The Family in the Industrial Age

LIFE AND LABOR IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD HIST 1301 | History The Family in the Industrial Age People's life altered in both minor and significant ways as they relocated from small farms and rural villages to metropolis and industrial hubs. Women and children had worked alongside husbands and dads on farms and in the workshops of craftsmen, providing cash for the household. In the industrial metropolis, their opportunities were not necessarily the same. Women and children were employed in factories throughout the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, but by the end of the nineteenth century, things had changed. Despite the fact that workers need less physical strength as mechanisation increased, the number of women and children working decreased. Although less of this labour was done in factories, adult males still frequently needed the help of their spouses and kids to pay the rent and buy basics due to the poor pay. Working-class men started to take pleasure in keeping their wives at home, even if they were employed, much like middle-class men did. Married women also preferred to stay at home when they could because it was hard to take care of the house and kids while working long hours in factories. In fact, a lot of male workers tried to force women out of the workforce, blaming their poor salary on women's willingness to take it. By the turn of the 20th century, children were no longer employed in most industries in the United States or Western Europe. Increased industrial mechanisation resulted in the elimination of tasks previously performed by children. Governments also enacted legislation that sought to outlaw child labour more often. Some upper-middle class politicians drove this campaign because they wanted to safeguard kids, but they didn't realise how much a working-class family would depend on their income. Politicians have also expressed concern that youngsters who grow up in industries would either become physically unfit warriors or ignorant and uneducated citizens. As the first industrialised country, Britain set the standard for ending child labour. The Factory Act enacted in 1819 set a twelve-hour workday restriction for youngsters. The most prevalent kind of industries in Britain at the time, textile mills, were forbidden from hiring children under the age of nine by the Factory Act of 1833. Children under the age of fourteen were only allowed to work eight hours a day and had to attend school for two hours per day. One may only labour twelve hours a day if they were fourteen years old or older. Lunch was provided to all youngsters for an hour. The Prussian Child Labour Act of 1839 restricted factory work shifts for workers under sixteen to 10 hours and outlawed employment of children under nine in factories. Additionally, it was forbidden for kids to labour at night in industries. However, companies looking for cheap labour and working-class families in need of their children's money sometimes circumvented these rules. In addition to interfering with business, many politicians opposed the act because it denied men the authority to manage their families. Child labour persisted in the face of such resistance to restrictions on it until legislation mandating compulsory schooling assisted in the transition of kids from workplaces to classrooms. By the late nineteenth century, formal wage employment for children under the age of fourteen had virtually disappeared from the United States and western and central Europe due to new legislation requiring schooling. Where industrialization started later, such as Russia and Japan, married women with small children kept working outside the house. For instance, in 1911, almost 70% of married women in Japan who belonged to the lowest stratum of the working class (the hinmin) worked outside the house; 10 years later, that number had dropped to 44%. As a result of these shifts, working-class wives began to augment their families' income by working from home rather than outside of it around the turn of the 20th century in the United States, France, Great Britain, and Germany. While single women and those whose spouses were unwell or absent continued to look for manufacturing jobs, married women were more likely to make money in non-out-of-the-home ways. Some took in laundry and looked after the kids of their working neighbours. In case the family's living quarters were spacious enough, they may accommodate boarders, who frequently shared beds with the kids. The housewife would take care of cooking and cleaning for both the guests and her own family. Many women worked from home, receiving payment according to the quantity of labour completed. They created little products like toys, costume jewellery, or artificial flowers using materials they gathered from nearby shops. Some pieced clothes together with stitches. Their kids, who might also sell goods and hawk newspapers on the street, would frequently accompany them. The size of families was impacted by these shifts in the nature of labour. By the start of the nineteenth century, middle-class families in the United States, France, Great Britain, and Germany had cut back on the number of children they had. Children's labour was still valued on farms, in craft stores, and in the early industries, thus the working classes continued to have big families. However, by the middle of the 20th century, children were dependent on a lower amount of money for school-related expenses such as food and clothing as they were unable to work in the factories with their parents to support themselves. They later turned into a cost that many working-class families were unable to bear. Large families were particularly unpopular due to the overcrowding and poor quality of urban housing that was accessible to the industrial working class. Birth control innovations at this period allowed middle-class and working-class parents to set limits on the number of children they had. Vulcanised rubber produced cervical caps, early diaphragms known as "womb veils," and more pleasant and dependable condoms. Pamphlets teaching women to restrict the number of children they have were mass-produced thanks to new printing technology. The Malthusian League, a British organisation that promoted contraception, was established in 1877. It bears the name of Thomas Malthus, who in the late 1700s promoted birth control measures to keep the population of people from expanding faster than the ability of the earth to sustain them. Despite the fact that Malthus had personally opposed the use of contraceptive devices, British advocates for their use included Charles Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, and Marie Stopes in the 1870s and early 1900s. As Stopes was doing the same in Britain, Margaret Sanger, a visiting nurse who worked with working-class women in New York and saw firsthand the negative health repercussions of several pregnancies, promoted birth control, a word she popularised. Women married later to delay having children in regions of Europe where the Catholic Church held sway and the use of contraceptive methods was discouraged. Workingclass families started to become smaller in the 1870s, and by the turn of the 20th century, labourers' average family sizes had decreased from four to six children to two to four, which was only marginally bigger than that of the middle class. The demographic transition is the term used to describe this decline in family size brought about by declining birth rates in developed countries. At this period, almost all city children's primary responsibility was their schooling. The world of industry required abilities that could only be acquired in a classroom. Getting a job that required at least a secondary school degree was necessary to become middle-class, and middle-class parents wanted to keep their standing in society, thus giving their kids an education was a priority. At the close of the 1800s, a small number of middleclass individuals, particularly young males, were pursuing further education beyond high school, with the majority of affluent families' sons being the ones who could afford it. The working class aspirant was to keep their kids in school until they had finished elementary school, when they learnt mathematics and basic literacy. Some kids also went to secondary school for a few years, where they learned about history, maths and maybe even a contemporary or classical language like Latin. A youngster might be raised into the upper echelons of the working class by taking a job like store clerk, cashier, or bookkeeper, which just needed a minimal education. A daughter entered the lower classes of the middle class if she finished high school and went on to become a teacher. By the end of the 1800s, most people in industrialised nations had access to public education systems that taught them the fundamentals of literacy. By 1910, almost everyone in the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain was literate. In adulthood, ninety percent of Japanese males were literate. More over 80 percent of Belgian and French people could do the same. More than half of the population was literate by the turn of the 20th century, even in nations like Italy that were slower to industrialise.