Post war America has been subject to rapid social change in the values and attitudes toward women and toward s traditional gender roles. Many women in North America today have left the traditional housewife role in order to participate in education and paid employment, to gain status as an individual as well as to make contribution to family household (Thornton & Cambum., 1979, p.61). The rise in female participation in education and paid labour has been accompanied with dramatic drop fertility, and we can anticipate this trend to continue into the future. In this paper I will be discussing several factors that contribute to the decline in fertility rates in North America, and as a result led to women reducing the number of children they have, or not having children at all.
Prior to the industrial revolution, women were seldom being educated, and they were not participating in paid labour. The work that women were participating prior to the industrial revolution was restricted mainly to the home. During this time the domestic sphere was romanticized and women would take on duties such as, cooking, sewing, spinning yarn, and childrearing (Lewis, J. J. n.d.). Men took on instrumental roles as being the main breadwinner for the family by working in the agricultural sphere or the paid labour market. During this time children played a role in the family home helping parents with the daily duties. Little girls would often help their mothers with domestic duties, and young boys would help their fathers on the farms. The work in the family home helped train children for the future and was a form of education.
During the industrial revolution, families were moving into more urbanized areas close to factories. Many wom...
... middle of paper ...
... Due to the fact women in developed egalitarian countries such as Canada are so focused on breaking the glass ceiling, and getting further ahead in the public sphere, I believe that women are going to continue to prolong their education and attain successful careers before having children. This is going to result in older ages at first birth, giving less time to produce numerous children, or result in women having no children due to conditions that do not support childbearing (health, marital status, employment, etc.). Due to women limiting the number of children they have, Canada will continue to be below the replacement fertility of 2.5 births per women and will ultimately sink below the current level of 1.2 births per women in Canada. This drop in fertility will require Canada to increase immigration into the country in order to replace the population.
Life before the Industrial Revolution went at a much slower pace, it was not any easier but it seemed to drift by. The majority of the country’s citizens resided in small rural towns making their living working the land or selling goods they had made with their own two hands. The people owned their own little plot of land, stayed busy trying to provide for their family, and enjoyed life. Once the Industrial Revolution began, the amount of small towns started to dissolve with the growth of huge metropolises.
A huge part of the economical grow of the United States was the wealth being produced by the factories in New England. Women up until the factories started booming were seen as the child-bearer and were not allowed to have any kind of career. They were valued for factories because of their ability to do intricate work requiring dexterity and nimble fingers. "The Industrial Revolution has on the whole proved beneficial to women. It has resulted in greater leisure for women in the home and has relieved them from the drudgery and monotony that characterized much of the hand labour previously performed in connection with industrial work under the domestic system. For the woman workers outside the home it has resulted in better conditions, a greater variety of openings and an improved status" (Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, pg.4) The women could now make their own money and they didn’t have to live completely off their husbands. This allowed women to start thinking more freely and become a little bit more independent.
Women were valued in the Middle Ages, but only as an economic commodity (Mundy 212). They served two main functions within medieval society: child bearer and manual laborer. Because women represented a large source of cheap labor, they quickly became the mainstay of the medieval economy. In many cases they would work along side men in the fields. However, women were paid less than children's wages for their work (Cipolla 234). The Church would not allow women to hold jobs that required literacy (Mundy 209). In fact, aside from hard labor the only occupation open to women was midwifery. "In hospital work women were almost as important as men" (Mundy 210). The textile industry was dominated by women, especially the woolen and silk industries (Cipolla 200). Though women enjoyed virtual domination in these crafts, they were still paid next to nothing. In addition to the intense labor, women had household duties to fulfill, especially if a woman was married (Cipolla 266)....
When I was growing up a woman was never heard of having a job other than a school teacher or seamstress. Our(women's)job was to take care of the house. We had a big garden out back from which we got most of our vegetables?A garden is a lot of work you know?We also had to make clothes when there were none to be had(hand-me- downs)
Prior to these changes, career options were limited for women. The work of a wife was often alongside her husband, running a household, farm or plantation. "Indeed, a wife herself was considered her husband's chattel, or personal property" (Cullen-Dupont 212). Cooking for the household took a major part of a woman's time. Making garments, spinning yarn, and weaving cloth also took much time out of the day. After the Revolution and into the early 19th century, educating the children became the mother's responsibility. Widows and the wives of men off to war often managed large farms and plantations. Other women worked as servants or slaves. Unmarried women, the divorced, and women without property, might work in another household, helping out with household chores or substituting for the wife if there was not one in the family.
While the world has issues with immigration, health care, drugs, gun control, taxes, and so on going on in the world we forget to think about the fact that our world is facing an issue as impractical as population growth. The idea that having a child will create issues for a country is odd, but it is the case for many countries, including the United States of America. “The U.S. is the third most populous country in the world and has the highest population growth rate of all developed countries,” ( Chamie 1) to further analyze this issue to put it in perspective of the global issue it actual is by comparing the United States current issue with population growth to the population growth issue in China.
During the Industrial Revolution the economy transformed from a rural and agricultural economy to an industrial or factory-based economy. Enormous bands of families flocked from suburban areas to cities in hopes of finding work in factories. Within those families who traveled to the cities were children who sought work in order to help support their
Conditions of laborers and the role of women in society has been constantly evolving over the course of history. However, these two major groups experienced the most drastic alterations during the Industrial Revolution. Between the 19th and early 20th centuries, laborers diversified in age, while labor conditions declined. During this same time period, the role of women was reinvented as females searched for work and changed their role within the family.
As this demand was increasing, so was the world’s population. In fact, as mentioned in the video, The Technology of the Industrial Revolution, “in 1850, the population had increased to over sixteen and a half million” (Video 2). Most significantly, this increased population shifted away from rural living to a more urbanized setting. In her dissertation, The British Industrial Revolution, Phyllis Deane asserts that many, “migrants were attracted by the prospect of higher wages and more continuous employment than [what] was available in the rural areas from which they came” (Deane p. 25). This resulted in the expansion of urbanized cities and living. In turn, the rapid urbanization of a population generated a different standard of working for new generations of people, especially children. Children were the forefront for labor and employment opportunities. As discussed by the video, The Children who Built Victorian Britain: Part One, “40% of the population were under 15 [and] most of them were sent to work” (Video 3). Successively new generations of children were mainly raised with the principles and aspects of factory work, unlike a majority of their parents that came from a more rural and country setting. Essentially the shift from rural living to city living also transcended in the way work and employment was performed and accomplished. In the
On the heels of the Scientific Agricultural Revolution, families were displaced from their tenant farms. The advances in fertilizer, irrigation and crop rotations, created efficiencies in farming that meant less farmers were needed to tend the crops and land owners no longer needed tenants to work them. Tenant farmers, after generations of farming land for the land owners, flocked to the cities to look for work. Some were exported to the North American colonies to farm land, but that would not solve the unemployment problem for all. Luckily, the Industrial Revolution arrived and these farmers found work in the emerging factories (Pavlic, P. 238). England’s financial innovations, the development of energy, transportation improvements, and the invention of machinery all helped to spark the Industrial Revolution (Pavlic, p. 239). As families began to urbanize, society was forced to make many changes to respond to the conditions. All of these changes because of the Industrial Revolution, created the modern society we live in today.
Especially mothers in America are at an economic disadvantage. With raising children as private responsibility and no net support from the society, the individuals will eventually end up in poverty. There are many countries that have adjust to the massive growth of women in the workforce over the past century by creating public policies to help accommodate work and family obligations. This paper will incorporate scholarly sources from Crittenden, Hays, Schulte, Coontz, Folbre, Stone and Lovejoy to back up the argument.
The rapid population growth in underdeveloped and developing countries is a result of people living in poverty with a lack of access to education. According to Earth Policy Institute, “when mortality rates decline quickly but fertility rates fail to follow, countries can find it harder to reduce poverty. Poverty, in turn, increases the likelihood of having many children, trapping families and countries in a vicious cycle” (Data Highlights). Ideally, women should have two children in order to reach the replacement rate necessary to sustain a population. However, in developing countries, the fertility rate per women is over four. As mentioned previously, the reason for the high fertility rates in underdeveloped and developing countries is lack of education. In these countries, access to education is very scarce and it is common that women do not have any access at all, as they are expected to stay at home and care for a family. Due to this reality, women do not have the privilege of attending school and receiving an education on birth control and family planning such as contraceptives. It is proven that “one of the most effective ways to lower population growth and reduce poverty is to provide adequate education for both girls and boys. Countries in which more children are enrolled in school—even at the primary level—tend to have strikingly lower
The industrial revolution changed the lifestyle of people drastically. The people living in the countryside , farmers, and skilled craftsmen were forced to move to town areas and work in factories as they could not compete with the machineries and went bankrupt. With a change in lifestyle along came, the higher expenses of urban lifestyle and thus women and children were sent out for work. They
A study shows that 60 per cent of the increase in female labor force participation rate that happened between 1986 and 2006 is due to the decline in fertility is one of the forces behind the increase of the female labor participation rate (FLPR). This decline in fertility may have happened due to the increase in female education which has led to a notable decrease in the number of babies born. Another factor behind the increase in the female labor participation rate would be the expansion of female education that is accountable for the continuous increase of women’s participation in the labor market.
It is implied that since the dawn of time, women have been inferior to thy fellow man. It was not until the Age of Enlightenment, which began around 1650 in Europe, that the first ideas of women being as competent as men, lacking only education and not intelligence, began to circulate (Online MBA). As the end of the 18th Century neared, women were regulars in salons and academic debates, though schooling for women would come late down the road (Online MBA). Prior to the birth of the Industrial Revolution, women did not work. Those who did work were from lower class families and many of those were minorities. It was the primary idea that a women’s role was of that at the home; cooking sewing, cleaning, and caring for the children. There were many duties required of them around the house and their focus was to be the supportive wife who dutifully waited for the husband to come home after a long day at work.