Living in the nineteenth and early twentieth century: How did the Family Work?



Family life was not easy in the nineteenth and easy twentieth century.  In Emma Griffin’s “Bread Winner” she describes how (among her sample) thirty four percent of children had gone hungry.  By the 1880s this figure had dipped to twelve percent but hunger was reported among children and adolescents into the twentieth century.  Hunger was often associated with shortage of money, especially in rural areas where the diet could be restricted to vegetables, flour, barley, meal and rice.  The Irish potato famine also had an effect.  By the 1850s hunger disappeared from rural areas due to wage improvements for agricultural workers but the fare could be meagre (eating bread and dripping or lard, for example).  Dinners might contain some meat and the Sunday Roast would involve meat as this kept the family looking respectable to their neighbours.  For the women the focus would be on feeding the husbands as the author writes “always look after the wage earner”.
This emphasis on feeding the breadwinner meant that eggs were enjoyed by fathers alone.  Food was available, but not always to the children.  Children would resort to cadging scraps may be from fish and chip chops.  Although charities provided food and there were some school dinners, people found this provision hard to accept.  It was the commitment of the father to providing for the family rather than the actual amount they earned that made the biggest difference to the lives of children.  Long working hours could create a physical absence for fathers from the home.  In some cases the absence of the father was for other reasons arranged by the father himself.  These reasons included trips to the pub, involvement in Sunday School teaching and visits to trade unions.  Fathers could not be relied on to be interested in their children.  In rural areas both parents often had a shared interest in preparing their children, particularly sons to work on the farm.
Some recalled mothers as unloving and strict yet many accounts would refer to the efficiency with which household decisions were undertaken.  Corporal punishment was widespread, with children even forced to go out in the woods to search for birch sticks that would be used to beat them.  If, in the unlikely case that a mother deserted or died, children would be taken in by someone who acted as a surrogate mother or placed in an institution.  In the autobiographies housekeeping skills were something that were easy to make comments upon, whilst the emotional aspects of relationships were less readily described.  A widely held belief persisted among women that mothers should not over-indulge their children and so cuddles and signs of affection were rarely described.  What mattered most in the lives of the autobiography authors was stability: responsible fathers and hard working mothers.  What would you write about in your autobiography?

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