Work, gender, and family in Victorian England - Karl Ittmann

At a time when historians are reaching for new approaches to understanding the hidden life of working-class European families, this study of family life and work explores some of social history's most pressing questions in a compelling and lucid way.
--Leslie Page MochUniversity of Michigan, Flint

As the industrial revolution swept through towns and villages, it radically altered traditional ways of life, dramatically transforming the family unit. The greater economic and social role of women, the changing relationship between parents and children, and the decline of masculine power all played a role in the perceived crisis of the family.
Increases in crime, infanticide, abortion, poverty, and the use of birth control all heightened the concern about the destruction of the family.

By the late nineteenth century, communities throughout Europe and the United States witnessed a deliberate limitation of family size. This fall in family size resulted, Karl Ittman argues, not from newfound prosperity or the universality of Victorian values, but rather from the need for families to protect themselves from the uncertainties of modern life. This uncoupling of sexuality and reproduction sent shock waves through western societies that still resonate today. Many of these same issues have appeared in the contemporary American debate over family values.

Focusing on West Yorkshire, England, in the latter half of the 19th century, Ittman illuminates the many social, personal, and familial crises brought on by the industrial revolution.