The Household

The Household Lecture

Warm Up

  • Discussion Prompt: What ideas are traditionally associated with women and work? What about now?

Reading Material

  • Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, an international bestseller.

  • Moms Can Do It All!: Discussing the double shift of being a mother and employed full-time by Elizabeth Wingard.

  • Trad Wife Handbook: The guide to traditional values in modern life by Madeline Green. Includes bonus traditional wife recipes.

Key Questions for Today's Lecture

  1. How did the industrial revolution transform household structures in the Northern United States?

  2. How did Americans try to justify this transformation?

  3. What were the consequences for American women?

Key Themes and Historical Context

  • Nancy Cott: A pioneering feminist scholar addressing these questions in her work "The Bonds of Womanhood," published in 1977.

Key Question No. 1: Transformation of Household Structures

  • New England in the Early 1800s:

    • Predominantly rural environment.

    • Structure centered around the nuclear family with the patriarch as the head of the household.

The New England Farm vs. The Plantation

  • Family Labor:

    • Families often had between 10 to 12 children. A larger family provided more labor.

    • Sons were essential contributors on family farms until they reached their mid-twenties.

Women's Labor

  • Example of Martha Ballard:

    • A midwife from Augusta, Maine, who delivered over 1,000 babies throughout her life.

    • Notable points:

    • There was no physical separation of workspaces based on gender, as both men and women participated in child-rearing.

    • Women were legally classified as economic dependents, limiting their autonomy.

Population Growth Statistics

  • From 1790 to 1810:

    • New York's population grew by 182%.

    • Pennsylvania's population grew by 86%.

    • Massachusetts's population grew by 25%.

The Lowell Mills

  • Significance: The first large-scale factory system in the United States.

  • Participation of Women:

    • Approximately 7,000 women were employed there by 1830.

    • They were heavily supervised, alleviating the concerns of parents about their daughters' safety away from home.

Married Women's Roles

  • Middle- and upper-class women generally did not engage in labor outside the home.

  • Instead, they became new consumers within the household, with childcare becoming their primary responsibility.

Life in Two Phases: Unmarried vs. Married

  • Quote from Amelia Jackson reflecting on the dissatisfaction of young women:

"I think a girl's life at my age [21] isn’t the most pleasant by any means; … I have sometimes wished I could be poor to have the pleasure of exerting myself."

Key Question No. 2: Justifying Transformation

  • Review Prompt: Would you consider women's work in the household as task-oriented or time-oriented labor?

“Home Sweet Home” and Domesticity

  • Five categories that define domesticity:

    1. Mother’s lives.

    2. Principles of child-rearing.

    3. Women’s role in society.

    4. Education for women.

    5. Etiquette and manners applicable to women.

Base and Superstructure Theory

  • The Base consists of:

    • Relations of production.

    • Means of production (e.g., machines, factories, land, materials).

    • Controlled by the bourgeoisie (the owning class).

  • The Superstructure includes:

    • Education, family, religion, politics, mass media, which maintains and legitimizes the base.

The Idea of Separate Spheres

  • A delineation emerged between home and the public world:

    • Home became a “sanctuary” from the workplace.

    • Concept that if the profit motive caused moral degradation in men, the home served as a remedy.

Key Question No. 3: Consequences for American Women

  • Prescribed Roles for Women:

    • Expectations for women to live selflessly for others, and make their husbands happy.

    • Legally, women's property and earnings belonged to their husbands, limiting their economic independence.

    • Many women perceived no feasible escape from this role.

The Labor of Motherhood

  • Women were expected to rear virtuous citizens who were disciplined and orderly, countering immoral external influences.

The Denial of Class Divisions

  • Many women, particularly from lower economic classes, continued laboring in factories and other sectors to earn a wage.

  • Middle-class women's growing concerns centered around the idea that these laboring women needed rescue from their conditions.

The Beginning of Reform Movements

  • Middle-class women began creating roles for themselves beyond domestic settings:

    • They claimed it their duty to foster a more virtuous society, actively engaging in movements like anti-slavery campaigns.

    • Additionally, many started opposing alcohol consumption.

The Drunkard's Progress

  • Illustrates the negative consequences of alcohol, detailing steps from initial consumption to devastation, emphasizing the moral reform narrative.

The Deserving Poor vs. Undeserving Poor

  • Reformers distinguished between those deserving help and those considered undeserving.

  • This marked a significant shift from the traditional Christian view represented by St. Francis de Assisi.

  • Middle-class women advocated values like thriftiness, sobriety, hard work, and deference:

    • They believed they should regulate assistance given through charity.

and they sought to create a more structured approach to helping those in need, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility and moral values in charitable actions.