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
•
•
•
•
Industrial Work and Immigrant Families
The family was a vital resource in adapting to the new society.
By “chain migration”, immigrants encouraged other family members to migrate and helped them
shift to industrial work.
Like working class women in general, immigrant women often entered the labor force to make
ends meet.
• At no time did more than 10 – 15% of wives in any nationality work outside the home
Families sometimes adapted to the new industrial setting by sending children out to work.
Racial Control and Family Life
New Frameworks for Thinking About Minority Families
• Racial minority families who do not meet the “standard family” ideal have been viewed as
deviant.
• New research investigates the social & economic conditions that lead to distinctive family
outcomes for people of color.
• Many ways in which systems of racial control have disrupted family life
Connections Among Race, Labor, and Family Life
•
The presence of racially-defined groups in the U.S. is tied to the demand for labor.
– A group’s assignment to certain kinds of work shapes their everyday lives
•
Racial minorities worked on building the agricultural and industrial base but were denied
industrial jobs.
– Most people of color were historically incorporated through coercive labor systems (slavery,
contract labor)
• Organized to maximize labor productivity, few supports for family life; in some cases family
life was legislatively denied
•
The subordinated labor status of people of color cut them off from institutional and social
supports provided for other families.
• Racial-ethnic families devised various solutions for maintaining family life
Black Families in Slavery and Freedom
•
Adaptation, resistance, and agency are key themes in recent research on black families.
• Family life as a positive adaptation to social conditions
• Two-parent households prevailed both during slavery and after emancipation.
• The main reason for family breakup during slavery was forced separation following sale.
•
Work & Gender
• The gender system under which slaves worked was imposed by whites.
• Men and women were laborers. Slave women were responsible for the domestic care of both
their and their owners’ families.
• Slave women’s work shaped child-care arrangements: women as a group were accountable
for one another’s children
• Gender relations were more egalitarian in slave families than in white families.
• Kinship
• Kinship ties were foremost in formation of slave families
• Connected unrelated slaves into a family
• Slave naming patterns reveal conception of family in broad sense, including extended kin
• Legal marriages did not exist, but unions were legitimized by rituals & fidelity was expected
• “jumping the broomstick”
• Two-parent households prevailed after slavery
• Most studies show no more than 20 – 25% of free Black households headed by single parent
• true in rural or urban south as well as urban north
•
•
•
•
Chicano Families in the Southwest
At the end of the Mexican War, Mexicans became foreigners in their own land.
• The displacement of the indigenous people, new laws, and new labor systems disrupted
family life.
Rapid economic growth set up a pattern of recruitment of new Chicano workers from Mexico by
U.S. economic interests.
• Immigration increased substantially in the early twentieth century
• Great diversity among Mexican immigrant families: sometimes entire family units, sometimes
chain migration
• Many employers and government “bracero” programs recruited only men for temporary labor
supply
• Migratory labor made families highly susceptible to disruption
Family Life Amidst Coercive Labor Systems
• Mexican families were forced to be flexible and adaptive.
• Extended family networks were crucial in dealing with migration.
• The compadrazgo system of godparents is an example of an adaptation to a largely
inhospitable environment.
Work and Gender
• As economic hardships forced women & children into the paid labor force, old pattern of female
domestic work and male productive work began to break down
• Women who stayed behind assumed more responsibilities as men migrated for seasonal
employment
• Entire families entered pattern of seasonal & migratory field work
• Although women did productive labor, family life was still gendered