Baby Boomers may be the last generation whose mothers generally were stay-at-home moms, taking care of the house, baking cookies, and so forth. Or so the stereotype goes.
But some had moms who went to a job outside the home every day. What is the norm now was the exception 60 years ago. And it created a lot of angst, as moms worried about whether their kids would become normal as they reached adulthood.
One of those working moms was an advertising executive – indeed, co-founder of her own ad agency.
Her name was Lois Wyse. You may not have heard of her, but you know some of the brands that she worked on. She is the one who came up with the slogan, “with a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.” Bed Bath And Beyon was just “BedAnd Bath” before Lois suggested adding “Beyond.”
In the early 1990s Lois’s daughter Kathy Wyse Goldman – by then herself a working mother – began to consider and appreciate her upbringing in a way she hadn’t before. And it inspired her to write a book, which she called My Mother Worked and I Turned Out OK.
And so it was on the day in early May 1993 that I met with Kathy and Lois to talk about the book.
So here now, from 1993, Kathy Wyse Goldman and her mom Lois Wyse.
Lois Wyse died in 2007 at age 80.
