Industrial Revolution Effects on Family Relationships
The paradigmatic shift from farming to Industrial workforce brought
rapid urbanization in
search of employment opportunities for survival. Almost overnight, small towns
around coal or iron mines mushroomed into cities. Changes in farming structure,
soaring population growth, and an ever-increasing demand for workers led masses
of people to migrate from farms to cities. These changes brought about far-
reaching consequences to the family relationships between parents and their
children including longer working hours, child labor, working women, child
labor punishments, child delinquency, severed social mobility and emergence of
new classes. This paper focuses on the industrial revolution in Europe in order
to understand the effects of a shift from rural-farming to urban-industrial on
the family.
Impact On The Family
Relations:
In the 19th century, Louise. A. Tilly and Joan.
W. Scott, pointed out that the ‘family economy’ was replaced by the ‘family
wage economy’ as industrialization caused the growth of wage labour and
shift in production, outside the household to factories. The family wage
economy was now defined by the need for money, to pay for food and rent,
towards which individual wage earners contributed. This shift, led to a change
in family structures, as family now became synonymous with ‘household’ and now
comprised only kin members living under one roof. As production shifted outside
the house, families were presented with the dilemma, of who would take care of
production needs and who of reproduction/child care, as
both didn't take place within the household anymore. Thus two spheres
emerged which became associated with gender roles- (i) the private sphere
associated with family and femininity handled by wives/mothers, and
(ii) the public sphere of work, commerce and politics associated with
men.
Working Class Family Changes
The Position of women and work: Tilly and Scott, examining this change in the working class family look
at the role of children, daughters and married women and their centrality to
the family wage economy. They say, children and especially daughters were
an important economic recourse for working class families, as were put to work
at a young age between 10-14years, to contribute to family income. Typically
girls from rural England and France shifted to cities, as the growing urban
middle class created a demand for domestic servants. For e.g. 2/3rd of all
domestic help in England in 1851 were daughters of rural labourers.
Children also found
great employment in the new mechanized textile industry as their nimble fingers
were preferred by employers. Tilly and Scott show that often whole families
shifted to new textile towns such as Manchester and Preston (England) and
Roubaix and Toulouse (France) to take advantage of manufacturer’s appeals for
families with “healthy strong children”.
In such cases a
parent collected the collective wage of all his family members- e.g. the Metigy
family together earned 46 Francs a week. The textile industry in which women
and children found greater employment than men was more lucrative than other
sectors, women were paid well, jobs availability was high which often led to
saving. A similar pattern of families working together was seen in mining towns
such as Anzin (France), where men worked in mines and women and children sorted
coal on the surface.
Child labour had important repercussions. Daughters
who shifted to cities became more independent of family control, especially
in spheres of marriage and spending money. Yet this independence was
accompanied by greater vulnerability of economic and sexual exploitation of
young girls. In cities wages were often low; employment was seasonal and
unstable due to economic fluctuations. Thus the prostitution developed as a new
occupation in order to survive. In 1836
Parent Duchatelet found that majority of prostitutes in Paris were recent
immigrants.
Yet in good times jobs were plenty, and young
women preferred to work in cities. This often led to permanent migration and
sometimes a loosening of family ties. However on the whole Tilly and Scott
argue that the period saw a continuity of strong family ties as most children
felt a sense of obligation to their parents and because family also provided
other benefits, as family ties maintained by mothers, helped children find jobs
and lodging in new cities.
The impact on
younger children especially till 1840s was very low literacy rates e.g. studies
from Manchester showed most children, “picked up some schooling between 3 and
12 years at irregular intervals.” The economic needs of families took
precedence over education. This situation improved slightly after compulsory
primary education laws were passed in Britain (1841), France and Germany post
1840s. Michael Anderson says that children earning a wage often gained some
independence too and sometimes entered, “relational bargains with their parents
on terms of more or less precise equality.”
Married women’s role conflict: Married women in the family wage economy played multiple roles, which
varied across working class and middle class households. In working class
women contributed wages to the family fund apart from their traditional roles
of managing the house, being available, self- sacrifice, bearing and caring for
children. Once women married their domestic duties and child care increasingly
conflicted with their capacity to earn a wage as industrial jobs demanded long
hours (upto 18 hours) away from home. This conflict was resolved by married
women not working, unless financial necessity demanded. It also led to the
concept of a ‘male bread winner’ emerging, as a result of gendering of the
newly created public and private spheres discussed above. A gendering of
spheres was more blurred among working class homes in which married
women were forced to work.
Women’s work
reflected a distinct pattern. Women
worked full time industrial jobs before and in early years of marriage before
childbirth, if necessary. After childbirth women usually took on
non-mechanized garment trades(e.g. needlework) or earned wages as caterers,
laundresses, charwomen and as keepers of cafe’s and inns, jobs which could be
done from the house thus reducing time away from home. Women carrying out these
jobs usually didn't consider themselves as employed, to avoid paying
taxes. Women’s jobs were often low paying, exploiting and temporary.
It was usually when
what Michael Anderson refers to as “critical life situations” hit (death,
illness or unemployment of a husband) which were common in the 19th century,
that married women were again forced to work. E.g. in textile towns’ wives of
men in low paying jobs, worked in the mills. In such situations, the gendering
of private and public spheres blurred as males often fulfilled domestic
duties.
Another impact of married women being forced to work was a rise in child
mortality rates as children were sent to wet nurses
and they suffered from malnutrition and beatings as punishment yet the survival
of the family was more important than that of an infant. As children grew up to
age 10 and could be put to work, mother’s were spared working, as children now
took on this role, contributing to the family fund. Married women were then
forced back into the workforce, in their old age, when children got married,
moved away and husbands grew old and ill. In such cases married women took up
any work they found.
In the domestic sphere married women played vital roles, they cooked,
cleaned and nursed the wage earning family members. Majority of the working class budget was spent on food Michael
Martineau’s study of wage spent on grain in five types of French families
between 1823 and 1835 shows an average of 55%. A mother’s managerial role was
well recognised in the household, as she managed the family fun to put food on
the table. As children spent more time at home only leaving when married, bonds
of affection also increased between mother and children as she organized the
family and fed it. Mothers also fulfilled an important social role, of
maintaining larger family ties, by visiting relatives with gifts and preparing
food for festivals. This was important as the larger kin network helped children
get employment and shelter when they moved to cities.
MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES:
In middle class or bourgeoisie Lynn Abrams says that children and wives
usually didn't work and especially not out of financial necessity, as
males earned well enough. Thus the gendering of the private
and public spheres was greater in the middle class household, as the married
woman’s ideal role was that of a mother/wife, who maintained a good house and
provided an emotional haven for husband and children to escape the hardships of
the industrial world. Abrams says the middle class mother’s role as chief
organizer of the house was valued. The increasing association of the home with
women led to women being seen as dependents and incapable of productive roles
like-politics and work. It also led to the development of patriarchy. Yet
women’s withdrawal from the work space didn't entail a total
withdrawal. Women in England and France contributed financial recourses to
family businesses and often controlled husband’s business activity. E.g. in
France, Deborah Simonton, shows family businesses often combined the names of
husband and wife e.g. The Mequillet-Noblet Cotton Company.
The division of private and public spheres also emerged within the
house, as private bedrooms became distanced from common
spaces like the kitchen and parlor. Thus Abrams says that in the 19th century
the home was increasingly on display, and the family became self conscious,
drawing rooms were filled with ornaments, furniture and wallpaper often made by
the women of the house since the women were now primarily judged for their
domestic roles. Women also became the representatives of the family as they
stayed at home and met with relatives, salesmen and officials.
With regards to children, the mother child relationship was central to
the new family as children now came to fulfill an emotional role as
opposed to a financial one. One saw the development of a concept
of childhood and adolescence as Peter .N. Sterns points out because children
began to stay home longer usually till marriage, even within working class
families. This was because middle class children didn't work but were
educated for longer now and in the working class labour laws (1830s) and
compulsory education laws (1840s) in Britain and France, led to literacy
increasing and children staying at home longer. The middle class family
also offered escape for working husbands from the hardship of work life, thus
family activities such as playing the piano after dinner and family holidays
developed.
With regards to
single mothers and widows who didn't fit the domestic family ideal
the space for them to be integrated into a household reduced, as families
became smaller.
Peter . N. Sterns also says industrialization led to decreasing birth
rates first in middle class and by 1870s in working class
due to emphasis on birth control. In the middle class this ‘demographic
transition’ occurred due to greater emphasis on the concept of childhood,
education and familial bonds. While in working class households it occurred due
to economic pressure, to conserve recourses. By 1900 most families had 2-4
children instead of 6 to 8.
However Tilly and Scott also point out that the
transformation of the family was widespread yet all
families didn't shift to the family wage economy, in France
especially compared to Britain small farms with family production died out only
in the early 20th century.
Conclusion
In summary the 19th century middle class norm of the
mother at the centre of the family as a homemaker or ‘angle in the house’ and
the clear cut gendering of spheres, became the widespread in working class
households by the late 19th/early 20th century. This was one of the main social
legacies of industrialization and capitalism in the 19th and early 20th century,
interlinked to the development of a working class and growing bourgeoisie,
which changed the social fabric of Western Europe. Indeed the industrial
revolution initiated changes in family relations between parents and their
children as it’s lasting impact.
