Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife. That is why the newly affluent men of the mid-20th century wanted it so much. They came out of the great depression, fought a great war, and wanted a wife at home. You should not judge all of history by this one era.
The work of child care used to fall on the entire extended family. The nuclear family reduced the flexibility in raising children. It was further reduced by a lack of work-life balance for both fathers and mothers. When women started working (again) the lack of flexibility fell on the mothers to fix.
In my own life - I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my great grandmothers worked. I had flexibility through daycare, my awesome husband, my awesome mother, and my awesome employers. I know they are all awesome because when my daughter (a software engineer) faced the same issues, her employer was not at all flexible. She quit work to stay at home with her three boys. I have a bunch of engineering friends who faced the same issues as my daughter. I originally thought they left the workforce out of choice and now I know they did not.
Of course! But that's only a tiny minority of wealthy women. Nobody is claiming that, historically, women did not work. It's just that female work was performed in proximity of their young children and interweaved with their care. Which is work in itself as well.
The historical norm of peasant societies is gendered work roles. Roughly speaking, the male works in the fields and the female works around the house / village. This pattern is even present across age groups, not uncommon to see 10 year boys herding the cows to pasture, and 10 year girls milking the cows at home. While I'm aware there are task and/or region and/or period specific exceptions, we're talking of the general pattern of [european] peasant societies here.
Women working away from their house and young children is the prevalent modern anomaly.
Working around the house/village is still work. Male peasants for the most part don't work outside the house/village either. They usually work on fields that relatively close to where they live. And a large fraction of the women work alongside them. Older men and women - grandpas and grandmas, etc. - do a lot of the childrearing while the younger women work.
Not sure about the US but here in Eastern Europe our peasant grandmothers were definitely working on the fields themselves, most of the times even longer hours than the men. It was the job of the very old women around the house to stay at home and take care of the eventual infants, but even then, that was an exception rather than the rule. I know that one of my grand-grand-mothers wanted to go and work the fields until her late 80s, together with everybody else from the extended family, staying at home was a sign of weakness and was seen as almost courting sickness/death.
Prior to industrialization, most women were home-makers.
And home-making was no slacking off either. Managing expenses, food (storage & cooking), raising children (feeding, teaching, playing), social bonding (neighbors, communities) etc. It kept their hands full.
> Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife.
Running an aristocratic, bourgeois or farming household is a full time job, just as much as being an office manager. Post WW2 mass affluence with lesser time demands for running a household due to domestic appliances and other convenience led quickly to women exiting full time household management and joining the labor market.
Just a small additional comment - if a company creates an environment that encourages community then they will keep women. I was lucky to work at two companies like this - Xerox and early Apple. I don't think they set out to create a family friendly environment. They were trying to have an environment that encouraged creativity. They were part of the zeitgeist of the Bay Area. It just happened to also be family friendly. Those days are gone (sadly).
> Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife.
You really need some data to back it up here. "I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my great grandmothers worked." is not good evidence. For one, there is a representative issue. For another, there is a huge difference between part-time work and full-time work. We don't know how many hours your mother, grandmothers, and great grandmothers worked, or worked for how many years.
Apparently the data contradicted with your own personal experience. This is why we should try to avoid general argument based on our on personal experience.
Labor force does count the actual workforce. They only count "wage slaves". One grandmother was a farmer. She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband. So she would not have been counted. I am not clear if it would have counted my other grandmother since she was a business owner. She owned a beauty salon. She also opened the first health food store in Berkeley with her sister to put my mother and her cousins through college. I doubt either would have been counted as labor force participation. My mother was counted.
> She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband.
Neither would have her husband been counted in the non-farm labour force survey. Thus swapping husband for wife would not have shown up as a change in the first place.
This is an interesting discussion. I remember my economists professor talking about how in Alberta during the 2006 boom labour force participation dropped as wages increased. In that case it was an example of the in-elasticity of labour demand.
From the social aspect it was an example of how for many families 2 working parents is not optional. A situation was fully true earlier in the industrial revolution. As the revolution progressed and labour had more negotiation power over capital real wages rose and duel working parents decreased.
Thus my pet theory is that the reduction in real wages is a non-trivial driving force for the current historic high labour force participation stats.
>One grandmother was a farmer. She took over from my grandfather when he got sick and he became the house husband.
I'm not sure what you think this proves. When the choice is "do something or starve" people do all sorts of things they would rather not do, from farming to prostitution to selling their children:
Most people for most of history were peasants. Peasant women don't just raise children - they usually contribute to almost everything else that the farming economy requires, as well. Think of old photos of peasants/poor farmers. Do the women look like they have been spending their time just raising children?
My family on both my mother and father's sides were farmers, including my parents for most of my early childhood. On the farm, women would work mainly during harvest season and a few other moments, but I remember quite vividly a conversation where my aunt got pregnant and other adults in the room we're angry that the birth might fall too close to harvest season so she wouldn't be able to help out. She said what was she supposed to do? To which her mother replied that you get pregnant at so and so season and that this is how it had been done for generations. At that moment I realized that most of their birthdays did fall out of harvest season (including mine!).
Your comment brought back those memories. I know an anecdote is not data but in my case (we're not American however) most women were expected to help out with the harvest and sowing. Children also helped out during harvest (some of my worst and best memories!). I also would say that at least in my region, some would help only seasonally in the farm. The rest of the year they're expected to be "managing the home" and any women that wanted to study would be met with very sexist attitudes and responses. Also worth mentioning that raising children does take a toll on you. If you think peasant women look bad because of hard work on a farm, it's probably not. Think hard work off the farm, combined with poverty, stress, anxiety, etc.
If by modern you mean common for the lower middle class in 1850 sure:
>And here occurs a curious inversion. It is a fact of common observance that in this lower middle class there is no pretense of leisure on the part of the head of the household. Through force of circumstances it has fallen into disuse. But the middle-class wife still carries on the business of vicarious leisure, for the good name of the household and its master. In descending the social scale in any modern industrial community, the primary fact-the conspicuous leisure of the master of the household-disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the case of the ordinary business man of today. But the derivative fact-the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife, and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by menials-remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands of reputability will not suffer to be slighted. It is by no means an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying himself to work with the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form render for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common sense of the time demands.
The work of child care used to fall on the entire extended family. The nuclear family reduced the flexibility in raising children. It was further reduced by a lack of work-life balance for both fathers and mothers. When women started working (again) the lack of flexibility fell on the mothers to fix.
In my own life - I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my great grandmothers worked. I had flexibility through daycare, my awesome husband, my awesome mother, and my awesome employers. I know they are all awesome because when my daughter (a software engineer) faced the same issues, her employer was not at all flexible. She quit work to stay at home with her three boys. I have a bunch of engineering friends who faced the same issues as my daughter. I originally thought they left the workforce out of choice and now I know they did not.