Remember the Virginia Slims ads that proclaimed “You’ve come a long way, baby”? Well, we  have progressed a lot. When I was pregnant in 1970, I was a clerk for a school district. Up to that point, teachers were given maternity  leave but not administrative workers. I received the first maternity leave allowed for that group of employees. Come to think of it, I also wore the first pantsuit in that office. They should have put ME in one of those ads.

But things have changed for the better.  In the 40′s pregnant women were dismissed from the workplace entirely, as if it was a thing to be ashamed of – yet family values were high, with expectations that if you were married, you would have children. A real double standard. Now, with FMLA,  even fathers get time off. You go, guys!

In the last 100 years or so we’ve developed both in our social awareness and technologically. In the 50′s there was a proposal to close the patent office, because ‘everything had been invented’. Can you imagine? We had just gotten started! Since then, every new discovery spawned many others.

How old are you? Think of the things that have come and/or gone in your lifetime. Dial telephones.  78′s, 45′s, and 33′s. Typewriters (I still have one). Cassettes, and the Walkman. For that matter, portable radios and stereos!  Do you remember the first VCR’s?  Our first one cost $600 (a lot of money) and it was the family Christmas present, bought with a bonus my husband received. Today they hardly even exist, DVD players are on their way out, and Blue-Ray players are cheap and practically disposable.  Warning: If you don’t remember some of those things yourself, your time is coming.

Okay – enough walking down memory lane. But stay true to the social mores and the technology of the time when writing your story, as well as the economic realities.Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was a popular television series in the 90′s, but in reality a female doctor in 1867 was very rare. That VCR was a special purchase for most people in the 70′s.  Recently I wrote about coming home from the hospital after I was born, and what could have happened if the trip  had been in the 1800′s.  Arline Chandler pointed out that in the 1800′s, I’d have been born at home. See? We slip up.

 Today, Alice would have pulled out her cell and texted for help when she fell down the rabbit hole (actually she probably would have been too busy texting with her friends to even notice the white rabbit in the first place).My friend, Dot Hatfield ( see First Person Limited on my blogroll), recently sponsored a contest for a short story set pre-1970. She felt it necessary to specify no cell phones. 

Speculative fiction could place cell phones in the bunkers in WWII, but otherwise, do your research. If you want to make your characters exceptional, like Dr. Quinn, then go for it. But be aware, and acknowledge the reality to your readers.

Here’s a great source for initial research on what was going on in each era, but there are many more:

 http://history1900s.about.com/od/famouscrimesscandals/u/timelines.htm