Work, gender, and family in Victorian England

Many feared the social consequences of such rapid change. These fears focused on the family and its swift transformation by industrialization. The greater economic and social role of women, the changing relationship between parents and children, and the decline of masculine power all played a role in a perceived crisis of the family. Increases in crime, infanticide, abortion, poverty, and the use of birth control were all tied to this concern about the destruction of the family and the resulting social chaos. By the late nineteenth century in most of Europe and the United States, the deliberate limitation of family size had become a general phenomenon. This fall in family size resulted, Karl Ittmann argues, not from newfound prosperity or the universality of "Victorian values," but rather from the need for families to protect themselves from the uncertainties of modern life. This uncoupling of sexuality and reproduction sent shock waves through western societies that still resonate today. Focusing on West Yorkshire, England, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, this book illuminates the many social, personal, and familial crises brought on by the industrial revolution. Through an intimate reading of the town of Bradford, center of the world's worsted trade in the heartland of the industrial revolution, Karl Ittmann recreates the web of material and social forces that shaped the decisions of working men and women about family life. The industrial revolution radically altered traditional ways of life in many towns and villages. Successive waves of economic and social reorganization forced working-class communities to readjust constantly to new ways of life and work.