Social Change 765

alike seemed to erode parental authority. Moralists blamed increasingly
homogeneous working-class neighborhoods, where drinking and domestic
violence seemed rampant.
Many women of child-bearing age who could afford to do so, or who had
no other choice, tended children full time. But once their offspring were
old enough to care for themselves, many working-class mothers returned
to factory work. Others worked at home, doing piecework and caring for
their children at the same time. Many women thus alternated between
industrial wage labor and child rearing.
As ever in the European experience, many women still were forced by
economic circumstances into prostitution, in large cities, towns of modest
size, and even villages. Some of the tens of thousands of prostitutes in
Paris, London, Berlin, and Vienna worked in elegant brothels, under the
direction of a “madam,” who allowed them only a couple days off per year.
Others worked on their own, waiting for customers in bars, doorways, win­
dows, and parks. Most prostitutes were working-class women—some of
whom were married—unable to find industrial work. Many were young,
having had to leave school early to support younger siblings.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s In the Salon at the Rue des Moulins (1894) depicts

French prostitutes.