Microblog Memes

People like this envision a past in which an 18 year old woman marries a loving, dutiful, and hard working man who is always able to earn a good living and who always acts in the best interest of the family. Also that he's smart/humble enough to make reasonable decisions. While this no doubt happened for some people, possibly even most at some times, it was by no means a given.

The young widowed mother is the easiest counterpoint here. Even a magnificent husband and father can just die young for any number of reasons. Or become disabled and unable to work. And speaking of disability, there are mental illnesses that are known to sometimes not be noticeable until adulthood, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I've known multiple men who are loving and dutiful husbands/fathers who simply are too mentally ill to be reliable as the some income. And yeah not even touching on PTSD here, especially in the era of "man up and shut up" in response to it.

But now let's look at the 1950s, the era that 2nd wave feminism was formed in response to. The decade experienced a conservative backlash to the massive increase in equality found during WW2 at least in the US. Women who had been employed during the war returned to homemaking for their often traumatized husbands, and weren't happy. During this time frame, much as during the interwar period, unmarried women were expected to engage in "women's work", such as secretarial labor or housekeeping, where she may be expected to be the brains behind a man less intelligent than her, while he gets all the credit and higher pay. She may have to manipulate him into listening.

The idea that a woman would have to do no productive labor (work for money) after marriage is extremely post industrial, middle and upper class. And as was one of the major points of the 3rd wave, it was an extremely white experience in the US. Pre industrial households would do small manufacturing for money to supplement agricultural labor. Poor women have always had to find some way to contribute to the family's finances, often as domestic labor (ie working as servants).

And now we get to the fact that not all men are awesome guys doing their best with the hand they drew, and in fact, for a long time, men in European societies (including non indigenous American countries), were worse than today on average. The prohibition movement had a major component of "many men blow too much of their wages on booze and so their family doesn't have enough for food, and they come home drunk anf violent". Men having second families wasn't particularly rare (I've got a direct ancestor in living memory who pulled that shit). Financial abuse as well as physical abuse were common, and it's not like it's easy to leave when you can't get a job able to support a family on. Also your husband may just be noticeably less intelligent than you and keep blowing his money in stupid investments and then laying down the law because your culture has decided he has the decision making genitals, and he's the one allowed to have a bank account and significant income. Hell, many men clearly resented their wives and children for the sole reason of them being culturally mandatory financial drains.