The Historical Making of the Family
Industrialization and the Family
• Macrostructural Transformations
• The decade before the Civil War was a crucial transitional period to industrialization in the
U.S.
• Sharp distinctions arose between the middle class and the industrial working class
• In middle-class families, the separation of the workplace from the home resulted in:
• men engaged in productive work
• women engaged in social reproductive work in the home
Work and Family in Industrial Society
• The Doctrine of Two Spheres
• Men were to follow production out of the household, and women were to remain responsible
for reproduction at home
• Cult of true womanhood
• An ideal that not all groups could achieve; a class ideology that separated middle class
“ladies” from working class women
• controlled women, narrowed their options, & lowered their status
• Women and Industrial Work
• 19th-century working-class women engaged in both social production and social reproduction
• Traditional female households tasks were first to be transferred to factories which hired
(young) working class women whose wages belonged to their families as late as 1900 -
1930
• The Family Wage
• An income sufficient to support a family at a decent standard; limited to white men; justified
women’s exclusion from labor force
• Childhood and Adolescence
• As industrialism advanced, the distinct life-cycle stages of childhood and adolescence were
recognized with corresponding class differences
• Girls & boys from poor families were still “put out” to labor for wages
• “Accordion households”
• Industrialization contributed to household flexibility during this transition period
• Enlarged household with boarders was more widespread than sharing space with
extended kin
• Response to economic need; helped families adapt to urban life
Immigration and Family Life
• Two massive waves of immigration (largest in recorded history)
• “Old” immigration: between 1830 and 1882, more than 10 million mostly English, Irish,
German, and Scandinavian immigrants arrived
• “New” immigration: between 1882 and 1930, more than 22 million mostly southern and
eastern Europeans arrived.
• Immigrant labor was crucial to the industrialization of the U.S.
• Immigrants faced discrimination, poverty, & difficulties re-establishing families
• Led to false conclusion that migration destroyed family life
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