Ideal Family Essay Research Paper The ideal

Ideal Family Essay, Research Paper

The ideal American family was transformed in the 19th century in large part due to the great changes taking place in the American society. Many family groups fit this changing mold while some did not. In this essay I will show how this concept of the ideal American family changed. I will also try to explain which groups of Americans followed this concept and why.

The end of the 18th century was a turbulent time in American history. The country had just won its independence from Great Britain and was attempting to find an identity for itself. Up to this point families in America were similar to British families. The father was the head of the household, but lived in harmony with his wife. The children were seen as part of the family’s labor force, helping to produce food and supplies for the family. The church ruled the family as much as colonial law in the late 18th. A change in the general economy paved the way for the emergence of a new type of family.

The market economy arose in the 1800’s in America. Goods were no longer being produced solely for family consumption. The families of this period were producing goods in excess to sell at markets. Goods able to be purchased at a market as well as the slave trade in the south helped to lessen the amount of household production for the average American family. With a market economy now in place in America, the door was open for the factory system and industrialization. This factory system created two main types of families in America: Middle Class and Working Class.

Middle class families were better off economically than their working class counterparts. In these families men worked in jobs considered to be middle class white-collar occupations. Women were therefore staying home and surviving on the man’s salary. With these middle class women staying home along with the smaller amounts of household production, a new type of labor arises. Women in this early 19th century time period become more and more involved in child rearing. The household work for these middle class women is task-oriented and unwaged. This makes them more and more dependent on their husband’s salary and more responsible for the children who were also out of the labor force.

Working class families were different in some ways from middle class families. Often in a marriage, the man’s wages were not enough to support a family so the woman would have to work outside of the home as well. Many women in working class families worked in factories. Working class families also tended to have more children than middle class families because their labor was often needed to supplement that of their parents. These traits applied mostly to Protestant Caucasians of British descent, but some immigrants were also affected by these economic changes.

The changes that shaped this domestic family were not only economic ones. Ideological transformations always accompany drastic economic changes. One such ideological change was the emergence of the Republican Mother. While women were discriminated against in politics as well as other forms of self-expression, they were still needed by the state. Because of the influence that women had in their families especially in the raising of the children the state had to convince women to be virtuous and to bring up good intelligent voters. This ideal was most likely applied only to middle class women as they were more virtuous and did not work outside of the home. Unlike the women of the colonial period, these women were responsible for their children and were blamed when the children were bad.

The idea that the children were born as blank slates was also a product of the new ideology of the 19th century. Religious ideals changed in the early part of the century through Enlightenment. Children were, for the first time, being seen as innocent. In colonial time it was seen as the father’s fault if the children were bad because their behavior was a result of a lack of punishment or discipline. Now with the moral mother in control of the child’s development as well as the rising Enlightenment belief that children were born as blank slates, women were held completely responsible for their child’s actions.

One other rising ideology was the way in which science was used to validate ongoing discrimination against certain groups. These sciences, usually called race sciences were used against sexes as well. Women were determined to be physically inferior to men. Women were classified as being more nurturing than men were and therefore more suited to remain in the home and raise good Republicans. Men were “discovered” to be more aggressive and speculating and therefore were perfectly suited to be in a work force that demanded a competitive spirit.

Not all Americans accepted these new ideals. They affected most Americans, but not all chose to live by these ideals. White middle class mainly Protestant families adopted the ideals more easily than other immigrant and minority groups. To these new Ideal American families, their type of family life was American by nature. The fact that some immigrant groups would not live by the same ideals was seen as being un-American.

Many Protestants had a sense of cultural superiority over other groups, as their consensus had not yet been challenged. The level of immigration was low for much of the first