the history of marriage

[enochs_fable]

Nothing irritates me more than people who point to a particular instance of an institution and imagine that it (in this case, marriage) is as it was, so to speak, for thousands of years -- when in fact the historical reality, as evidenced by cursory research, is quite different.

history of marriage. The whole man-breadwinner, woman-homemaker

Comments

[verin_the_brown]

well, even our own culture used a different model when the primary work-place was the home, and women were intimately involved in commerce as well as child-raising. Once the primary place of work became divorced from the home, women were essentially restricted to the home sphere.

Okay, but it is incorrect to say that for pre-industrial farmers in the US and Great Britain, for instance, in the past 200 years that there was a fairly consistant division of labor such that the women already did the non-commerce tasks?

In our own culture, how common was it really for married men to do cooking, cleaning, and sewing/spinning, and intensive child-care?

Then of course there were the upper crust Victorians who could afford to farm their kids out to wet nurses, so they could go do whatever rich Victorian women did all day. :)

Yeah, I'm not talking about rich folk, or families where the mother dies, or those where the man is the father and the grandfather to the child for that matter, but rather a model of what can work for the majority of families.

Likewise, I could believe there are whole cultures where the norm is to give infants a substitute for human milk, but I am dubious that widespread use of clam juice, goat milk, or gruel would make for a healthy population.

[enochs_fable]

My hazy recollection is that after the 1700's or so was when the work/home separation really occurred. Some of the answer to your question would depend on what counts as non-commerce tasks: with farmers for example, both women and men generally had to participate in the labor to keep the farm running - I'm sure there was some division of labor within those duties, but all of them were essential to the success of the farm. It wasn't as if all the women did was stay home, cook and raise the kids. It just wasn't economically feasible - and this holds true for a lot of women in later time periods: unless you could afford to have the woman stay home, she didn't. Employment was limited, contigent and haphazard, but they had to find other ways to bring in money. Being a stay-at-home wife was a real luxury that many couldn't afford!