In the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution caused a sharp differentiation between gender roles. Men and women were thought to have completely different roles. Men were seen as workers while women were seen as home-makers. Men and women were totally opposites each other. Marriage was seen as the only proper locale for sex, and women didn’t have any rights in their marriage lives. Birth controls were absent, and abortion was forbidden since 1800s. Sex within marriage usually meant frequent pregnancy, especially as some areas had laws that a husband had his rights to his wife’s body. The death rate for a woman delivering a child was 1 in 200 in 1870 (Radek-Hall), so having children could be psychologically traumatic for women. The …show more content…
Many children died at an early age because of poverty, and lack of medical treatment, while the others lived in bad conditions, uneducated. It was a desperate situation for low-income families all over the nation.
On the other hand, female’s role in society was to be wives. They take care of the children, do housework, or go to work which is limited to unskilled jobs or agriculture labor. Having a lot of children was a terrible panic for women because they had to go through the childbirth without medical access. Especially, women in working class families had to go back to work right after giving birth without taking any medicine because they needed money for the other children. Mothers’ health declined if they kept getting pregnant, so women tried many ways to prevent having children. However, most of the methods were not safe and sometimes dangerous for their body.
Margaret started her job as a nurse; during her work, she met working-class, and deprived women who had to go through recurrent childbirth, miscarriages, or self-induced abortions because of lacking of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. In the early 1900s, there was neither birth control nor education on how to stop pregnancy. Working class women usually used the natural methods to avoid having children; for example, olive oil, pomegranate pulp, ginger, and even tobacco juice were used to smear on or inside the vagina as an early spermicide. More scary than that, some women drank
While also working as a nurse in a predominantly poor neighborhood, Margaret treated many women who had attempted to self-terminate pregnancies as well as those who had gone through illegal back-alley abortions.Around this time, Margaret started to dream of an easier and safer alternative, envisioning a pill that could be taken to prevent pregnancy from ever occurring, and thus saving these women from being forced to undergo unsafe and illegal operations. It is because of these beliefs that she began the fight to make birth control information and contraceptives widely available to
Men die in battle; women die in childbirth” (Gregory 1). This quote from the historical novel “The Red Queen” presents a straightforward reality that women and men believed before the advancements of modern medicine. In accordance with past social norms the time periods between the 17th and 19th century have shown that women would always hold the role as the weaker sex. Between the prejudice of men who considered themselves superior and the way history portrayed woman in a submissive light, there was no understanding of what women experienced throughout their lives. There may have been a few incidences that made an appearance here or there, but their significance would soon lose recognition in the masses of that time. Unfortunately, the only role that was considerably memorable for women during these eras was marrying into a well-off family and producing children. Still, even in this aspect of their lives women were viewed as inadequate. Childbirth held no advantage for men and midwifery was considered a profession that only a woman would be fitted for. In the late 1800’s a prominent surgeon by the name Sir Anthony Carlisle even went as far as to say that midwifery was a “humiliating office” and therefore “suitable only to women”( Massey 1). However, comments and thoughts like this would prove to be invalid as men became more immersed in the practice of childbirth. Fear of death led women of higher status away from traditional practices of female midwifery and they turned
In the early twentieth century, the low to middle class women of the United States were burdened with frequent pregnancies often ending
For many women in the nineteenth century, having an abundance of children lead to poverty, illness and sometimes death in the delivery room. Lack of medicine and technology resulted in the inability to predict complications in pregnancy causing death to the baby and mother. A typical procedure asked for was the removal of the reproductive organs as shown in Crystal Rogers’ article, "Ovariotomies became quite popular in the Victorian era, requested by women in large numbers. It is posited that the procedure provided a covert way for women to resist the societal pressure to have or continue having babies." (Roger 3).
The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.
There are many causes and effects of America’s Industrialization, some of the main reasons include: migration to cities, improved transportation, and laissez-faire philosophy, while the primary effects generated by these causes include; consumerism, expansion of the market, and changed working conditions.
Women across the U.S. were fighting for reproductive rights. The fight was intense due to women not being able to do decisions for themselves. Since the beginning of civilization, women were expected to produce children from marriage to menopause, in a constant battle to birth more children than died in utero, in infancy, or of childhood disease. The birth and mortality rates were so high that women had to have a stop to it. American white women were considered to be the ones having the most children. In 1800 American women were bearing an average of 7.04 children; 5.21 in 1860; and 3.56 in 1900. During this time the rates were so high because the typical women of the household was supposed to be the one at home cleaning, cooking, taking
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, societies were primarily patriarchal. Men were considered the dominant gender and were given full authority over females. From the time they were born, women belonged to their fathers then eventually their husbands when they were married. Females were not allowed to make their own decisions throughout their entire lives. Women were caged into the life of being a perfect lady and nothing less. During the day, women were left with the responsibility of cleaning, taking care of the house, raising and watching children, cooking, and running day time errands for their husbands. They were also responsible for ignoring any affair their husbands may be having with any of their close friends, neighbors, and secretaries. Women were forced to live the perfect life in the public’s eye. Unfortunately, that was not always possible. As imagined, this type of
In the nineteenth century women lived in an age of inequality because of their gender. Women had very limited choices when it came to their occupational choices, which is why most women stayed home to care for their children take care of the house, keep things clean, and in line and make sure that everything was ready before their husbands came home from their longs days of working.
In the 1800’s before the turn of the century it was male dominated world. Women were expected to marry and bear children. They were also supposed to stay home in order to tend to the domestic duties of cleaning, cooking, running errands and taking care of the children while the men went to work to make a weekly wage (Women, par. 2).
It was believed that the women’s responsibility is to continuously repopulate the country. When the women stopped having as many kids the men felt like they had no purpose in the society.
Families have always played an important part in society, from having a son to carry on the family name, having multiple children to help on the farm, to the parents having someone to take care of them when they are unable to do so in their old age. Majority of families before the 1900’s consisted of the husband working and the wife keeping the house along with raising the children. After the 1900’s though the family dynamic would be changing, the large fluctuation of clerical positions were up for grabs and while it was tradition for women to stay home, they seemed to be made for typing. The single woman were more prominent than ever before taking on what society considered gender specific roles such as, nurses, secretaries, librarians, and teaching. While the majority of society believed as Theodore Roosevelt did “the greatest thing for any woman is to
Ladies before the nineteenth century were basically attached to the household. With little information or accessibility of contraceptives and conception prevention, and with an "obligation" to their better half, ripe ladies definitely had numerous children. keeping in mind the end goal to give nourishment to their substantial families and to appropriately run the family unit, they couldn't extra time for some other activities. This empowered a confidence in partitioned circles as men headed out to work and ladies stayed at home. It likewise appeared to reaffirm the faith in the predominance and strength of men, as they "gave" for the household. Women started to endeavor to control the sizes of their families in the private circle, yet
This Youtube video shows the audience fairly accurately the causes of the Industrial Revolution, and why the revolution occurred in Britain, and not another location in the world.
Women sought out information on birth control in the interwar period in order to lessen the double burden placed on them to work and care for the home. Married working class women that were employed outside the home had access to knowledge on birth control from friends and used this knowledge to plan their pregnancies.