Economics and the Family

In preindustrial society, the basic economic unit in which most people worked was the family household. Families owned, or at least had rights to, small amounts of land on which they worked as well running low-intensity cottage industries within the home, such as spinning and weaving. Families worked together as self-employed members of this economic unit. With the industrial revolution, the family as the basic unit of economic production was replaced by the large, capital intensive factories where employees worked for a wage, thus the domestic and economic spheres were divorced and the idea and function of the family was changed.

The Myth of the Abandoned Extended and Larger Family

It is commonly believed that preindustrial families were characterized by large numbers of children and an extended family structure with grandparents, uncles and aunts all living in the same household. The corollary of this is that the industrial revolution saw the beginning of a decline in family size and a change in structure to the nuclear family that prevails in the Western world today. However, historical evidence from parish record shows that in Europe, at least, the nuclear family has been the dominant model of the family for as far back as records go. Indeed, the decline in infant mortality in the industrial revolution led to a growth in family size, though the likelihood of surviving into adulthood was much slower to improve than infant mortality rates.

The Birth of the Breadwinner

In most families during the industrial revolution, particularly in its early stages, all members of the family, including children, would have worked in the mills and factories. Indeed, in many factories, children formed the bulk of the workforce, being easier to control and costing less to employ. Although through most of the industrial revolution, women took on an equal amount of paid work as men, the inequalities in wages did formulate the role ideas of the male breadwinner and the domestic female, whose role was to support the ability of the man to bring in the main income. The separation of men and women into laboring and domestic realms began in the middle classes and worked more slowly into working-class society, though in reality women were often burdened with the double shift of domestic labor and full-time paid employment.

The Creation of Childhood

Although many children did work in the factories and mines of the new industries, often under appalling conditions, it should not be forgotten that the industrial revolution also was marked by the incredible growth of the size and influence of the middle classes. Many middle class professions required education for success, and the new economic climate meant that there were more options in terms of career choices on which young people could embark. This meant that increasing numbers of children were neither laboring nor being trained in a trade that they would follow throughout their lives but were instead being given a general education. In a sense, children were increasingly seen as long-term investments rather short-term suppliers of wage labor. This decoupling of childhood from the world of work created new ideas about childhood. Ideas that saw recognition in the Factory Act of 1833, which aimed to limit the labor of children in factories and tried to introduce two hours of compulsory schooling for all children. Some working families objected to the act in theory as it denied them a crucial source of income. So it might be argued that the act is arguably an example of middle class thinking about the sanctity of childhood being projected onto the working class.