In 1899, many Americans were shocked by the news that the United States had the highest divorce rate in the world. To many observers, the news was a sign that the American family was in danger. If the family was at risk, then America’s entire social order faced uncertainty. Much of the fear surrounding the family arose from the profound changes taking place in the first decades of the 20th century. Many Americans believed that the family was in crisis. Industrialization, urbanization, immigration, feminism, and the expansion of the state led to changes in the roles of men, women, and children in the family. Despite the shrill pronouncements of many observers, ordinary people were not denouncing the family. They had simply begun to change their behavior and to ignore what had become an outdated family ideal.
Many of the changes that occurred after 1900 were a result of tensions between family ideals and practical realities. Family form and functions changed in response to a complex set of circumstances, chief among which were the effects of economic class and ethnicity. Thus, middle-class families in which the husband worked in a profession might have differed greatly from a working-class family in which both the husband and wife worked.
Most of the fears in regard to families arose from the middle class. The middle-class family ideal popular at the turn of the century centered on the home as a refuge from the world of commerce and trade. Ideally, men were to venture forth into the immoral and dangerous world to support the family, while mothers and children were to stay in the home and thus be protected from the world. This ideal of the middle-class family rested on the woman as the moral center of the family. It was her role to exert a moralizing influence on her husband and to raise her children. Many observers proclaimed that the middle-class family, which—they argued—formed the backbone of the American social order, faced imminent danger from a variety of forces acting to pull it apart.
The new family ideal of the early century emerged from a rapidly changing economic environment. Large-scale industrialization and commercialization were reshaping the work lives of many Americans. For non-farm families, work was completely removed from the home, which meant that workers of all classes were out of their homes and apart from their families for most of the day. At the turn of the century, for example, a typical industrial laborer worked 59 hours per week. Long hours often had a negative effect on family life. Fathers and—in the case of many working-class families—mothers were not always present in the home to parent their children. In middle-class families, the new wage economy meant that the mothers were in charge of raising the children. For some working-class families, the mother filled the same role. In the working-class families, care for children was often undertaken by older siblings or neighbors. The new economy also provided greater job opportunities for young women. Teenaged women could work in the factories, the newly created department stores, or in clerical jobs. Paid work opened up a new world for young women who traditionally had remained in the home to help out with domestic work. Their new independence often led to tension between the young women and their families.
The expanding cities that accompanied industrialization shaped family life. Cities offered new social opportunities for children outside their families. Commercial dance halls, pool rooms, amusement parks, and movie theaters provided space where youths could meet and socialize away from their parents. In these new venues, youths developed their own subcultures based on their shared values. In turn, they distanced themselves from their families. It was not only large cities, however, that experienced these changes. Age-segregated leisure surfaced even in small cities, like the Muncie, Indiana, of Middletown.
The tremendous increase in immigration affected the family. Middle-class Americans feared that the increase in immigration, particularly from eastern and southern Europe, would overwhelm native-born, white American
Photograph of a woman and children reading by Gertrude Kasebier, ca. 1900 (Library of Congress)
Families. The declining birthrate among white native-born Americans contributed to the fear that uneducated immigrants eventually would outnumber and overrun the educated population. The idea of “race suicide” helped spur anti-BiRTH control campaigns aimed at convincing native-born, middle-class women to have more children. Despite these campaigns, the birth rate continued to drop, and birth control use increased.
The birth control campaigns were a reaction to new, emerging roles for women. As more middle-class women went to work outside the home, observers feared that America’s children were endangered. Between 1890 and 1910, women’s enrollment in colleges tripled. Their participation in the workforce doubled between 1890 and 1900, and it increased by 50 percent between 1900 and 1910. In addition, women expanded their public activity by creating women’s clubs and other organizations that played an important role in the reform movements of the Progressive Era. The WOMAN SUFFRAGE movement lobbied for women to have expanded rights. It succeeded in passing and ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, in 1920. Critics of the women’s movement argued that women’s participation in public life threatened the future of the country. If women were working or engaging in social reform activities, they could not be at home with their children. Children, the critics claimed, were growing up without proper guidance and socialization.
In response to these changes, many states sought to toughen their divorce laws. Throughout the 19th century, states had made getting a divorce easier, but others allowed divorce only on account of adultery, desertion, or physical cruelty. South Carolina outlawed divorce all together. In the Progressive Era, these laws became stricter, and many states tried to prevent divorces by preventing bad marriages. States passed laws outlawing marriages between men and women who suffered from drunkenness, venereal disease, addiction, and mental defectiveness. Other states raised the age of consent. These laws did not have the desired effect. Men and women seeking a divorce simply pretended to meet the requirements set down in the laws. Thus the divorce rate continued to rise even after the tightening of restrictions.
Government intervened in private life in new ways in an effort to save the American family. Most of these interventions focused on promoting the nuclear family ideal in which fathers worked, mothers were housewives, and children went to school until they were 15 or 16 years old. Most states passed women’s maximum hour laws that restricted the hours women could work. The purpose of these laws was to ensure women’s health, but a side benefit was that mothers might be able to be at home more frequently, particularly when children were home from schools. Many states began to offer MOTHERS’ PENSIONS, which supplemented women’s income as a means of keeping widow’s families together. Although these programs had little impact, they demonstrated the commitment that Americans felt toward saving the American family.
States intervened in the lives of children in other ways to promote the nuclear family. They passed CHILD LABOR laws and compulsory school attendance laws so that working-class children were required to attend school. Compulsory schooling laws were partly an attempt to remove immigrant children from their homes, because educators believed that the schools provided a better environment for socializing children. Teaching children appropriate values in home economics was one way to shore up the family. These efforts failed to engender the nuclear family ideal. The inability of many working-class men to earn enough money to support their families was the major reason. Women and children often worked, therefore, out of necessity.
Family life was affected by mass-production industry in a different way. The increase in industrial jobs led to a decrease in the number of women who were willing to work as domestic servants. Many middle-class families had employed servants in their homes. Domestic service jobs were not as appealing, however, as jobs in factories and stores. Middle-class families faced a shortage of domestic servants, which meant that middle-class women had to do housework themselves. The shortage of domestic help led to efforts to professionalize domestic labor and increase public education in the domestic arts. Advocates hoped that professionalizing housework would convince women to remain home rather than work for wages. It further led to the rationalization and scientific organization of housework by introducing home appliances in order to reduce the labor involved in housework. New appliances such as electric vacuums and washing machines did not, however, release American women from housework. As appliances made cleaning more efficient, standards of cleanliness and hygiene were raised. American women experienced an increase in the time spent cleaning their homes. While work hours dropped, men did not engage in any new domestic labor. Thus, a majority of American mothers maintained their role as the principal provider of home labor.
The family ideal changed in regard to the purpose and place of family life. Families had been stripped of many of their educational, economic, and welfare functions. In their place, society assigned the family primary responsibility for fulfilling emotional and psychological needs of its members. This shift gave rise to a model of marriage called companionate marriage. Before this time, religious obligation, economic need, or moral pressures often held together marriages. Companionate marriage was to be held together by romance, equal rights, and affection. Psychologists, educators, and social service professionals popularized the new conception of marriage early in the 20th century. Relationships between parents and children also changed. Families were still supposed to provide a stable environment for children but added to this traditional role was emotional satisfaction. Children gained the right to express their feelings and to interact freely with their peers. The family ideal thus centered on nurturing emotional well-being in its members.
Paradoxically, as families grew closer emotionally, older children were gaining freedom outside their families. The creation of youth subcultures gave children the ability to define themselves outside of their family. By the 1920s, children identified more with peer groups than with families. This was particularly true for middle-class teen-aged children, for whom high school education became universalized. High schools became the site in which youth subcultures were created and expressed. Working-class youths also enjoyed more freedom from family control. Many working-class parents allowed their children to keep some of their pay, rather than demanding that they turn over the entire paycheck to the family. The practice gave youth money with which to pursue leisure activities.
Younger members of the family, therefore, were breaking away from the family.
Younger children faced a changing environment as well. In the Progressive Era, experts on children published countless books and articles on the proper care and rearing of children. They recommended that parents set strict sleeping and eating schedules for young children and advised parents to wean and toilet train their children early. Experts told mothers not to play with or fondle their children, because it would instill a desire for sensual gratification that would place a strain on a child’s nervous system. By the 1920s, a new set of experts emerged who strongly rebuked the rationalized style of childrearing. They advocated a more permissive style of parenting. Parents were encouraged to use a reward system to encourage proper behavior. Many experts still recommended, however, that parents—and particularly mothers—avoid too much affection, for the fear that it would spoil children. In the 1920s, a third group of experts argued that childrearing should be aimed at developing well-adjusted personalities. They warned that stifling childish instincts and actions could permanently damage a child. Educators such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori argued that children’s innate curiosity and independence should be encouraged.
By the end of the 1920s, the emergence of mass media, the common experience of living in an industrial society, and the rise in real wages for many workers led to a more homogeneous family model across class lines. The nuclear family became the ideal family. Although there was never a time when every family in America fit into that model, it was becoming more widespread.
See also EDUCATION; population trends; sexuality.
Further reading: Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988).
—Michael Hartman
World History
