The Changing Family Chapter 24 Part III

Premarital Sex and Marriage  For the middle classes, economic considerations continued to be paramount in choosing marriage partners through most of the nineteenth century.  Increasing economic well-being allowed members of the working class to select marriage partners based more on romance.

Prostitution  Prostitution was common. Many women considered it a phase in their life, not a permanent job. They would go on to have families of there own with a husband from their class  Middle- and upper-class men frequently visited prostitutes defying the middle class moral code.

Kinship Ties  Newlyweds usually stayed very close to relatives.  Kinship ties helped working-class people to cope with sickness, unemployment, death, and old age.

Gender Roles and Family Life  The status of women changed during the nineteenth century.  The division of labor became more defined by gender.  Economic inferiority led some women to organize for equality and women’s rights.  As society increasingly relegated women to the domestic sphere, women gained control over household finances and the education of children.  Married couples developed stronger emotional ties to each other.

Child Rearing  Attitudes toward children also changed during this period.  Emotional ties between mothers and infants deepened.  There was more breast-feeding and less swaddling and abandonment of babies.  Increased connection often meant increased control, including attempts to repress the child’s sexuality (for example, to prevent masturbation).

Child Rearing  Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis  Freud postulated that much of human behavior is motivated by unconscious emotional needs who nature and origins are kept from conscious.