Because supporting your children financially reeks of selfishness, right.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
Seriously, characterizing anything a woman does that's not wandering around a locked kitchen with a baby hanging off each tit, boiling dinner, as "selfish?" That wasn't even a cute look last century.
PROTIP: "Housewives" were, and always have been, a luxury. "Working women" are, and always have been, the norm.
The concept of a woman that stayed home and did nothing but tend to housework and children was originally a status symbol, the same way obesity once was. Just like being able to afford to be fat was a rare luxury, so was an able-bodied family member that did no outside work.
More commonly, women held stalls in the market, brewed alcohol or grew crops for sale/consumption, traded in other goods, taught, provided services like folk medicine, childcare, midwifery... jobs they could do in conjunction with mothering and home labor.
(Also, sex work. LOTS of it. MANY sex workers were married, or mothers, or employed in other work that had slowed down and wasn't providing like it should've. As many as 20% of urban Victorian women were prostitutes, at some point.)
The idea of women at home and no where else being "traditional" is a relic of Post-WWII attempts to get women out of the labor force, and reassign their work to returning soldiers. Yes, it is THAT recent. Within living memory.
Nothing "traditional" about it.
Nothing "traditional" about it.
Like seriously, do y'all genuinely picture medieval village women just like... sitting in their fucking one-room houses all day? Dusting their three pieces of furniture? Really???
I swear. This is what happens when we only learn the history of the rich.
I swear. This is what happens when we only learn the history of the rich.
Families where kids were put to work in the fields in the single digits, but you think mom's inside with an apron on, knitting. HO-KAY.
