Victorian woman was no woman of leisure, however. To say that life in the home was an easy one, like the life of leisure previously enjoyed by women, is a mistake. Whilst women readily accepted that their place was in the home, they undertook this responsibility with great dignity and pride. Women had a moral duty towards their husbands, their families and towards society as a whole.

They were very much the “Domestic manager.” The ideal woman at this time was not a weak, passive creature, but a busy, able and upright figure, who believed in the importance of the family, marriage and women’s innate moral goodness.

The home was regarded as a haven from the busy world of politics and business, and from the grubby world of the factory. Those who could afford to created cosy domestic interiors with plush fabrics, heavy curtains and fussy furnishings which effectively cocooned the inhabitants from the outside world. The middle class household contained concrete expressions of domesticity in the form of servants, decor, furnishings, entertainment and clothing.

Women as home makers:

The traditional role of women has always been that of home-maker. Although some women went out to work, their primary responsibility was in the home, tending to the household chores and looking after the family.

The Traditional round of Household tasks:Women have often had to contend with the pressures of work and housework – completing the jobs that needed to be done around the house. Many working class women often had to combine jobs with completing this housework.

For example, they may get up, clean the hearth, wash the clothes, make breakfast, wash up, send the kids off to work or school, go to work, come home from work, make tea, wash kids, wash pots, do washing, go to bed.

Maintaining a middle class household in the 19th century involved hard physical labour, most of it carried out by women. All the major tasks involved fetching and boiling water. Washing and ironing clothes was strenuous work. Floors were washed and scrubbed with sand. Food was prepared at home. Few families had flushing toilets before the end of the century, and although ready made clothes became available in the middle of the century, underclothes were still made by hand and bed lined was hemmed and repaired at home. So if it could be afforded, servants were hired to carry out these domestic tasks. The majority of middle class families only had one servant, enough to give the woman a certain status, but insufficient to allow her to spend days doing embroidery and playing the piano.

WOMEN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1930s)Women had a very hard time and were often the only breadwinners in the family, employed because they were cheaper than the men. The world was hit hard by an economic depression in the 1920s and traditional industrial areas were hit hardest. Many workers were laid off. This meant that very little money was coming into homes.

In industrial disputes in the 1920’s and 30’s there was no strike pay and the wives were the ones who had to struggle to make ends meet. Many lived on bread and margarine and tea and soup kitchens saved many from starvation. Women sacrificed everything for their families. It was said about miners’ wives — “The miners work seven hours themselves and work their women seventeen”.Women became more and more involved in social work during the 20’s and 30’s.

Women grew prematurely old through poverty and worry and silently starved themselves for years to give their children a chance. They had to endure THE MEANS TEST introduced by the Government as a cost cutting exercise.

Government officials came to your house to assess you for unemployment benefit. They looked at every wage earner in the house and also any possessions that you could sell off to make money. House owners often hid goods to beat the means test man.

Unemployment Assistance Boards paid benefits only to those desperately in need and ONLY if they were seeking work.Women did get involved in industrial disputes and some women were even violently involved but Labour women stressed that society should value the domestic role of women — women should have a choice between paid labour and work in the home and both should be equally valued.Women really struggled to “make ends meet.”

CHILDBIRTH

Women are designed to have babies every year and throughout history they have with disastrous consequences for women. Childbirth is dangerous for mother and child and often one or both died. Until the 18th century the infant mortality rate was as high as 4 out of 10 (40%). Up to the 17 century (midwives) were responsible for childbirth but after this male doctors took over responsibility.

Doctors tried out new technology such as forceps. Even in the 19 century 20% of mothers died in childbirth and 17% of babies.Anaesthetics were first used in the 1840’s and Queen Victoria was given chloroform as a painkiller during the birth of her 8th child in 1853. Florence Nightingale trained midwives focusing on cleanliness.

In the second half of the 20th century developments have transformed childbirth.• Epidurals• Safe caesareans• Small babies can be kept alive.• Nowadays only 1 in 60,000 mothers dies in childbirth and only 1 in 200 births results in the death of the baby.Childbirth is now seen as a great emotional experience shared by father and mother.

1860 Working-class mums on average spent 15 years pregnant.1877 Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant taken to court for publishing book on birth control.1921 Marie Stopes opened family planning clinic.1930 Family Planning Association formed.1950 1 in 10 women did not have any babies.1960’s Contraceptive pill introduced.1967 Abortion became legal in Britain.1991 Average British family had less than two children.Today Roman Catholic Church still bans use of contraception.

As the G8 summit in Japan opens, Carolyn Miller, chief executive of the medical aid agency Merlin, argues for a push to cut deaths during childbirth in the developing world.

It is often said the health of a nation can be measured by its women. Yet one woman dies in childbirth every minute. Half a million women die in childbirth each year, entirely unnecessarily - nearly all of these deaths could be prevented if the women had access to a skilled birth attendant. The leaders of the world's richest countries at the G8 summit have an opportunity to change this. The Millennium Development Goals, agreed at the UN summit in 2000, set a target of cutting maternal mortality in the developing world by a third, by 2015. Halfway to the deadline, we are badly behind. The G8 leaders must get us back on track. They must commit to investing in countries where rates of maternal mortality are highest. Short-termism Nearly half of the women who die in childbirth each year live in 46 fragile states - countries where the government is unable or unwilling to support the needs of its people. Whether emerging from a decade of civil war or recovering from famine or disease, these countries have limited resources. Too often the funding available for aid to fragile states is for short-term programmes only.

This is short-sighted. Only by committing to improving maternal mortality in times of crisis as well as stability can we reduce the number of women who die in childbirth. The key to reducing rates of maternal mortality is increasing access to good health care. Rates of maternal mortality are directly associated with attendance of skilled birth attendants. Countries with the lowest maternal mortality report over 98% attendance by a skilled birth attendant. Those with the highest rates of maternal mortality report less than 60% attendance. Without a trained, experienced midwife on hand, women are more likely to die from complications including bleeding, infection, unsafe abortion, high blood pressure and prolonged or obstructed labour. Food or health? In the Central African Republic, maternal mortality levels stand at 1,100 per 100,000 live births, among the highest in the world. Not surprising when you consider that in one district there is just one midwife for 55,000 people. More than a decade of insecurity has led to chronic neglect of the health care system. Staff have not been paid for months. Health centres are crumbling. Drugs are in short supply. People have to pay for health care and women will often have to travel for miles to receive the care they need. As food prices rise around the world, many will have to decide whether to feed their family or pay to see a midwife. It is often a choice between life and death. At Merlin we do everything to ensure trained midwives can get to pregnant women and have the right skills. In Sri Lanka we give midwives motorbikes. In DR Congo we give them canoes. In Afghanistan, we give them a donkey. The G8 leaders must make it their priority to fund lasting change. They must help governments to build capacity: train health workers, pay their salaries and impress the importance of seeking good health care. In Afghanistan, Merlin set up a midwife training programme in the remote, mountainous Takhar province. In just 18 months we gave local women the skills they need to deliver babies safely in their communities. The midwife school is contributing to a successful national strategy. A survey recently completed by the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that up to 40,000 infants are saved each year across Afghanistan due to the increased presence of skilled birth attendants. One death per minute

MATERNAL DEATHS Per 100,000 live births, in 2005Afghanistan: 1,800DR Congo: 1,100Mali: 970Bangladesh: 570India: 450Russia: 28Uzbekistan: 24UK: 8Switzerland: 5Sweden: 3Source: Unicef, The State of the World's Children

Why women still die to give birth

In Sri Lanka we give midwives motorbikes, in DR Congo we give them canoes, in Afghanistan, we give them a donkey

It would be wrong to say fragile states do not receive funding. In 2006 they received $12bn (£6bn) of overseas aid and the levels have increased over time. However, nearly half of this was dedicated to Sudan and Afghanistan, leaving the remaining 44 fragile states to split the rest between them. The Central African Republic received just $600m. With dedicated long-term funding, NGOs such as Merlin can work with governments to set up midwife training schools helping to bring life-saving midwifery skills to communities. It is impossible to set up these projects with short-term funding. As the G8 summit begins, time is running out to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The impact of the delay? Every minute a women dies during childbirth. During the three-day, 72-hour summit, another 4,320 women will have died giving birth.

The pill.The contraceptive pill, introduced 40 years ago this week, still has its fair share of supporters and

opponents. According to family planners, it has helped to liberate women and has enabled them to take a great step forward. But for pro-life groups, it is just another way of aborting a baby and has led to the rise in sexually transmitted diseases. The pill was introduced in the US in 1960. One year

later, it was made available in the UK but only to married women. Today, it is used by more than 3.5 million women across the UK. It is the preferred form of contraception for one in four women aged

between 16 and 49. Worldwide around 100 million women take the pill. Developed by American biologist Dr Gregory Pincus, the pills works to suppress ovulation. When introduced on the NHS, the pill was prescribed mainly to older women who already had children and did not want any more. In

1974 when family planning clinics were allowed to prescribe single women with the pill - a controversial decision at the time.

The use of the combined oral contraceptive (COC) pill is associated with a significant reduction in the incidence of ovarian and endometrial cancer.

The risk of breast cancer increases with the length of use of the COC pill. Oral contraceptive use is a highly effective form of contraception. Gallstones

occur more frequently in oral contraceptive pill users.

Cervical cancer

The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies the COC pill as a cause of cervical cancer. Yet there has long been debate as to whether there is a direct causal association between the pill and the disease or an indirect effect relating to changes in sexual behaviour leading to an increase in exposure to carcinogens, primarily the human papillomavirus. It is estimated that with ten years of COC pill use there is an increase of 7.3–8.3 cases per 1,000 population in less developed countries and an increase of 3.8–4.5 per 1,000 in developed countries. However, it is important to note that many studies have not contextualised the success of national screening programmes.

Cardiovascular disease

Oral contraceptive use is associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction. Many studies have attempted to attribute this as a direct causal effect. Several recent studies have shown that in patients younger than 35 years with an uncomplicated medical history and no additional risk factors (i.e. hypertension, smoking or obesity) there is no significant additional risk. But in women older than 35 there appears to be a two- to three-fold increase in the incidence of cardiovascular events amongst those who take combined oral contraception.

Gallstones

There remains a strong correlation between oral contraceptive use and incidence of gallstones, although this is dependent on age. In patients aged 21–30 years using the COC pill, 39% have ultrasound evidence of gallstones compared with 14% in non-users. In COC pill users aged 31–40 years, 40% have evidence of gallstone disease compared with 18% in non-users. An inverse pattern has been seen in older patient groups, although this may be explained by the small number of patients using COC at this age.

Marie Stopes and Birth control clinics.

Marie Stopes, the daughter of Henry Stopes and Charlotte Carmichael, was born in Edinburgh in 1880. During the First World War Marie began writing a book about feminism and marriage. In her book Married Love, Marie argued that marriage should be an equal relationship between husband and wife. However, she had great difficulty finding a publisher. Walter Blackie of Blackie & Son rejected her manuscript with the words: "The theme does not please me. I think there is far too much talking and writing about these things already… Don't you think you should wait publication until after the war? There will be few enough men for the girls to marry; and a book like this would frighten off the few." Blackie objected to passages such as, "far too often, marriage puts an end to women's intellectual life. Marriage can never reach its full stature until women possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners."

It was not until, March 1918, that Marie Stopes found a small company that was willing to take the risk of publishing Married Love. The book was an immediate success, selling 2,000 copies within a fortnight and by the end of the year had been reprinted six times. Married Love was also published in America but the courts declared the book was obscene and it was promptly banned.

Marie's next book was about birth-control. Marie's next book was about birth-control. She had become interested in this subject after meeting Margaret Sanger, a birth-control campaigner from America. Sanger had been converted to socialism, while working as a nurse in the slums of New York. She observed that many women died of self-induced abortions or raised large families in poverty. Sanger began publishing her own newspaper where she argued in favour of birth-control and abortion. The main theme of her articles was that "no woman can call herself free who doesn't own and control her own body." After advice about birth-control appeared in her newspaper in 1915, she was charged with publishing an "obscene and lewd article". Margaret Sanger fled to Britain and it was while she was in London she met Marie Stopes.

After hearing Margaret Sanger's story Marie decided to start a birth-control campaign in Britain. She knew it would be dangerous as several people in Britain, including Richard Carlile, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, had been sent to prison for advocating birth-control.

In 1918 Stopes wrote a concise guide to contraception called Wise Parenthood. Marie Stopes' book upset the leaders of the Church of England who believed it was wrong to advocate the use of birth control. Roman Catholics were especially angry, as the Pope had made it clear that he condemned all forms of contraception. Despite this opposition, Marie continued her campaign and in 1921 founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control. With financial help from her rich second husband, Humphrey Roe, Marie also opened the first of her birth-control clinics in Holloway, North London on 17th March 1921.

Although Marie Stopes was not prosecuted, Guy and Rose Aldred, who published a pamphlet written by Margaret Sanger, were found guilty of selling an obscene publication. Many Roman Catholics believed that Marie should also be charged with an offence. Halide Southland wrote in an article in The Daily Express where he called for her to be sent to prison.

Marie Stopes today:

Marie Stopes International (MSI) is the UK’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive healthcare services. Our nationwide network of centres see over 138,000 men and women each year who come to us for information, advice and professional care. A registered charity, Marie Stopes International also works around the world in 38 countries. Surplus funds from the UK centres, help support vital

sexual and reproductive healthcare programmes in some of the world’s poorest regions. So by using Marie Stopes International services in the UK, you are also helping improve the lives of over 4.6 million people every year.

Improved Health Care for Women:The passing of the National Insurance Act in 1946 created the structure of the Welfare State. The government also announced plans for a National Health Service that would be, "free to all who want to use it." Some members of the medical profession opposed the government's plans. Between 1946 and its introduction in 1948, the British Medical Association (BMA) mounted a vigorous campaign against this proposed legislation. In one survey of doctors carried out in 1948, the BMA claimed that only 4,734 doctors out of the 45,148 polled, were in favour of a National Health Service.

David Low, Evening Standard (July, 1948)

By July 1948, Aneurin Bevan had guided the National Health Service Act safely through Parliament. This legislation provided people in Britain with free diagnosis and treatment of illness, at home or in hospital, as well as dental and ophthalmic services. As Minister of Health, Bevan was now in charge of 2,688 hospitals in England and Wales.

The National Health Service was expensive and in April 1951, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, placed a shilling on every prescription and announced that people would have to pay half the cost of dentures and spectacles. As a result of this action, Aneurin Bevan resigned from the government.

The principles of the NHS were to provide a comprehensive service funded by taxation, available to all and free at the time of need. With continued food rationing, a housing shortage, spiralling tuberculosis death rates and on the back of an exceptionally severe winter the welfare state could not have come at a better time for post-war Britain. In its first year the NHS cost £248m to run, almost £140m more than had been originally estimated.

In 1948 it was estimated there was a shortage of 48,000 nurses. By 1952 the situation improved, figures show there were 245,000 whole time equivalent nurses. Nurse training became strengthened the same year by the professional regulator, the General Nursing Council, which improved its education syllabus. Strict educational requirements for new entrants to the profession, which had been relaxed during the war, were re-implemented and the foundations to build the profession were laid. Nurses clearly took to heart the words of then Chief Nursing Officer Dame Elizabeth Cockayne: ‘We find ourselves doing things with patients and not just for them as previously, leading them to self direction and graduated degrees of independence. As a profession we need to become increasingly self-analytical and to examine what we are doing and why.’

Benefits for women included:

Maternity care – pre-natal and ante-natal care

MidwivesPaediatricians and ObstetricianBreast Cancer screeningCervical Cancer screening

In 1946 the Clement Attlee and his Labour Government passed the revolutionary National Insurance Act that created the structure of the Welfare State. The legislation instituted a comprehensive state health service, effective from 5th July 1948. The Act provided for compulsory contributions for unemployment, sickness, maternity and widows' benefits and old age pensions from employers and employees, with the government funding the balance. The benefits for women included the following:

Maternity pay

If you are working and have a baby, whether you work full or part time, you have the right to receive Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) as long as you meet certain conditions. Find out about these conditions and your rights.

The basics of maternity pay

The maternity pay benefits you might get will vary depending on your circumstances. Usually you will claim statutory or contractual maternity pay from your employer. There are also a number of other benefits which you may be entitled to.

Contractual (company) maternity payYour employer might have their own maternity pay scheme. Check your contract of employment or staff handbook, or ask your employer's human resource (HR) department.Some company schemes require you to pay back some money if you don't come back to work. However, you must be paid at least as much as SMP (if you qualify), which doesn't have to be repaid.

Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)

You can get Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) for up to 39 weeks, as long as you meet the conditions.

FAMILY ALLOWANCES

Family allowances had been one of the items proposed by the Beveridge Report in 1942. The Labour Party briefly debated pressing for allowances during the Second World War, but a party conference resolution to this end was opposed by the trades unions for fear that the amount paid would be taken into account in wage negotiations, leaving workers no better off.

As passed, the Act empowered the Minister of National Insurance to pay an allowance of five shillings per week for each child in a family other than the eldest; later Acts increased this sum. It was payable whilst the child was of school age, up to the age of eighteen, if apprenticed or in full-time school education.

The most marked changes are the rise in the proportion of one-person households, and in the proportion of lone parent families. In 1996-7 over one quarter of households comprise one person living alone, double the proportion of 1961. The proportion of families comprising a couple family with dependent children has fallen from 38%in 1961 to 25% in 1996-7

Family patterns and abortion.Here are some of the women's rights arguments in favour of abortion:

women have a moral right to decide what to do with their bodies the right to abortion is vital for gender equality the right to abortion is vital for individual women to achieve their full potential banning abortion puts women at risk by forcing them to use illegal abortionists the right to abortion should be part of a portfolio of pregnancy rights that enables women to

make a truly free choice whether to end a pregnancyThis argument reminds us that even in the abortion debate we should regard the woman as a person and not just as a container for the foetus. We should therefore give great consideration to her rights and needs as well as those of the unborn.

Pro-choice women's rights activists do not take a casual or callous attitude to the foetus; the opposite is usually true, and most of them acknowledge that choosing an abortion is usually a case of choosing the least bad of several bad courses of action.

Changing family patterns

The greater incidence of independent living amongst those under pension age may, for example, be a consequence of later ages at marriage and cohabitation. For example, Murphy and Berrington note the overall proportion of women living as a spouse of the household head (married or cohabiting) was very similar in 1981 and 1991 - at 24.9% and 25.2% - but this results from different trends in different age groups.

Type of family 1961 1981 1997

Couple no children 26 26 28

Couple 1-2 children 30 25 21

Couple 3+ children 8 6 5

Lone parent households

2 5 7

DOMESTIC TECHNOLOGYHousehold gadgets have reduced the time needed to do housework but they have also raised people’s expectations of women e.g. higher standards of cleanliness, more possessions to look after. Women are now expected to keep their families better clothed, better-housed, better fed and generally happier as well as earning extra money, keeping the family accounts etc.The modern woman has to be a SUPERWOMAN — successful at home, successful at work, successful in bed and slim if not thin. Living up to these impossible ideals can have dangerous consequences,

neuroses and dangerous diets. To compensate for this newer images of women are shown of ordinary people living active lives.

Vacuum cleaners:

A hundred years ago, a very different beast was born when engineer Hubert Cecil Booth invented the Puffing Billy. Booth's machines became the talk of the town and he was called upon to perform a number of unusual jobs - like cleaning the girders of Crystal Palace, which were suffering from accumulated dust. Booth was asked to dispatch a machine to the scene.

Birth of the Hoover

He ended up sending 15 machines, and over four weeks vacuumed up 26 tonnes of dust. After the launch of the first vacuum cleaner, it was six years before the invention of a machine which would not only revolutionise our lives, but our vocabulary. In 1907, William Henry Hoover produced the first commercial bag-on-a-stick upright vacuum cleaner in Ohio, USA, although he was not responsible for its design. He bought the patent from his wife's cousin, James Murray Spangler. By 1919, Hoover cleaners were being manufactured in the UK, complete with the "beater bar" to establish the time honoured slogan "It beats as it sweeps as it cleans". In 1926, Booth's British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Company branded all its domestic vacuum cleaners under the famous "Goblin" trade name.

The automatic washing machine:

At the beginning of the twentieth century even the most simplified hand laundry used staggering amounts of time and labour. One wash, one boiling and one rinse used about 50 gallons of water. In addition, laundry day – traditionally on Monday as it followed the Sabbath when women would be relatively rested - incorporated sustaining fires, scrubbing the clothes with soap, then stirring for hours with “washing sticks” to lift and agitate the boiling clothes. Whites, coloureds and flannels would have to be washed separately, after which items would be forced through a mangle and then hauled wet and dripping outside to be hung up to dry. No wonder it was seen as the most gruelling day of the week and, where possible, farmed out. (It also wasn’t a task that could be left undone: when Florence Nightingale went to the Crimea she made laundry her first mission. In a hospital rife with disease she found that only six shirts had been washed in a month.)

The first manual washing machines appeared in the 1760s, the most popular type being a wooden box, which was filled with clothes and rotated. This type of washer was first patented in the US in 1846 and survived as late as 1927. In 1874 William Blackstone built a washing machine, a tub that moved clothes in soapy water back and forth by an arrangement of pegs and gears, as a birthday present for his wife. Five years later he moved his company to New York where it still produces washing machines to this day. Competitors moved in quickly; by 1875 more than 2000 patents were issued for washing devices. Not every idea worked; one company built a machine designed to wash only one item at a time.

By the early 1900s the washing machine had fully entered the electric age. Powered by electricity, steam and petrol, these worked reasonably well as far as cleaning clothes went but had one major drawback: the motor was bolted to the side of the tub where it often became wet, delivering

powerful electric shocks in the process. After several people literally fried in the process of washing their clothes the drum was enclosed into a case.

The first fully automatic machine was made by a US company called Seeburg who mostly made jukeboxes. The machine was a failure but Seeburg carried on making timer switches for other companies and by 1947 General Electric claimed it had produced the first automatic machine with an agitator to rotate clothes. It took a decade before automatics reached the UK and, when they did arrive, were as expensive as a small car. Automated washing machines remained a luxury product until the 1960s when companies started producing twin tub machines and this style of washer sold millions. In the mid-60s 44% of UK households owned a washing machine. By 2002 it had risen to 93%.

Have these inventions made the lives of women easier?

The debate is still open as to whether theses machines have actually made women’s lives easier. Higher standards are now expected than ever before and women are expected to multi-task, often doing many jobs at once.

Improved Housing Standards:Since the end of the Second World War housing standards have improved greatly. The “Slum Clearance” programs of the 1940s and 1950s knocked down many of the old, run-down terraces that had been built during the Victorian period. Although these houses were simple and had no modern conveniences, they were well loved homes and the owners often moved out under protest.

They were replaced with new houses, often built on large housing estates, or pre-fabricated houses that were built quickly and cheaply. Other people were not so lucky and ended up in high-rise tower blocks where people lost their sense of identity.

These new houses all had new amenities as well, such as piped gas, piped water and central heating, all of which came with the added responsibility of increased bills and higher rents.

Women now had to clean houses to a new, higher standard and had to cope with fitted kitchens, carpets and shiny bathrooms.

Good quality housing really does impact upon life styles and life expectancy.