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Household Values, Women's Work, and Economic Growth, 1800–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

W. Elliot Brownlee
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Abstract

This essay explores the state of economic knowledge regarding the development of household economic life in the United States since early industrialization by examining explanations for the low labor-force participation of middle-class married women prevailing until the 1940s. These explanations, including those emerging from fertility studies and resting on market forces, imprecisely specify the domestic roles of housewives. Interdisciplinary specification of these roles, drawing on social and cultural historians, and rigorous measurement of time allocation within the household would help resolve the various interpretations and assist in estimating the contribution of household work to social product.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 199 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

1 See, for example, Goldin, Claudia, “Female Labor Force Participation: The Origin of Black and White Differences, 1870 and 1880,” this JOURNAL, 37 (03 1977), 87–112Google Scholar; and Rotella, Elyce, “Women's Labor Force Participation and the Growth of Clerical Employment in the United States, 1870-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 The dimensions of the problem may be understated. Because the jobs that married women accepted between 1890 and 1920 tended to be increasingly unskilled, it is likely that middle-class women participated in the economy at rates actually lower in 1920 than a generation earlier. In any event, because of variations in census definitions, it isriskyto look closely at decennial trends in components of the female labor-force data, especially when such trends involve relatively small numbers.

3 The question of the relative rates of increase requires much further analysis. But, when one uses teachers' salaries as an indicator, the relative wages of rural women increased between the 1840s and the 1880s, and the relative wages for urban women increased between the late 1890s and World War I. See Burgess, W. Randolph, Trends of School Costs (New York, 1920), pp. 32–33Google Scholar.

4 Peter R. Uhlenberg finds the most significant decline in marital fertility among Massachusetts native-American women took place in the 1870 birth-cohort. See “A Study of Cohort Life Cycles: Cohorts of Native Born Massachusetts Women, 1830-1920,” Population Studies, 23 (11. 1969), 407–20Google Scholar.

5 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Boston, 1973), p. 126Google Scholar.

6 Easterlin, Richard A., “On the Relation of Economic Factors to Recent and Projected Fertility Changes,” Demography, 3 (1966), 131–53;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBanks, J. A., Prosperity and Parenthood, A Study of Family Planning among the Victorian Middle Classes (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

7 Easterlin, Richard A., “Factors in the Decline of Farm Family Fertility in the United States: Some Preliminary Research Results,” Journal ofAmerican History, 63 (12. 1976), 600–14 andGoogle Scholar“Population Change and Farm Settlement in the Northern United States,” this JOURNAL, 36 (03 1976), 45–75Google Scholar.

8 Most informative is the work of Peter Lindert, who assesses the inverse relationship between child quality and fertility on a macro-level. See Lindert, Peter H., Fertility and Scarcity in America (Princeton, 1978). For reinforcement of this interpretation by a cultural historian,Google Scholarsee Kennedy, David M., Birth Control in America, the Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven, 1970), pp. 41–42Google Scholar.

9 For examples of proponents of “modernization” variables, see Sweezy, Alan, “The Economic Explanation of Fertility Changes in the United States,” Population Studies, 25 (07 1971), 255–67 andCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedVinovskis, Mans A., “Socioeconomic Determinants of Interstate Fertility Differentials in the United States in 1850 and 1860,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6(Winter 1976), 375–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Reid, Margaret, Economics of Household Production (New York, 1934), pp. 11–12. The most representative examples of theGoogle Scholar“new” home economics are found in Journal of Political Economy, 81 (03-April 1973) and 82 (March-April 1974)Google Scholar.

11 For a useful summary of the elements of the “privatized” family, see , Kennedy, Birth Control in Modern America, esp. pp. 38ff.On the spread of the “privatized” family among the American middle class,Google Scholarsee Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar.

12 For a case study of the attachment of the nineteenth-century middle class to the family as the most stable institution in the midst of the dramatic urban change, see Sennett, Richard, Families Against the City: Middle-Class Homes of Industrial Chicago, 1872-1890 (Cambridge, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Glenn, Mary Wilcox, “The Significance of the Home,” The Journal of Home Economics, 8 (09. 1916), 474Google Scholar.

14 For evidence that employers failed to offer women attractive apprenticeship programs, despite the comparative stability of older women in the labor force, see Women's Bureau, U.S. Department -of Labor, Women in South Carolina Industries (Washington, D.C., 1923), p. 76Google Scholar; Women in Alabama Industries (Washington, D.C., 1923), pp. 62–63;Google ScholarWomen in Missouri Industries (Washington, D.C., 1924), pp. 27–33;Google ScholarWomen in New Jersey Industries (Washington, D.C., 1924), pp. 29–35.Google ScholarSee, also, Manning, Caroline, The Immigrant Woman and her Job, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 74 (Washington, D.C., 1930), pp. 92 ff. For evidence of discrimination based on marital status,Google Scholarsee Winslow, Mary N., Married Women in Industry, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 38 (Washington, D.C., 1924)Google Scholar; and Lobsenz, Johanna, The Older Woman in Industry (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

15 An exception is the work of Nickless, Pamela J., “Changing Labor Productivity and the Utilization of Native Women Workers in the American Cotton Textile Industry, 1825-1860,” this JOURNAL, 38 (03 1978), 287–88Google Scholar.

16 Perhaps best representing this line of argument is Chafe, William H., Women and Equality: Changing Patterns in American Culture (New York, 1977), esp. pp. 13–42. Marxist sociologists would phrase the argument in terms of the rise of capitalist modes of industrial relations, based on “exchange-value,” undermining the value of household work and, thereby, the work of women. See, for example,Google ScholarBraverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974), p. 415Google Scholar.

17 See Brownlee, W. Elliot and Brownlee, Mary M., Women in the American Economy: A Documentary History, 1675 to 1929 (New Haven, 1976), pp. 25 ffGoogle Scholar.

18 For examples of such studies, see , Reid, The Economics of Household Production, pp. 81 ffGoogle Scholar.

19 See, for example, , Lindert, Fertility and Scarcity, pp. 42-43 and 115–21Google Scholar

20 For elements of this viewpoint see , Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Cath erine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven, 1973)Google Scholar; Smith, Daniel Scott, “Family Limitation, Sexual Control, and Domestic Feminism in Victorian America,” in Hartman, Mary S. and Banner, Lois W., eds., Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York, 1974), pp. 119–36Google Scholar; Linda Gordon, “Voluntary Motherhood: The Beginnings of Feminist Birth Control Ideas in the United States,” in ibid., pp. 54-71.