Family Life in the 19th Century: Ideals vs. Reality
Explore the contrasting aspects of family life in the 19th century, from idealized values of stability and love to the practical realities of family structures, sizes, and the private sphere. Discover how societal norms influenced the roles and dynamics within different social classes.
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Presentation Transcript
THE FAMILY Week 12
Ideals v Reality The Private Sphere? Overview: Changing Parental Roles Golden Age of Childhood Conclusions
Family values Retreat from stress and turmoil of industrial world Idealised as centre of stability Household viewed as separate from the world of work fostering love, co- operation, and peace Differentiation of sexual spheres: men in public sphere and married women in the home: There can be no security to society, no honour, no prosperity, no dignity at home, no nobleness of attitude towards foreign nations, unless the strength of the people rests upon the purity and firmness of the domestic system (Shaftesbury) Pleasures and virtues of home life were major theme in art and literature.
Reality: family structure Middle class: Family structure was primarily nuclear. Isolated from larger kinship network (except spinsters). Aristocracy: close kinship ties beyond nuclear core. Dependant on patriarch for allowance. Working class: close kinship ties beyond nuclear core. Mutual support in times of crisis.
Reality: family size 1861: 67% of families headed married couples. 18% by widows/widowers and 15% by bachelors/spinsters. From 1870 there were changes in the composition of families. The mortality rate began to fall due to improving standard of living, better nutrition, public health reforms, and the decline in death by infectious diseases. Also fall in the birth-rate which meant number of children in families fell. Marriages in the late 1860s produced an average of 6.16 children. By 1870s 43% of women had between 5 and 9 children and 18% had ten or more. By 1881 this had fallen to 5.27. By 1914 much more dramatically to 2.73.
THE PRIVATE SPHERE?
Private Sphere? Not in front of the servants : Domestic staff censor routines, habits and practices of a family. Conform for fear of gossip damaging reputation. Lodgers: Families in need of additional income forced to take in lodgers, especially widows. Poor families often shared houses with other families renting rooms not complete house. Despite separation of home and work premises with industrialisation, For many middle class, homes are still places of work e.g. doctors and vicars. The home a place to do business (e.g. the gentleman s study) or to network (e.g. dinner parties). Home a statement of your success and therefore how good you are at your job. Respectability of family reflects on trustworthiness of breadwinner.
Motherhood. Angel of the House: wife and mother natural role of women. Most women gave up work when married but working mothers increasingly criticised esp. factory workers. Blamed for social ills personal rather than public problem (infant mortality, malnutrition etc) Economic necessity yet social anxiety surrounded issues such as child care, birth control, and gender roles exposing contradictions in separate spheres ideology. Letter from Blandini to the Bradford Observer (1871) called for adoption of 9 hour day for men and 6 hour day for women as: wives and daughters shall be restricted to six hours per day, to give them a chance to learn domestic duties, for why should females be employed outside the domestic hearth. The domestic hearth is the only sphere in which they can shine in all their brilliance. What business have they outside of it?
Fatherhood John Tosh: Domesticity and Manliness (1991) 1800 - Stern, aloof, authoritarian father stereotype. Warmth and affection associated with mother. Effeminate to show emotion. Fathers withhold love from sons to fit them for real world. Secularisation made moral discipline at home imperative. Up to 1850: fatherhood a crucial stage in winning social recognition as an adult, fully masculine person . Thereafter, flight from domesticity marginalises importance of family to male status. Reinforced by army, church, scouts, schools.
Fatherhood Cont. Julie-Marie Strange: Fatherhood and Working Class (2015) Working-class fathers overlooked by historians, seen as absent fathers and studied in predominantly economic role. Fatherhood marginalised by state, philanthropists and welfare reform. The Family perceived as mother and children. Idea of authoritarian father or bully exaggerated by contemporary social reformers and historians. Personal testimony shows fathers often affectionate. Throughout 20thcentury continuous development of hands on father or new man . E.g. father-craft classes in interwar era or admittance of men to labour room in 1960s.
GOLDEN AGE OF CHILDHOOD
Perceptions of childhood. Before 18thcentury children needed close supervision and moral guidance as training for adulthood. If left unchecked their sinful nature (present in all humans) will triumph. Idealised from 18thcentury on: children seen as innocent and in need of protection from the corrupt world (Rousseau) Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! (Psalm 127:3-5) Not just a economic necessity but a blessing. Fewer children per family but spend more time with them. Romanticising of childhood common in Victorian and Edwardian society.
Conclusions Victorians idealised and romanticised everything from courtship to childhood. Reality of family life seldom lived up to ideals. At the same time the cult of family took hold, family size was declining, masculinity was being reimagined as flight from domesticity and divorces were increasing in number. The religious ideas of sacred nature of marriage and of the natural evil of children diminished as secularisation/enlightenment progressed. Instead children a blessing while state more willing to intervene in abusive marriages. Industrialisation separated home and work entrenching separate sphere ideology but this divide was seldom upheld in reality especially amongst working classes where economic necessity prevented women solely adopting angel of house role. Beware stereotypes. Easy to think of marriage and motherhood as gilded cage for women. Easy to view men as absent, abusive or detached. Testimonies increasingly reveal the problematic nature of generalisations.
