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Today's teenage girls take it for granted that they have such a wide range of opportunities open to them. Education, travel, careers, motherhood, gap years - they certainly seem to have it all compared with young females of the past. Lynne Sterling takes a look at the noticeable lack of options available to teenage girls in the 1930s.

The type of advice young girls are offered by their schools these days is likely to revolve around two main issues; their choice of career and how to avoid drug addiction and teenage pregnancy.

For the modern-day teenager - constantly faced with a multitude of life choices and meeting everything far too young - both areas provide valuable, even indispensable, information. Schools have little choice but to move with the times.

But how different expectations are today to the aspirations for schoolgirls back in the 1930s when Gladys Lindahl (nee Smith), of Sawley, was busy considering her future.

In those days, the main focus of advice was how to help youngsters become a good housewife and mother.

Although Gladys died in December 1996, her son, Peter Lindahl, recalls that, like many young girls of her era the academic potential shown by Gladys, could not easily be fulfilled.

"There was no chance of my mum sitting A-levels and GCSEs, never mind studying for a degree," Peter said.

"In those days, unless you came from a very privileged background which could fund further education, a woman's opportunities were much more limited.

"The majority of young girls were required to start work at 14 or 15 years old, to help out with family finances for a while, before becoming a wife and mother with a home of her own to run."

In fact, the pressure placed on females of that era to become "good" homemakers is graphically illustrated in a small blue handbook, which was given to Gladys by her senior school, in Sawley Road, Long Eaton.

Many of the comments contained in the handbook are likely to leave modern feminists torn between stamping their feet in disgust and disbelief, or rolling about in their seats with laughter.

It seems that the handbook was the first of three manuals written by Wilena Hitching, the headmistress of a girls' school in Leeds. Wilena wrote with great gusto and her ideas were backed by the Board of Education at that time, which praised the manual. It described how "great pains had been taken by this extremely enthusiastic headmistress in training her girls to become perfect wives and mothers".

The manual adopts a very rousing tone as Wilena embarks on enthusing her young prodigies with the "never-ending delights" of housework.

"You come to school so that you may be able to become good women, able to carry out thoroughly well women's special work," states the manual.

It continues: "Nobody can manage a home well unless she feels in her heart what splendid work she is doing.

"The cleverest men in the world may make good wise laws, and strive with all their might to make the nation happy and prosperous; but unless a woman's work is done they cannot succeed, for mismanaged homes can never make a happy nation."

Wilena then appeals to the youngsters to strive tirelessly towards creating "happy comfortable homes, which will be "a credit to yourselves, a credit to your town or village and a credit to the nation".

The manual proceeds to outline how this worthy state of perfect domestic harmony can be achieved.

Tips on cleanliness, good manners and general respectability abound, ranging from useful pointers to explicit practical instructions.

Nice girls, it seems, needed to make the best of their hair by "plaiting it loosely at night and tying it up daintily in the day with a clean, pretty ribbon".

They should also, apparently, favour white brushes and combs, which show up the dirt, and make sure they clean them at least once a week in warm water containing a piece of soda (the size of a walnut), then place them on the windowsill to dry.

"Remember it is every girl's duty to appear as charming as possible," Wilena warns.

The girls are also advised on how to conduct themselves in the street.

They should always walk on the right hand side of pavements and never "interfere with the comfort of others, as is done when three or four friends walk side by side".

Staring at others is seen as "not only very rude but wicked," according to the manual and "only the most vulgar people mark or destroy public property" by putting their feet up on buses and trains.

Wilena goes on to remind her readers that "girls, as well as other people, are known by the company they keep, so it is a mistake to associate with ill-mannered, untidy and untruthful girls".

"Nothing shows a bad-mannered girl more plainly than the coarse loud vulgar laughter so often heard in the street," she concludes.

Although Wilena's manual is also packed with some extremely useful cleaning tips, nutritious food recipes and handy instructions for managing a 1930s home, it is the idealistic and presumptuous tone of her comments which are most likely to jar with today's youngsters.

The various statements of blatant class prejudice are also destined to grate on the sensibilities of many in these politically correct, modern times.

For example, Wilena takes it upon herself to warn working people and their children against the evils of "tea-dinners", which she claims are neither economical or nourishing.

The manual states that "unless there is a very special reason, a good housewife will never give her husband and children tea, bread and butter and tinned meat, or meat from the cook shop, for their midday meal".

In Wilena's world, housewives were also expected to have an endless supply of aprons and cookery sleeves, changing them several times a day for their various chores.

It would be interesting to discover how many young teenagers from the 1930s and 40s took Wilena Hitching's manual to their hearts, attempting to live by its various rules and regulations in an effort to become the "perfect" little homemaker.

Peter found a copy of the manual among his mother's possessions when she died.

He believes that she would have extracted some useful tips from the handbook and disregarded some of the more unrealistic comments.

"I think most young teenagers would be highly amused and probably quite surprised at some of the expectations and demands made of their predecessors," he said.

"I imagine they would also be shocked by the lack of choice and opportunity which was available to them as they matured from young girls into women."

Gladys, like many females of her generation, began her first job at 15 years old, working initially in a cotton mill factory, at Draycott.

She later tried her hand at various jobs. For a period she worked as a sales assistant in a jewellery shop in Long Eaton, and then as an assistant at Long Eaton swimming pool, before marrying British bomber pilot Tony Tute.

In 1950, Gladys remarried translator Martin Stephen Lindahl, of Breaston, and moved to Switzerland, where she lived for nine years with her husband and three sons, David, Peter and Michael.

"In that sense, my mother's life was not typical," said Peter.

"I feel we were very lucky to experience living in Switzerland at that time. The standard of living was much better generally than in England. Most of the houses had double glazing and better heating and we also escaped the English class system out there. "There was no rationing, better health care, plus it was a very beautiful country to spend your childhood in."

The family also had the experience of living in Washington DC, in the USA, for three years in the early 60s, before returning to Buckinghamshire in Britain.

Gladys and Stephen finally retired to Castle Donington in the 1980s.

"My mother was raised by strict but loving parents, who instilled in her sound values and a strong sense of self-worth which gave her the confidence to tackle anything, from making curtains to writing poetry and building garden walls.

"She was nicknamed Twink because of her lively, bubbly personality. She was a strong-minded women who, had her own ideas on life and, in some ways, was ahead of her time and the feminist revolution."

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