If you have been exposed to the manosphere or a particularly stupid post from an account called something like TradMaleWest or ConservativeTradHeroes, you’ve probably heard the declaration that for “almost all of history, women didn’t work: they stayed at home to cook and look after their husbands and children, and they were happier that way”. This is, I’m afraid to tell you, complete and utter nonsense.
In fact, your ancestors would have openly sneered at you for refusing to work, if you tried to claim your ‘husband was your job’.
Because women have always, always, always worked.
The fantasy of a woman staying in her rosy cottage, never working, her sole responsibilities being the niceties of folded stockings, the feeding of nesting swallows, the cuddling of adoring little ones, and cooking steak for your strong husband is one that is the preserve of 1950s adverts trying to sell suburban cheap housing to the aspirant working class. Similarly, no one spent all day prancing around meadows for wildflowers before delicately arranging them in a vase for beloved husband to return from the mine for a hearty stew. Life was unbelievably hard, for most, if not all, of human history.
Unless you were in the top 25% of women, right up until around the reformation acts of the 1910s, you’d have spent 7am-8pm slaving away in factories, mills, kitchens, farms, fields, plantations, pens, mines, and sweatshops. You’d not only be expected to bring money in to the household and provide for your family, but you’d have to. You can forget having a nanny, a cleaner, and a piano tutor for little Liam. It was essential for three or four people- usually children or older in laws- to pitch in with the weekly rent and utilities in the tenements and cottages.
If you were privileged enough to have a husband who could cover the rent or afford a house, until at least the sixties, you’d almost always have a small side job (literally, ‘cottage industry’) taking in washing, cooking other people’s meals for when they got home, fetching water, minding goods and stalls, fixing torn clothes and buttons, repairing broken objects, packaging things, cleaning other people’s homes and providing childcare. Roughly three quarters of women did ‘side work’ as a washerwoman, charwoman, skivvy, or peddler. One in ten were full time sex workers: yes, even married ones. And forget having your own money! Your money went straight on the family budget of food and clothing: your husband could also confiscate it from you whenever he wanted, right up until the 1900s. Many men struggled with alcoholism and it wasn’t at all uncommon for them to spend your entire wages on gin and beer.
From the age of about 12 or 13, all your children would be expected to work too. You’d almost definitely be ‘helping’ your husband too: if he was a carpenter, you’d be expected to oversee deliveries, orders, and custodial work, for free. If he was a baker, you’d be up at the crack of dawn to make the bread, unpaid. If he was a blacksmith, you’d be looking after the horses and overseeing the books and ore loads, unpaid. If he was a tailor, you’d be working on his orders and providing sewing and pattern cutting, unpaid. If he was a shopkeeper, you were a shopkeeper, you’d be expected to oversee all customers and stock-taking, unpaid. If he worked in a bank, you’d be responsible for his networking, wardrobe, events, and diary. We just call this work a ‘job’ now. This labour, paid or unpaid, all went into the household budget and kept you afloat: so forget lounging on the sofa gossiping with other ladies over a cream teas.
And forget spending all day baking delicious pies and pastries: food could account for between 30–60% of the household income. You’d be making gruel, porridge, pottage (google it) and eating the bones, skin and marrow off the cheapest cuts of hares, deer, and pheasants. You had to make food last: that would mean salting and pickling and scraping the mould and dirt off what you could find. Forget steak every night: meat was expensive and you ate what you got. My grandmother, as late as the forties and fifties, was expected to make a chicken last for two weeks, without a fridge or freezer. The glorified image of a gleaming housewife casually beaming over a large cream gateau is a total fabrication. Unless you were upper middle class, and I’m talking a handful of women, perhaps 10%, the idea of casually baking cakes, spending all day playing bridge with your local wives at home, eating red meat every night and not having to do a side hustle would have been considered luxurious and impossible before about 1970.
Even very well-to-do middle and upper class women, and please be aware I am talking about an incredibly privileged 1 in 1,200 women here, did not sit on their behinds eating cake in pretty dresses, doing whatever they wanted all day. It was just not socially acceptable: an ‘idle’ wife was as wicked in social circles as a promiscuous one. You would definitely have been gossiped about and shunned. You’d be expected to represent your husband at balls, events, church meetings, engagements, and dinners, take social calls and network on his behalf, organise massive events, oversee all your servants and staff (up to the hundreds), run and manage charity work, social causes, and support his elections, his business deals, and speak multiple languages, play instruments, and be extremely well versed on current affairs and culture. The dresses are nice, sure: the lifestyle was fraught with intrigue, blackmail, social disagreements, unhappy marriages, lies, and secrets. It was not at all uncommon for a woman to fall from grace after an ill-judged meeting or a poorly managed pregnant servant and find herself out on her ear with a maiden aunt in the country. And forget happy afternoons in the palatial gardens with your babies: you’d see your children for an hour a day, before they went to bed, unless you had an engagement.
A ‘housewife’, as we’d understand it in a contemporary context: not earning any income, overseeing childcare, cooking, and keeping the house tidy, was absolutely neither realistic or possible for the enormous majority of women for every single demographic: and it still isn’t today. They might well have identified as ‘traditional’ women who ‘stayed at home’, but they were doing an enormous amount of labour either doing secretarial, accountancy, trade or physical roles for their husbands, or working discreetly behind closed doors for extra income. The tiny, fractional postcard image of a delighted housewife in designer floral gowns with a gleaming kitchen and a comical amount of scones just wasn’t a reality for real women. And it still isn’t. It never has been. The idea that we ‘just cooked and cleaned’ and that us going to work is simply a cruel unnatural modern phenomenon is ludicrous. I cannot begin to say how much of a upper middle class fantasy this notion even is.
I don’t mean to disparage modern housewives who do get to enjoy school fetes, nannies, and lunches with your neighbours: if that is the path you wanted to take, and one that works out best for your family, I applaud you. But most families can’t afford for live like that on $30,000 a year. Most people can’t afford for the wife not to do some kind of part time income, some kind of unpaid labour for her husband’s career (looking at you, self employed folks), or some kind of labour swap (childcare, cooking, cleaning). It’s always been that way. It’s always been a luxury sold as a social ideal, one where hardworking men could aspire to just work a little more, just do a few extra hours, just be a bit more productive, and get a magical little hausfrau who will greet you at the picket fence with an apple pie and her soft sweet ironed femininity.
What an understandable anger, sadness, and grief, then, to realise that the little hausfrau fantasy will need a $300,000 salary.
In fact, your ancestors would have openly sneered at you for refusing to work, if you tried to claim your ‘husband was your job’.
Because women have always, always, always worked.
The fantasy of a woman staying in her rosy cottage, never working, her sole responsibilities being the niceties of folded stockings, the feeding of nesting swallows, the cuddling of adoring little ones, and cooking steak for your strong husband is one that is the preserve of 1950s adverts trying to sell suburban cheap housing to the aspirant working class. Similarly, no one spent all day prancing around meadows for wildflowers before delicately arranging them in a vase for beloved husband to return from the mine for a hearty stew. Life was unbelievably hard, for most, if not all, of human history.
Unless you were in the top 25% of women, right up until around the reformation acts of the 1910s, you’d have spent 7am-8pm slaving away in factories, mills, kitchens, farms, fields, plantations, pens, mines, and sweatshops. You’d not only be expected to bring money in to the household and provide for your family, but you’d have to. You can forget having a nanny, a cleaner, and a piano tutor for little Liam. It was essential for three or four people- usually children or older in laws- to pitch in with the weekly rent and utilities in the tenements and cottages.
If you were privileged enough to have a husband who could cover the rent or afford a house, until at least the sixties, you’d almost always have a small side job (literally, ‘cottage industry’) taking in washing, cooking other people’s meals for when they got home, fetching water, minding goods and stalls, fixing torn clothes and buttons, repairing broken objects, packaging things, cleaning other people’s homes and providing childcare. Roughly three quarters of women did ‘side work’ as a washerwoman, charwoman, skivvy, or peddler. One in ten were full time sex workers: yes, even married ones. And forget having your own money! Your money went straight on the family budget of food and clothing: your husband could also confiscate it from you whenever he wanted, right up until the 1900s. Many men struggled with alcoholism and it wasn’t at all uncommon for them to spend your entire wages on gin and beer.
From the age of about 12 or 13, all your children would be expected to work too. You’d almost definitely be ‘helping’ your husband too: if he was a carpenter, you’d be expected to oversee deliveries, orders, and custodial work, for free. If he was a baker, you’d be up at the crack of dawn to make the bread, unpaid. If he was a blacksmith, you’d be looking after the horses and overseeing the books and ore loads, unpaid. If he was a tailor, you’d be working on his orders and providing sewing and pattern cutting, unpaid. If he was a shopkeeper, you were a shopkeeper, you’d be expected to oversee all customers and stock-taking, unpaid. If he worked in a bank, you’d be responsible for his networking, wardrobe, events, and diary. We just call this work a ‘job’ now. This labour, paid or unpaid, all went into the household budget and kept you afloat: so forget lounging on the sofa gossiping with other ladies over a cream teas.
And forget spending all day baking delicious pies and pastries: food could account for between 30–60% of the household income. You’d be making gruel, porridge, pottage (google it) and eating the bones, skin and marrow off the cheapest cuts of hares, deer, and pheasants. You had to make food last: that would mean salting and pickling and scraping the mould and dirt off what you could find. Forget steak every night: meat was expensive and you ate what you got. My grandmother, as late as the forties and fifties, was expected to make a chicken last for two weeks, without a fridge or freezer. The glorified image of a gleaming housewife casually beaming over a large cream gateau is a total fabrication. Unless you were upper middle class, and I’m talking a handful of women, perhaps 10%, the idea of casually baking cakes, spending all day playing bridge with your local wives at home, eating red meat every night and not having to do a side hustle would have been considered luxurious and impossible before about 1970.
Even very well-to-do middle and upper class women, and please be aware I am talking about an incredibly privileged 1 in 1,200 women here, did not sit on their behinds eating cake in pretty dresses, doing whatever they wanted all day. It was just not socially acceptable: an ‘idle’ wife was as wicked in social circles as a promiscuous one. You would definitely have been gossiped about and shunned. You’d be expected to represent your husband at balls, events, church meetings, engagements, and dinners, take social calls and network on his behalf, organise massive events, oversee all your servants and staff (up to the hundreds), run and manage charity work, social causes, and support his elections, his business deals, and speak multiple languages, play instruments, and be extremely well versed on current affairs and culture. The dresses are nice, sure: the lifestyle was fraught with intrigue, blackmail, social disagreements, unhappy marriages, lies, and secrets. It was not at all uncommon for a woman to fall from grace after an ill-judged meeting or a poorly managed pregnant servant and find herself out on her ear with a maiden aunt in the country. And forget happy afternoons in the palatial gardens with your babies: you’d see your children for an hour a day, before they went to bed, unless you had an engagement.
A ‘housewife’, as we’d understand it in a contemporary context: not earning any income, overseeing childcare, cooking, and keeping the house tidy, was absolutely neither realistic or possible for the enormous majority of women for every single demographic: and it still isn’t today. They might well have identified as ‘traditional’ women who ‘stayed at home’, but they were doing an enormous amount of labour either doing secretarial, accountancy, trade or physical roles for their husbands, or working discreetly behind closed doors for extra income. The tiny, fractional postcard image of a delighted housewife in designer floral gowns with a gleaming kitchen and a comical amount of scones just wasn’t a reality for real women. And it still isn’t. It never has been. The idea that we ‘just cooked and cleaned’ and that us going to work is simply a cruel unnatural modern phenomenon is ludicrous. I cannot begin to say how much of a upper middle class fantasy this notion even is.
I don’t mean to disparage modern housewives who do get to enjoy school fetes, nannies, and lunches with your neighbours: if that is the path you wanted to take, and one that works out best for your family, I applaud you. But most families can’t afford for live like that on $30,000 a year. Most people can’t afford for the wife not to do some kind of part time income, some kind of unpaid labour for her husband’s career (looking at you, self employed folks), or some kind of labour swap (childcare, cooking, cleaning). It’s always been that way. It’s always been a luxury sold as a social ideal, one where hardworking men could aspire to just work a little more, just do a few extra hours, just be a bit more productive, and get a magical little hausfrau who will greet you at the picket fence with an apple pie and her soft sweet ironed femininity.
What an understandable anger, sadness, and grief, then, to realise that the little hausfrau fantasy will need a $300,000 salary.
