Marriage and Family

With all the changes in the economy and business systems, the lives of the people who made up these systems changed too.

This has to do with the cottage industry as discussed in chapter 19.

• How, therefore, is chapter 20 a result of chapter 19?

- The cottage industry led indirectly to younger marriages and more premarital pregnancies. Before this change in industry, lower class communities lived in villages where they were subject to traditional rules and customs. As cottage workers, however, young people were given a certain degree of independence from their parents or neighbors' watchful eyes.

The first area that felt these changes was the basic institution of family...

          - Even though living with the entire family under one roof was not exactly popular in Europe (oddly enough, this isn't that surprising) , there had been this kind  of extended, familial-like relation to the other townspeople a peasant lived around.

                     - However, with more work able to be done away from open-sharing land villages, the nuclear family started gaining importance. Now, a couple would have their own house with their children rather than having their parents ,siblings, and neighbors  know everything about their lives.

In terms of social structure, is this nuclear family more or less stable than the extended family?

             - Observing how many social traditions fell apart with the new system of marriage and separated family members, life with the extended family could be seen as more stable for larger implications. For example, the later explosion of unwed, pregnant women could attest to the fact that their separation from the rest of the family led them to a life of promiscuity that  might have ruined their chance for a stable,married life. It also led to a large population of illegitimate children.


Another aspect that evolved during this time was the reasons behind marriage.

•          For the larger part of their history -->  members of the lower/middle class  were not interested in the romance part of a partnership, but rather survival.

- Daily life  = a constant struggle for the basic necessities

•  Therefore -->  if Jacques was a really nice guy, but was known not to bring home as much food or had to wait a while for his father to die to get his land,chances are there would not be a Mrs. Jacques the Peasant walking down the aisle anytime soon.

•   Now, however, the young men were getting their own jobs through the putting-out system.

 

•  Men --> able to establish themselves financially without having to wait for land or rely solely on crops. With this new economic "freedom", couples could marry earlier knowing they had a relatively stable income. This enabled more couples to marry for love.

As the 18th century went on, however, a lot of men and women decided to drop the wedding part and opt for just  premarital sex.

- With many people working outside the home = less restrictions placed on relationships by the outside world.

- Without fear of being paraded around on a donkey as public shaming, men and women carried on affairs without being married. Many, but not all,  women in these relationships then ended up pregnant.

•  No watchful eye of close-knit communities --> many premarital relationships did not end in marriage, regardless of pregnancy.

• Although many men promised a proposal afterward, the thought of a burden caused by a wife and child caused this rise in unwed mothers.

• At this time, there was a rapid spike in the amount of illegitimate children born to unwed mothers.

• Not to be overlooked is the fact that not all illegitimate children resulted from couples --> some children resulted from assault on working women by their bosses (ex: fathers/sons of the families these women worked for)

In line with the last point, many of the women that left home found work as a housekeeper or maid in the homes of higher class families.

      - How were these women treated in this environment?

• It was not uncommon for these women to be mistreated, whether it was a result of sexual, physical, or verbal abuse. Evidence of such treatment is detailed in court cases from the period where female servants would bring their mistress or master to court for legal remedy. The likelihood that these cases were decided in favor of the servant were slim.

      - Did holding this job affect how respectable ("marriable" ) a woman in this group was?

• While the abuse of female servants may suggest the feelings of their masters about their respectability, holding this job did not hinder most women from eventually settling down in a domestic life. It was becoming a commonplace for young people to leave home to start working for wages. Therefore, it was almost customary for women of this class to establish themselves financially just as their male counterpart before marriage. In addition, the traditional village rules not longer decided for the young person. Rather, the decisions fell into the hands of the young adults themselves.