university of california press from marriage to the market the transformation of womens lives and work aug 2006

[...]... provide a new understanding of the underlying causes of the events dramatically transforming women’s lives, and the very nature of gender itself, in the last decades of the twentieth century I explain both how and why women’s relationships to marriage, motherhood, and the labor force have altered profoundly over these years and the consequences of these shifts for the new economy of today Rather than focusing... am] too busy to live,” a lawyer’s wife in one northeastern city wrote to her sister in 1845, as so consumed by household tasks and the “filling up” and other care of her six children.18 Despite their long hours of work, the great majority of women saw their interests as lying within rather than outside the framework of their domestic economy The other avenues of support offered to women by the market. .. is not just a story of destruction and collapse Out of the pieces of women’s old ways of life and work a new social and economic order has been built The transformation of women’s tasks and labor into work done for pay has fueled much of the rise of the new economy of the twenty-first century, contributing to a dramatic growth in profits and national income overall However, women and their families have... such work together In the early United States, both white and African American women were responsible for an arduous set of domestic tasks essential to the survival of their families Women butchered hogs and hung them to bleed, cooked over wood fires, and hauled water in and out of their homes as part of their daily chores The growth of a market economy brought changes to such work, but initially these... 116 Detailed sources of mothers’ support, by race, 2000 158 Figures TA B L E S 1 Income and work of married white mothers, 1970 and 2000 147 2 Income and work of married black mothers, 1970 and 2000 148 3 Income and work of unmarried white mothers, 1970 and 2000 151 4 Income and work of unmarried black mothers, 1970 and 2000 152 5 Mean labor force attachment of mothers, by education and race, 2000 155... still struggling to fit the pieces of their lives together Whether lawyers or secretaries, married or single, women talk of being overburdened by the demands of work at home and for pay Many do sink, despite their efforts, into poverty As women struggle to carry out their labors of love in the face of waning private and public assistance for such tasks, we have to ask ourselves how we came to such a place... sketches some of the implications of such analysis for our understanding of the difficulties faced by other groups of women in the United States and abroad, and for our understanding of the process of social change itself The picture that emerges from this analysis is a troubling one Women have made great gains, especially over the last half of the twentieth century Many of the old rules and customs that... home and work, without it Only when we lift the domestic realm clearly into view can we see what once held this realm together, even in the face of great poverty, and why it has now come apart Many of the problems that confronted women over the second half of the twentieth century, from the rise of single mothers among the poor to the recent time crunch faced by many families, are tied to the failure to. .. shift of focus, from Europe to other areas of the world claimed as colonies The intrusion of new commercial relations only rarely resulted in a sudden and complete destruction of the old social fabric Rather, the growing group of merchants usually drew on and reinforced many of the existing arrangements of work; only gradually did the market come to dominate Even in the United States, as one historian... and the children of the baby boomers themselves, carry this account into the present This study traces the breakdown of marriages, struggles with poverty, and acquisition of elite professions or poorly paid service jobs over successive cohorts of African American and white women as paid employment replaced marriage as their central means of support Gender, Race, and the Market To knit the details of . FROM MARRIAGE TO THE MARKET