Faith and her fiancee Peter talk as if he is going to make her give up her work as a nurse when they get married, and Jack tells Peter that he should let her keep doing what she loves even when they marry, but it would not be him stopping her working. At the time the marriage bar was in effect, meaning that women had to give up working when they married, particularly in skilled jobs such as nursing. Women in domestic jobs could work, and Elizabeth may even have been allowed to continue teaching because rules were less strict for teachers in rural areas, a nurse in a city would never have been allowed to continue working after she married.
When Elizabeth is talking to the little girls about Hattie losing her best friend she asks the girls "who here has lost something close to them?" The girls respond with trivial things like losing a teddy bear and a dog running away, but many of these children lost their fathers in the mine explosion.