Breadwinners and Homemakers: Where Do Family Roles Originate?

I recently listened to a podcast on The Literary Life in which the hosts discussed Dorothy Sayer’s essay “Are Women Human?.” This led me to read the essay for myself. “Are Women Human?” makes the case that women need to have meaningful work because they are humans and God created all humans to work. Some women feel called to the meaningful work of raising and/or educating children and taking care of the home. But what about other forms of work, careers even? Sayers argued that as humans, women should be treated as individuals and that each should engage in the work that is meaningful and best suited to herself. The essay was originally published in 1938, offering a view contrary both to the Victorian ideals the culture was coming from and to the rise of feminism.

The Ideal?

While growing up, I remember occasionally hearing in sermons that women should be at home. The pastors expressed that though there is not a clear mandate, the examples in Scripture show women being at home and so this was the ideal. I partially agree, but I don’t think it is looking at the whole picture.

As The Literary Life pointed out, our current understanding of family roles originates more from Victorian culture than biblical examples. We should be careful before equating something “traditional” with the biblical model. Before the industrial revolution and Victorian era, going as far back as the age of the Bible, it is true that women were often at home, but there are two other significant factors involved. 1. Were women working while they were at home? 2. Who else was at home?

Were women working at home?

What did women do at home before the industrial revolution and the Victorian era? Yes, they cared for the household and for their children. However, many of them also worked in the modern sense of laboring or working at a craft or industry, something that put food on the table or brought in money. They often had skills in the trade of their father and/or their husband. Many had enough knowledge and skill that they could carry on the business if their husband passed away, which meant they were heavily involved while he was living.

Who else was at home?

In agrarian societies, men and women worked in their home and on their land together. That’s right. Men were at home too. Men and women had different roles, and because of the care of children there might also be a different amount of time spent on the trade or breadwinning aspect of the work, but they were working in the same place. In Proverbs, when it talks about men being at the city gate, this was a place of business, but they weren’t there 40 hours a week. This wasn’t their “job” or “career.” They were primarily at their home, working the land and managing their households, and occasionally at the city gate when a business transaction was required. Even when the merchant class rose to prominence, women and men were still often working in the same place. The place of business and the home were often one and the same. Both the husband and wife had some role in the business and some role in the home. They could also share the responsibility of raising the children, with the father being physically present most of the time.

The Victorian View

It wasn’t until Victorian times when the industrial revolution changed how “work” was done. Now, people had to leave the home to work, not just to go out to the fields on their land, but to a factory or an office. Work became for regimented (and much less meaningful), counted by hours on the clock. Children still had to be supervised (if they were not old enough to work themselves) and so it was primarily men or lower-class unmarried women who could work for a wage. Married women likely wouldn’t be able to earn a wage, but they would work to care for the children, keep up the house, cook, etc. Upper class married women had even this work stripped away from them. They no longer had a hand in the family land or business, and they weren’t even supposed to care for their own children. Servants cared for and educated the children, cleaned the house, cooked, etc. No wonder insanity and hysteria (hints of true mental health challenges) were so prevalent among upper class women at this time. What was a woman’s role? Essentially, to be an ornament to her husband and a spiritual guide to him. There was a prevailing Victorian view that men couldn’t overcome their baser animal instincts without a good, spiritual woman’s help. The one job women were given to do was an impossible one. (By the way, this is where the literary trope of the good girl reforming the bad boy comes from.) To the complaint Sayers sometimes heard that women would take men’s jobs, her response was that men took women’s jobs away first.

The Feminist View

On the other hand, feminists encouraged women to do whatever men did in total equality. Sayers talks about how important it was for her to be able to attend Oxford (even before degrees were conferred on women). She was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford in 1920 (several years after completing the work). She makes clear that she personally wanted this education. She did not obtain it merely for bragging rights. Her view was that there were many women (and many men) who would not desire it or be suited for it. She didn’t think women should copy men simply for the sake of saying they could do anything a man could. This imitation was unhelpful because it ignored that women were human and therefore individuals with strengths and limitations. Not every job will be suited to every person.

Mothers and Fathers Together

I would say, in an ideal world, mothers should be home, not because of what I think is ideal for women, but because of what I know about children as an elementary school teacher. Children (especially young children) need time with their parents and families more than anything else. However, I would go a step further. I think in an ideal situation, fathers should be home too.

The pandemic and forced shutdowns have taught us something very unexpected. It is no surprise that mental health crises have gone up during the pandemic due to concerns about health, finances, career, isolation, etc. There is an assumption that the number of mental health crises in children has also gone up (see this article). However, Keith McCurdy, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and licensed Professional Counselor, has a different take. The data cited to show that children’s mental health crises have gone up could be read in a different way. It states that there are more emergency room cases. McCurdy explains that this could be because more counseling sessions have been moved online. If there is any concern when the physician is not physically in the room with the patient, the default is to send them to the emergency room so that the ER can determine if it is an emergency or not. It is also true that for those who were already struggling with mental health, the affects of the pandemic and lockdown could have worsened it. However, McCurdy says from what he has seen as a practicing family therapist, mental health struggles in children have gone down significantly during the pandemic. Why? His hypothesis is because it is much more likely that children have been home with at least one and sometimes both parents for long stretches of time, without the interrupting pressures of extracurricular activities.

With the world shaken upside down and the nature of work being revisited, maybe it is time we also rethink our understanding of roles in the home. How much is that understanding shaped by the Victorian worldview rather than biblical examples? Father, mother, and children living and working as a unit may not be an attainable ideal. However, it is good to consider what the ideals are. If possible, how we can adapt our lives for the good of our marriages and families? We all need meaningful work and we all need a place in the family.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash