Daily Life in the Nineteenth Century453transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial
economy, which broke down the historic pattern of a
household economy in which a husband and wife
shared the labor of farm or shop, creating instead a fam-
ily wage economy in which a husband and wife typi-
cally worked at separate jobs and pooled their wages to
maintain the home. Other important changes in mar-
riage were appearing by the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, largely the result of the successes of the women’s
movement. The historic pattern of patriarchal mar-
riage—of a husband’s authority and a wife’s obedience—
a pattern sanctified by law, religion, and custom, was
breaking down. Married women were winning funda-
mental economic rights, such as the control of their own
property or wages, beginning with the British Married
Women’s Property Acts of 1857–82. The breakdown of
the paternalistic marriage, which has continued during
the twentieth century, soon touched all aspects of family
life, such as control of the children.
A third fundamental change in the nature of mar-
riage, the legal right to end the marriage, developed
during the nineteenth century. The French Revolution
instituted divorce, but that law was repealed by the re-
stored monarchy. The Prussian legal code of 1794
made divorce comparatively easy there, and Bismarck
imposed divorce on Catholic Germany during the Kul-
turkampfof the 1870s. Legislation of 1857 in Britain and
1884 in France permitted divorce, and Scandinavian
countries adopted similar statutes. Men and women
(but significantly more women) increasingly exercised
this right during the late nineteenth century. British di-
vorces climbed from 178 per year in the late 1850s to
surpass 1,000 for the first time in 1906. Divorce rates
rose more rapidly in France. The first full year of di-
vorce (1885) saw 4,000 marriages dissolved, and that
number doubled by 1895, tripled by 1905. By the early
twentieth century both France and Germany were see-
ing 15,000 divorces per year. Such figures do not com-
pare with the “divorce revolution” of the late twentieth
century, but the social trend was clear, as the Catholic
Church argued in blocking divorce in Italy and Spain.
The combination of later marriage, the increased
use of birth control, and the legalization of divorce
meant that the average size of European families de-
clined. The economic system no longer rewarded large
families when children were obliged to attend school.
The vital revolution that conquered many childhood
diseases meant that parents could be confident of chil-
dren surviving into adulthood without having ten or
twelve of them. Whereas ten or more children had
been a common family size during the Old Regime, less
than 10 percent of the population now had such large
families. By the 1850s German peasants averaged four
or fewer children; even textile workers had smaller fam-
ilies (see table 23.10). Families continued to shrink dur-
ing the nineteenth century. Completed family size for
all British marriages of the 1860s included four chil-
dren; for marriages in the early twentieth century, the
average had fallen to two children.
A typical household of nineteenth-century Europe
still retained some characteristics of the Old Regime,
however. A household still meant all of the people who
lived together under a common roof, and that included
servants, apprentices, or boarders. A study of Notting-
ham in midcentury found that more than 20 percent of
households contained a lodger, and well-to-do families
had an average of two servants. Most of these domestic
servants were unmarried women, and such service was
the largest source of employment for women during the
century. More than 700,000 women worked as servantsPercentage of families
Occupation 0 1– 34–6 7–9 10 or more
of father children children children children children
Agricultural 31.3 33.6 22.8 7.2 4.8
Metal industry 17.1 59.9 17.1 2.9 2.9
Textile industry 21.4 32.2 25.0 14.2 7.2
Source: Heilwig Schomerus, “The Family-Life-Cycle: A Study of Factory Workers in Nineteenth Century Württemberg,” in Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee, eds.,
The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany(Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981), p. 185.TABLE 23.10Family Size in Württemberg in the 1850s and 1860s