I'm wondering if your family was as old school as my family!
Did your mom or grandmother have a drivers license?
If yes who taught them how to drive a car ?
How old were they when they learned?
Did your friends' moms drive?
My mom learned to drive when she was 40 years old and her mother-in-law taught her (my Omi) . My dad wanted nothing to do with it! 😞My mom was the only one of 7 siblings that learned how to drive. . .legally that is. Only my grandfather from that side learned how to drive.
Only the wealthy moms in our Catholic school owned a car . Very few moms drove that I recall.
In the old country driving a vehicle was not a necessity. A tractor, etc. . . was another story.
My mother was driving throughout my entire childhood. She was born in 1920. She had to drive for her job as a social worker.
One of my grandmothers drove although she didn’t drive often. They only had one car. The other never drove although she did ride both the bus and the streetcar to work in Washington DC during World War II. They were both born in 1883!!
I’m old. All my friends’ moms drove. One of them even drove the library bookmobile.
My mother drove. She was born in 1923. She learned as a teen, I think, or a college student. However, when I was little, she didn’t have a car. My dad drove to work and she could use his car on weekends. I don’t recall exactly when she got a car, but I think by the time I was 5 or 6 she had one.
Her mother drove. She grew up in Detroit, but cars were a new thing when she was a young woman. She probably learned to drive when my Grandfather was serving in WW I. I don’t have any recollection of my father’s mom driving. I do remember taking the bus with her once when I was visiting them in Toledo. I think Grandpa drove to work, but they were a one car family. She may not have known how to drive.
My friends’ mothers all drove. I grew up in a prosperous suburb of Detroit. Everybody had cars, and there was no public transportation. Many of my friends’ fathers were engineers and executives in the auto industry.
My mom was born in 1919. She always had stories about the trolley's in the Twin Cities. I'm not positive, but I think she learned to drive when she married my dad and moved out west. I'm not sure who taught her. So sad to realize some stories will never told again. Both my grandmothers never learned to drive.
My mother drove. I assume her father taught her to drive at 18.
Her mother drove until her mid forties. She had a radical mastectomy in her mid 40's about 1955 and never drove after that due to loss of all her muscles on that side of her chest. Not sure how old she was when she started driving or who taught her. I assume my grandfather as they married very young. She was a breast cane surviver and lived to be 90.
My father's mother never drove a car or had a license during her lifetime.
Lord, yes. She drove everywhere and was called "Grambo" by her grandchildren and adult children when she did. My brother and sister-in-law and I would conspire together about who would go with her and drive when she wanted to take the grandkids out for ice cream because we didn't want the kids in the car with her behind the wheel. Speed limit? Forget it. Just get out of her way.
I have no idea who taught her to drive. It had to have been after they moved from the Boston area to Ohio because lots of people don't drive in Boston, or didn't when we were young. The public transportation is very good.
My mother never drove. My grandmothers never drove. Living in Chicago we took a lot of public transportation with my mom.
Growing up I’d have to say that only about half of my friends’ moms drove. It was usually the dads who took us places.
drove. I am not sure who taught her - I'm guessing her father? My mom was born in 1920. I have no idea if my mother's mother drove or not. She died when I was 5. I know my father's mother did not drive, but her sister did and they lived together after the kids moved out. My grandmother lived in Washington, D.C. and she used public transportation. I can remember her taking me on the bus as a very young girl.
My mother-in-law did not drive. I have no idea about my husband's grandparents, but I doubt his maternal grandmother did. His paternal grandmother was quite a woman - she may have driven.
But we always lived in rural areas or small towns and there is no public transportation--even now. I have never lived in a place where there was organized public transportation. Plus we were farm people and kids start driving on the farm at very early ages.
My grandma was born in 1921. She drove and had her license. She also worked in a factory most of my childhood. There were several years she didn't have a car of her own though. She could also drive a tractor and a big farm truck.
Mom was born in 1948--grew up driving a tractor and a farm truck by then. She had a driver's license from age 16 on. She married at 17 and quit school. Got a job and had to drive herself to work. She has a lot of brothers so I assume one of them taught her.
Most of my friends' moms in 70 and 80s drove as well. There were a few housewife types who did not.
I think it depends where you lived. My mom was born in 1921 and did not drive. We lived in Chicago 2 blocks from the bus stop and 4 blocks from the bus terminal on one of the longest and busiest Chicago streets. Dad took the bus to work. If we went somewhere with mom we took the bus. We did have one car. I only had two friends’ moms that drove and they were both younger moms.
My mom was born in 1916 and I assume she learned to drive growing up on the farm. Mom drove us on all the school field trips and scout outings. Lot of friends moms didn't drive. We got 2 cars in 1957. We moved to the suburbs in 1954.
My grandmother drove to Quincy each week with her eggs and butter to sell. Then she'd go visit with her sister. She drove into her 80's.
Family story my uncle owned a trucking company and he had loads of cattle to get to the St. Louis Stock Yards. The night before his men got drunk and weren't fit to drive. My tiny little aunt, and my cousin each drove a big truck. At the edge of town they stopped. My uncle then took each load into the stockyard by himself-since it wasn't a fit place for women.
Both my grandmothers drove (born in 1901 and 1905). I don’t know who taught them (assuming a family member) but they both worked and drove themselves to work. My mom (born 1929) was taught to drive by my dad when I was a baby (1951)
They all lived in California where public transportation has never been the greatest.
I literally can’t think of an adult I knew growing up that didn’t have a driver’s license.
My maternal grandmother was an immigrant from Sweden in 1916 and lived in St. Paul. She did not drive, my grandfather did. She knew everything about the bus system in the city, though!
My mother drove, but back in the day, did not have to take any kind of test. She told me she just went down and got the license!
My paternal grandmother drove, but like a bat out of hell! My mother would not allow us kids to be in the car with her. She really was a scary driver!
My mom drove, my grandmother did not. I cannot remember who taught my mom, but she learned to drive because my dad told her he would not get a car unless she could drive it. He knew how to drive, but we lived in the city and he took public transportation to work. He didn’t need a car just for him.
she was in her 90's. She lived down an hour long road where few people lived. They all knew her and just pulled way over the minute they saw her. She tended to use 2 lanes. She'd just drive into a small town where people knew to be cautious if they saw her.
I think a sheriff or someone she knew told her she really needed to stop driving. They called my dad, he flew up, got her, and brought her back with us.
I only knew 1 GM, but she drove.
When I was young, I lived in a Catholic neighborhood ( we were not, but almost everyone else was) and my mom was the only woman there who had a car.
IDK if the others knew how to drive or not.
Once a wk, she'd take orders from neighbors. We'd go PU tons of bread from a "day old store." We'd have a station wagon full of cheap, dry, 5 cent loaves of bread.
When we moved in 2nd grade, I think most women knew how to drive. They sometimes though had to share a car with their husband.
They'd drop their husband off at work and pick them up if they needed the car.
Did your mom or grandmother have a drivers license?
Mom did. Paternal grandmother did but not my mom's mom.
If yes who taught them how to drive a car ? I think my dad taught my mom. She didn't learn until all 4 of us were born. So it was the 1960's. She was born in 1927. I distinctly remember being in the car when she was practicing.
How old were they when they learned? So she must have been 30 something! I think she was tired of relying on my dad and needed to be independent to shop, run the kids from here to there, etc.
Did your friends' moms drive? Yes, I can't think of anyone who didn't.
Did your mom or grandmother have a drivers license?My mother and her mother did, but I doubt my dad's mother did.
If yes who taught them how to drive a car ? My mother was born in 1926 and raised by her dad, a farmer. She told me she was driving by herself when she was 13. Her best friend who was 2 years older, never learned to drive and my mother would drive "across the mountain" to visit her.
This friend never learned to drive and lived in the next city over. My mother loved to go outlet shopping with her, so we would pick her up and take her.
The friend was also a substitute teacher and the school would send a taxi to pick her up. I guess she was worth the price!
Did your friends' moms drive? Yes We always had to carpool to go places like the pool, scouts, youth groups, etc. My own kids never carpooled except to school when they did not ride the bus. I think the seat belts limited how many were in the back seat... !
Did your mom or grandmother have a drivers license?
My mother did, and my maternal grandfather was the one who taught her to drive. When she married my father in the early 1950s, his car had a stick shift, but she had learned to drive on an automatic (late 1940s). She never mastered driving a stick, and would tell us amusing stories about constantly stalling. When they bought their first car together in the mid 1950s, it was an automatic, and all of their future cars had automatic transmissions.
Neither of my grandmothers drove. My father was from a poor family, and he told stories of his father going to a hardware store to buy a driver's license at some point in the late teens or early 1920s. My mother's family was middle class, and my maternal grandmother probably could have driven if she had wanted to. I recall hearing stories of her driving briefly in the 1920s, and at least one of her older sisters drove. Many of her friends drove, but I'm not sure why she never did.
How old were they when they learned?
I'm not sure how old my mother was, but I'm going to guess about 16-19.
My mother tried to learn. Her father and a friend were in the car with her. They yelled at her, and she got nervous. She never got her license. My grandmothers did not get their licenses.
My mom did drive. She had to take the 5 of us to our lessons after school and do the errands typical of moms. After she and dad retired, he did all the driving. I never saw her drive after that.
Not sure about my grandmothers. One died when I was 6 and when my other grandmother went shopping it was always with my aunt who lived next door to her.
My grandmother never learned to drive but her daughter, my mother, learned at age sixteen and later was one of the first “lady” city bus drivers in a large city in NY state. That was news back in the fifties. I still have the large newspaper photo of her driving a bus. She was petite and looked glamorous. She took the job because it paid a man’s wages which she needed as the divorced mother of two children.
My mother taught me to drive a manual transmission. I got my license the week I turned sixteen.
My grandmother didn’t because they didn’t have a truck at the house grandpa worked away from home. She was 15 when they got married (just did the math and realized they lied about her age)
My mother didn’t drive. She jokingly said that it was my fault that she didn’t. My father attempted to teach her when I was a toddler and she said I’d cry whenever she took the wheel. I don’t think she really wanted to do it.
We lived in a very walkable small town and I don’t have memories of many of my friends’ mothers driving.
My mom learned at age 35 and was never a great driver. I dreaded being in the car with her. I think it took her three times to get her DL.
Neither of my grandmothers drove, but they were amazing when it came to public transportation.
we lived in a small suburb and she could walk to every place she needed to go. Doctor, dentist, drug store, grocery store-they delivered the groceries, hair dresser and bank. We had buses running all the time and for just a small amount of change she could go to two different small cities or take a bus or train into NYC to shop.
My grandmother in Maine never drove until she was almost 60 and my grandfather died. I don't know if she really got a license or not. The thinking in her small town was that everyone could drive to the "village" or the nearby "town" without a license. One only needed a license if you drove on the highway. Odd none of them ever got a ticket for driving without a license!
There was really no need to drive where we grew up.
My grandmother, born in 1892, tried to learn to drive. My grandpa taught her. On her first solo trip she drive through the garage and that the the end of her driving career.
My mom drove. She shouldn't have - she was a terrible driver and refused to wear her glasses. She was born in 1924. My grandpa told us how she would steal the family's gas ration tickets during WW II and drive to the naval base to flirt with the sailors. She mainly would drive from the house to the train station, about 6 blocks.
I learned to drive when I was 13 in a cemetery in the small town my other grandpa lived in. When I turned 16 and wanted to get my license it was a huge battle to convince my parents to sign for it. None of my sibling had a driver's license. My sisters didn't get one until in their late 30s.
My dad died in a boating accident in 1965. Mom learned to drive, grandma never learned to drive. She moved in with us to help my mom with her four kids.
My mom did drive. She had to cart around 8 kids until they got their own license. I don’t know who taught her drive. She just always did. However, when we lived in a big town, she took the bus because we only had one car.
One grandmother passed before I was born. My paternal grandmother was born in 1892. She drove, but I don’t know who taught her. I remember her owning an orange car with a white top.
My mother learned to drive when she was young. I think my dad and maybe her brother/cousins taught her? We only had one car for a long time when I was a child, so she didn't drive very often. My dad worked away from home for a long time, but when I was maybe 7 or 8 my mom got a used car so she could take us to the doctor or dentist and grocery shop during the week when my dad wasn't home. My dad installed seatbelts in the back seats of the car because he worried about us having an accident and getting injured. I think only the front seats had seat belts in those days?
My grandmother drove at one time, but she fell out of the habit and never got a license or let hers lapse? I suppose she learned when my grandfather did. He didn't learn till the last child was leaving home in the 1950s. They owned a big farm in a very rural area and someone in the family always had a car or truck so if they needed something they'd get a ride or send them to the store to get it? I remember my dad telling stories of riding his horse and taking a sack of grain to the mill for flour or to the store for supplies and bringing them home the same way.
I have no idea about the other grandparents. My grandmother had died when my mother was a small child. She had a child who died in infancy and she herself had gotten tuberculosis. This was before there were any good antibiotics with which to treat it. My grandfather fell apart and his children went to live with family friends for years. They had very minimal contact for quite a long time.
Yes, my grandma and great-grandma both drove! I'm not sure who taught them or how old they were when they learned. I wish they were here to ask. That would be interesting. They were born in the late 1800's and early 1900's, so I'm not sure how common that was back then.
with German POWs during WWII. I'm not sure if she could drive before or the army taught her--I think it was the army. She joined young and Cleveland had a pretty good transit system.
Her mother drove, not sure when she started. Granny would go a mile out of her way to avoid a left turn.
Not sure about Dad's mom. She lived in Buffalo NY and came west to live near her sons after she had Parkinsons.
None of my grandmoms drove. My mom drove but I have no idea who taught her since her dad died when she was 14. Now I'm curious so I will ask her. My friends' mothers drove except for 1. She didn't drive for years, I was in my 20's when she learned to drive. She stalled out and it was the last time she drove. She was my only friend's mother who didn't drive. My dad's sister didn't drive either. I don't know why she never learned.
My mother, if she were alive, she'd be 96, drove from a young adult, early 20s?, to mid 80s when my dad wouldn't let her any more because of her increasing loss of memory. She was taught by her dad. Her mother, I'm sure, never drove, but her dad's second wife (married long after Mom had her own children) drove. She was the worst driver ever because she drove in the middle of the street at the slowest speed possible.
On my dad's side, I'm pretty sure his mother didn't drive because I don't think his parents had a car. I'm not certain of that. I never knew her, she died just after I was born.
Now I'm curious. I'll ask Man about his mother. He says his mother drove a lot. He thinks no for both grandmothers. I wonder about one of them, though, since she lived on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in the early part of the 20th century.
My Mom drove from the time I can really remember, but I have a vague idea that my dad may have taught her when I was a toddler. We only had one car for a while, but then she got her her own.
My "local grandma" (dad's mom) drove - and probably a bit longer than she should have. My parents started to worry about her, but she was adamant about her freedom. Then one time, she had a small fender-bender at the corner near our house. My brother and I heard the sound and ran out. We were scared out of our minds, because apparently she had been bringing us a lasagna - wedged in the back window (when there was sort of shelf there in older cars.) The whole window was splashed with sauce, and we thought the worst. Turned out she was fine, and only a small dent in the car. The dish just tipped over and splattered. After that, she took our worries a little more seriously and let people cart her around.
My other grandmother (about a half-hour away) had a car when I was old enough to remember, but strangely, I never remember her actually driving it. We would go visit her most Saturdays, and take her out places, but mom would drive Grandma's car.
I'm not sure when either of them learned.
Pretty much all my friends' mom's drove that I know of (1970s/80s).
My mother's mom never drove. (Grandma died in 1978)
My mother refused to learn to drive, and had a state ID. She was born in 1925.
I learned at age 14, because my state had a "family need" category. Drivers Ed and one road test. No restrictions. Drove a tank of a car. 1973 Impala
My dear kid is terrified to learn. My husband shares every stinking horrror story, and this kid doesn't need to be terrorized to fly right. I'm really dreadng this.
My mom and my 3 grandma's all had driver's licenses. My mom's mom did all the driving when she and her husband went around together becaue he was a truck driver and I guess he was tired of driving by that time. We were also country people, so if you didn't drive, you didn't go anywhere!
My dh's grandma did not have a driver's license. They lived in and around NYC, so I think she never had to drive. His grandpa used to tell a story about a time they had car trouble and he wanted her to steer while he pushed. She told him ladies don't drive, and he told her that she could get out and push! He thought it awfully hilarious, and she would sit there affirming that ladies don't drive (and I don't think she drove or pushed..)
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11-23-2020, 04:48 PM
think she drove or pushed..)
