Changing Families

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Changing Families
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Premarital Sex and Marriage

• Traditional marriage ways were pretty much dead
  by the 1850s
• Romantic love became popular!
• Couples came from different towns and were closer
  in age
• Romantic sentiment became more influential rather
  than traditions and financial considerations
• The middle class was much more focused on
  economic considerations
• Marriage was considered one of the most important
  financial transactions for the middle class lives
  ( Later 19th century)
• Older, more economically stable men would marry
  younger women
• Tension grew in middle class marriages
• After marriage, middle-class morality demanded
  strong fidelity

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Continued

• Late-adolescent, middle class boys often had
  sexual experience with prostitutes or maids
• Illegitimacy explosion between 1750 and 1850
  births were happening much more frequently
  OUTSIDE OF WEDLOCK
• Poor and poverty stricken saw little wrong in
  having child without marriage
• By the mid-century, romantic ideals, premarital
  sex and illegitimacy was booming among the urban
  working class
• However, some areas that were not industrialized
  or were controlled by certain religious
  communities did not experience an illegitimacy
  explosion
• Young people valued what they were taught

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Continued

• Western, Northern, and Central Europe experienced
  a decrease in illegitimacy during the last half
  of the century
• Many women were heading to the alter expecting a
  child
• Unmarried people were still just as sexually
  active as their grandparents were during the
  illegitimacy explosion
• Pregnancy among single women led to marriage and
  2 parent households
• The urban working-class eventually became more
  stable
• Helped in strengthening the family as an
  institution

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Prostitution

• 155,000 women were registered as prostitutes in
  1871-1903 in France
• My Secret Life
• 11 volume autobiography written by an anonymous
  author
• Sexual adventure
• Devoted to sexual activity
• Invested in prostitutes
• Prostitutes received money, food, baths
• Could buy sex before and after marriage
• Difference in social classes led to different
  types of sexual exploitation
• Prostitution was temporary
• Many women went on later to lead normal lives
• Established homes and families

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Prostitution
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Kinship Ties

• Working class households had a stronger
  connection with blood related relatives
• Newlyweds would move to a house near their
  relatives
• People went to their families for help with
  sickness, unemployment, death, and age
• Funerals or unexpected deaths required
• high financial demands
• Relatives would help with problems
• in payments and will be repaid over time
• Relatives were useful around the house
• Can help with taking care of house, kids, and
  cooking
• Shared clothes, handed down, and useful
  information

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Gender Roles and Family Life

• After 1850
• Women began to be associated with taking care of
  the household and children
• Men earned the money for the family
• Separate spheres were created
• Women were not offered the same opportunities as
  men
• Working women earned lower wages than men
• Women could not own property
• Middle class feminists wanted more legal rights
• They wanted the same right as men (education and
  work)
• Believed it was not okay to have unmarried women
  with almost no way to support themselves
• Felt that work could add variety for their own
  lives

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(No Transcript)
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Continued

• These feminist groups had victories
• 1882- law that gave property rights to married
  English women
• After the 1880s, women were given more
  opportunities to educated work ( White-college
  jobs)
• Socialist women did not just want
• rights for women in the working class,
• but for all the working class

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Continued

• Although women did not make the money, they
  usually were the ones to spend it
• They decided how it would be spent
• Womens lives were very demanding at home
• Married working class did not really want a job
  since they were so busy with children, cleaning,
  etc.
• Women did all she could to make her husbands
  life more pleasurable
• People began to marry for love and sexual
  attraction instead of obligation
• Economic concerns became less of a struggle
• Working class women were rather content and
  satisfied with their lives

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Child Rearing

• Growing love and concern mothers gave their
  infants were signs of deepening emotional
  attachments within the family
• Early emotional bonding to the infants began to
  spread among the higher classes by the end of the
  18th century
• Mothers began to breast feed their own infants
  instead of using wet nurses
• Responsible for saving lives
• A sign in France that showed an increase in
  affection was that fewer illegitimate babies were
  abandoned in foundling homes after 1850

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Continued

• There was also a greater care and concern for
  older children and adolescents
• Women began to limit number of children they had
  in order to take care for the ones they had
• Practice of swaddling stopped completely
• The most important reason for the reduction in
  family in the higher classes was the parents
  desire to improve their social/economic position
  of their children/ themselves
• Growing number of contraceptive methods among
  couples showed an increased concern for children
• Parents made attempts to repress the childs
  sexuality
• Diet, clothing, games, and sleeping were also
  carefully regulated

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Continued

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the Viennese founder
  of psychoanalysis analyzed the dynamics of the
  middle class family life in the late 19th century
• One of his most influential ideas was that boys
  would compete with their fathers for their
  mothers love and affection also known as
  Oedipal tensions
• He believed that much of human behavior was
  motivated by unconscious emotional needs whose
  nature/origins are kept conscious by mental
  devices he called defense mechanisms
• Came to the conclusion that unconscious
  psychological energy is sexual energy, that was
  repressed by rational thinking
• The young person from the working classes could
  break away easier from their family when they
  became oppressive

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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)