by Edna Thackeray

Created on: August 25, 2008   Last Updated: September 24, 2011

Many professions for women have revolved around bearing and raising children. In recent memory, women were not encouraged by men to leave the home and to make the family her primary focus. Men were the breadwinners and their place in society inviolate and sacrosanct. These social mores were not to be trifled with, and if broken, the consequences would be nothing less than social ostracism and eternal damnation. Women were not educated or

as well-trained as men; most universities did not matriculate women well into the early 1900's. Women did not have the right to own property or to vote. Some women wrote novels under pseudonymns like George Eliot, rather than face the shame and social ostracism of the day.
Although, there were a few exceptions, women accepted their lot in life. Women were the "descendants of Eve", and not to be trusted' best to "protect" them by keeping them at home and tending to her children.

There is no doubt children need their mother's love and attention; a home and family life sheltered from hardship.Single women were encouraged to become nannies, teachers and nurses.
Once married, these short-lived careers were given over to child-raising and the maintaining of a home. Much time and expense was given to a young girl's eventual assumption of domestic responsibilities. She must not only oversee the well-being and educating of her children, but
run her household efficiently, complete with house servants and attendants.

The "coming out" of a young girl was a whirl of social teas and dance/balls for which she was amply prepared in all social graces and materially endowed with the finest apparel, often imported from Paris. Although this flurry of activity soon ended after a sumptuous, intricately-planned wedding was achieved, her every act as mother and wife must now consider its social importance and correctness.

The World Wars changed the status of women everywhere. They were enlisted to work in the factories, staff bond drives and blood banks to contribute to the war effort. The Great Depression also forced many women to leave home and accept work while their husbands could not obtain employment, or in the unhappy event that she was abandoned. The concept of women having any of their own "rights" were still not developed or even discussed. She merely was making sure her children would not starve or become destitute street urchins.

Eventually. the physical and emotional toll many women and children suffered throughout the
Industrial Revolution,particularly

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