Women in Europe since 1750 by Patricia Branca

Author:Patricia Branca [Branca, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Social History, Modern, 19th Century, Reference, General
ISBN: 9781136243004
Google: NVLuREtfOI4C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-02T15:55:36+00:00

The Working-Class Woman’s Dilemma

Ironically, given the great popularity among social historians for study of the working class, we know very little about the working-class family beyond what the vital statistics tell us. The role of the woman in the working-class family remains a particular mystery until illuminated by sociological research dealing with the last two decades. Even more than her middle-class counterpart she remains, once married, locked inside her home. Lack of material from magazines and manuals compounds the problem of grasping her role and outlook, for literature was rarely directed to working-class women with their lack of funds and general reluctance or inability to read. Perhaps, indeed, she needed less guidance from outside experts anyway. For we are beginning to understand that working-class women made their own family adaptations and may be judged remarkably successful in dealing with change.

The role of the working-class woman in the family certainly underwent significant alteration in the nineteenth century as a result of the forces of modern living. By the end of the century the working-class family seemed to be adopting many aspects of middle-class culture and behaviour patterns, most particularly as it too began to limit family size after 1870-90. However, the working-class family’s forging of a modern life style involved far more complexities and subtleties than mere imitation of the middle-class model. Even shared behaviour could result from different causes, and much behaviour was not shared at all, for the role of the working-class woman was and remains substantially different from that of her middle-class sisters. Birth control, a possible case of imitation in that it followed middle-class adoption chronologically and was indeed the subject of intense middle-class propaganda (as reformers saw benefits to the well-being of the poor if there were fewer mouths to feed), was part of a distinctive adaptation to the new forces of urban and industrial life. The physical health of the working-class woman was obviously to benefit from fewer pregnancies, but this does not seem to have been as important in the decision to cut births as it was in the middle-class family since there was little or no effort to improve the woman’s pre-natal and child delivery care until much later than the advent of family planning. In fact it seems possible that women in working-class families were not really emotionally prepared for birth control. For many women the decline in children was viewed as a deterioration in their importance in the family. Recent polls indicate that the working-class still views numerous children as a sign of family success far more commonly than does the middle class. This is not to downgrade the importance of birth control in the class; by 1900 the rate of decline was as rapid as that of the middle class although, starting later, the working class continued to have larger families. However, the process here was not simply middle-class culture taken with a slight time lag. In the working class, economics was the primary factor in the decision to limit births.

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