The Changing Family

1. Kioko Rodriguez Kendra Friesen Rachel Despain Rebecca Torres Sarai The Changing Family

2. Premarital sex and marriage • By 1850, pre-industrial pattern of courtship and marriage was dead • Marriage-a family’s most crucial financial transaction • More important to mid-class after 1850 • Marriage contracts remained a common practice

3. Differences • Differences between husband and wife built tension in many mid-class marriages • Young women’s virginity was watched by their mother like family credit • By adolescence, mid-class boys usually attained considerable sexual experiences with a maid or prostitute

4. Illegitimacy • Illegitimacy explosion between 1750 & 1850 • Poverty and economic uncertainty often prevented marriage, many saw litter wrong with having illegitimate offsprings • Pattern of romantic ideals, premarital sexual activity, and widespread illegitimacy was firmly established by mid-class urban working classes

6. Prostitution • Between 1871-1903, 155,000 women were registered as prostitutes in Paris alone! • Over 750,000 others were accused/suspected of prostitution • All classes visited prostitutes but mainly mid/upper class supplied most of the motivating money • An anonymous author wrote My Secret Life-an eleven-volumeautobiography of devoting his life to his sexual fantasies • Prostitution was also a back up plan for paying expenses that weren’t payable by a regular job

8. Kinship Ties • Kinship ties were ties to relatives after marriage • Were popular after marriage in the late 19th c. and became the most important tie than other acquaintances • Newlyweds and other couples went to their families for, help and even financial aid • Many families lived close to their relatives

10. Gender Roles and Family Life • Industrialization brought great changes to European women • Consequential for married women • Husbands became wage earners in factories • Factory employment declined for women • As economic conditions improved, most men expected married women to work outside the home • There was a strict division of labor by gender constructed separate spheres • the wife as a mother and homemaker, the husband as a wage earner • Meant that married women faced great injustice

11. Gender roles and Family Life cont. • The Napoleonic code gave women few legal rights • Women had rebelled against them in which the were feminists • Middle class feminists campaigned for equal legal rights • Home and childeren became wifes main concerns • Wives controlled the money • Gustave Droz • Belived that love and marriage was the key to happines • Condemed men who made marriage sound dull and practical • Urged women to follow their hearts and marry a man near their age

13. Child Rearing • Mothers were attached to their babies • started to breast feed them • Fewer illegitimate babies were abandoned • Women limited the children they had so they could treat their other kids equally • Birth rate declining • Parents became too concerned with children that they felt trapped • Concerned with sexual behavior

14. Child Rearing cont. • Mother and child relationship was full of love • Father and child relationship was very difficult • Sometimes felt like a stranger • Sigmund Freud • Founder of psychoanalysis • Believed human behavior was motivated by emotional needs • Children bargained with parents • If unsuccessful then they moved out