Traditional Family Roles

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, households were seen as the basic unit of production, known as the family economy. Women and children relieved the household burdens by assisting men with their craft, so there was little distinction between home and economic life. Furthermore, children were nurtured and disciplined at home, strengthening familial ties. Nonetheless, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, family structures and gender roles changed. It resulted in the disruption of traditional family units from the Old Regime: Men were associated with the workforce, whereas the women were in the domestic sphere. Meanwhile, the relationship between children and their parents deteriorated due to the rise of child labor and public education.

To begin with, the idea of the household as a unit of production was challenged when men were viewed as the provider of the family. With the creation of larger machines, work moved from the home to factories, where the entire production process would be contained in one area. Generally, the workers were men, who provided the manual labor required to operate machinery. In turn, this eliminated many jobs for women, who had to seek other means of employment, which paid little. This was due to a

misconception that a woman’s salary supplemented her husband’s, so men received higher wages than women. Thus, with men responsible for the majority of the household income, they became known as the breadwinners of the family. From this, the family economy deteriorated as more men went to factories for work.
Owing to the fact that men replaced women in the workforce, the role of women turned toward the domestic during the Industrial Revolution.

In both the working and middle class, women were affiliated with housekeeping and child raising, a belief that originated in the upper class and nobility. Since factory work was reserved for men, women usually became maids or worked in the cottage industries for money. These limited job opportunities led to the assumption that women belonged in a traditional setting, because most of their work reduced contact with modern technologies. So while their husbands worked in factories to provide income, women remained at home, furthering the collapse of the classic family unit of the Old

Regime.
Meanwhile, children lost the familial link they had with their parents due to long hours away from home. In the working class, child laborers were prominent in factories because their families depended on their pay to afford living expenses. Work wages were able to be sent over long distances, allowing children to work and board at the factory dorms to earn more money. Also, discipline no longer occurred at school; public education shifted this duty from parents to teachers. Hence, the amount of time children were kept from home became greater. As distance and time increased, the connection between children and their parents were eventually lost.
Put briefly, the Industrial Revolution oversaw the decline of the family economy to wage economy because the different gender roles between men and women, and the sustained distance and time children spent away from home.