Transcript Industrialization and the Family

Industrialization had a profound impact of
the family by removing women and
children from the world of work.
 In the early industrial period families work together in
factories as they had did on farms and in cottages.
 The father often acted as contractor for the family and
parents disciplined their children
 Child labor generally was welcomed by these families
but opposed by reformers
 Britain’s Factory Act of 1833
 banned the employment of children under nine and
limited the hours of older children
 this ended the tradition of families working together
 Long working hours – eleven a day – and exhaustion
from physical work usually meant families had little
time together once the Factory Act was passed.
 Originally, women were a large part of the industrial
workforce and did the same work as men in mines and
their smaller hands were particularly desirable in the
textile factories.
 Factors for gendering work
 Men did not want to compete with women for jobs
 the difficulties of being a mother on factory time
 the intimate working conditions of men and women
working together
 Legislation forbidding women from working in mines
was passed in 1842.
 Married women of all classes were expected to stay out
of the workforce and remain in the domestic sphere.
 Initially, middle class women worked alongside their
husbands as managers of factories or as merchandisers
of goods, but this began to change as the industrial
system become established.
 When married women needed to worked it was
usually in the non-industrial sector of the economy.