324 SECTION 2 WORK AND FAIVITLY, 1880 - 1914 CHAPTER 7 THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF FAMILY LIFE Work and Family: An Introduction Consideration has already been given to the way in which employment in Leeds was structured along sex lines and how this in turn affected the conditions of employment experienced by both male and female workers. It is the intention of this section to explore in greater depth the divisions which existed within the female labour force, which were based on age, on marital status and on ethnic and family background, through a study of the complex interrelationship between work and family life during the period 1880-1914. It is hoped that this will shed some light on the relationship between the individual characteristics of female workers, the type of work undertaken and the extent of wage earning among different groups of women, as well as suggesting the way in which women's experience of work affected their view of themselves as women and as workers. In recent years research into the relationship between work and family life has increased and has challenged the view, widespread in sociological literature on the family, that work and family should be seen as separate spheres. 1 This view is based largely on the work of Talcott Parsons. He argues that, with industrialisation, the potential strains between the kinship system and the occupational system were minimised by 325 the development of an internal structure of family life based on the segregation of sex roles. 2 This meant that men performed instrumental roles in the world and women fulfilled expressive ones within the family which reduced the possibility of competition between the sexes. 3 More recently, critics of Parsons have argued against the idea that work and family can be usefully considered as separate spheres. They suggest that women's role in the home should not be seen simply in cultural terms. 4 Veronica Beechey, for example, stresses the continuing economic importance of women's role within the family under industrial capitalism. She argues that women provide a very specific reserve army of labour, that they play a crucial role in the reproduction and maintenance of the labour force and that they have a central part to play in deciding family consumption patterns. 5 Beechey also suggests that the relationship between reproduction, production and consumption must be seen as a historically specific one. She argues that the emphasis on one activity over another in different periods must be seen as the outcome of political decisions, trade union strategies and changes in the mode of production 6 Studies of work and family life undertaken by sociologists and historians in recent years have tended to reinforce the view that the two spheres should be seen as closely interrelated. Nevertheless, beyond this common area of agreement they raise very different questions and adopt a variety of approaches in attempting to analyse and explain the precise form of this relationship. One approach seeks to emphasise the continuing importance of the family in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in affecting both the extent and the type of work undertaken by women.7 326 It is suggested that family priorities dominated and remained primary in women's decision to enter the labour force after industrialisation, and in some cases in their choice of employment. 8 In their study of women's work and family life in Europe since 1750, for example, Louise Tilly and Joan Scott argue that industrialisation did not isolate work and family spheres, but brought a new form of interaction between them. 9 They suggest that families made a series of strategic decisions about where and to what extent female members should engage in wage earning. Furthermore, in allocating the time of women betwen household labour and waged work, families were influenced both by the demand for labour in local areas and also by the supply of women for work. The latter was itself closely related to demographic patterns and to the prevailing structure of family life in specific localities) 0 On the one hand, Tilly and Scott argree that families made decisions according to the opportunities for work available to all family members which determined the family's need for wages. But the decisions made were also affected by values derived from a pre-industrial society, and therefore involved a compromise between traditional and new organisational and social structures. Tilly and Scott explain women's desire to work in the nineteenth century, therefore, by the persistence of pre-industrial peasant values rather than by the pressures resulting from low paid, low skilled work in a new industrial economy.12 One problem with a focus on family strategies is the tendency to emphasise the coherence of the family unit, and to minimise the potential for conflict both between family members and also between family commitments and the individualistic ethic of the market place. 13 Tilly and Scott's 327 analysis is also firmly rooted in a materialist explanation of the relationship between work and family. They are less concerned to explore the attitudes of female workers or to raise questions about the extent to which waged work affected women's status and consciousness.14 Indeed, a weakness of their book lies in the seemingly passive way that people submitted to the process of industrialisation, leading one reviewer to remark that there is no sense of "who was doing what to whom, let alone what anyone might have felt about it".15 Patricia Branca's study of women in Europe during a similar period also stresses the continuing interrelationship of work and family and the importance of family life and values in affecting the extent and the type of work that women did.' 6 Unlike Tilly and Scott, however, Branca does address the question of changes in women's consciousness. She approaches this through the framework of modernisation theory. The core of her work is concerned to examine the extent to which women expressed a new sense of individuality and a desire to enhance their own personal well- being at the workplace and in the family, and the extent to which they contributed to "modernising" both spheres.' 7 She argues that throughout the nineteenth century women continued to identify with family life and that the main objective of single women was to be married. This meant that they had little job commitment, because "women simply did not define their lives through work". 18 When they had to earn wages before marriage, Branca suggests that they chose work, such as domestic service, which had features that were similar to those found in a family setting. Moreover, they were always reluctant to enter factory employment which "was never their preferred work". 19 She argues that in the late 328 nineteenth century women were eager to enter the new white-blouse occupations because they were still "seeking to combine work with a quest for personal contact and for socialisation". She then goes on to suggest that this showed a willingness to seize "on the leading economic trends of a maturing economy ... service work at lower levels proved compatible with women's work goals and constituted a highly viable economic adaptation". 2 ° In the case of married women Branca argues that there was a tendency for them to withdraw from paid employment, for "men, and presumably women, found it inappropriate and degrading for married women to take outside jobs". Thus, married women would not accept employment if it "conflicted with family centred goals". 2 ' As with Tilly and Scott's analysis, Branca's study implies that modernisation simply takes place and that women are then presented with options over which they can exercise some choice. In making choices, for example about whether to seek paid employment, they are influenced by personal taste, economic pressures or traditionalism, although even traditional areas of work can enable them to adapt to modern ways of life. 22 Branca pays little attention, therefore, to changes in the forms of production, to the struggles which took place over how such changes should occur and to the varied ways in which individuals and groups expressed a challenge to industrial capitalism.23 Branca's emphasis on the importance of family values underestimates the effect that the experience of work itself could have on the extent and type of employment that women did. Earlier studies tend to argue that paid employment outside the home for women, both during and after industrialisation, presented the possibility of altering the balance of 329 power between the sexes. 24 Recent research suggests that the experience of work is more likely to reinforce women's domestic role and subordinate status within the home. In a study of contemporary office workers, for example, Fiona McNally argues that the lack of opportunities for promotion or interesting work offered in the labour market, combined with low rates of pay, are just as important in explaining women's willingness to accept a subordinate status in the family and in the work- place as their attachment to the home. 25 She suggests that women's orientations to work are not fixed solely by their upbringing and by their education, but that they can "be sustained, modified and frustrated by the experience of work itself". 26 Leslie Woodcock Tentler's examination of women's work in Pmerica between 1900 and 1930 also stresses that the predominant features of female employment, such as low pay, monotony and lack of promotion prospects, along with a low status in the occupational hierarchy, did nothing to alter women's expectations of future marriage. She claims that it served instead to reinforce their identification with a domestic role which at least had the attraction of giving them control over their own lives and the lives of others.27 Tentler's work is important for highlighting the ways in which work, both at a practical and at an ideological level, could reinforce women's commitment to domesticity.