Through cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of two samples
of families living in Indianapolis from 1860 to 1880 and from 1900 to 1920,
I test several hypotheses on how families adjusted their use of three income-
generating strategies (wives' employment, children's employment, and taking
in boarders) to their social, economic and demographic milieu as well as to their changing needs and opportunities as they moved through the family life cycle.
The bulk of families in both periods used at least one of these strategies at some
point, relying on strategies of wives early in the life cycle and/or strategies of
children later. Relative to families in the post-1860 period, families after the
turn of the century relied more on the paid work of wives and daughters and
less on boarding and sons' employment as sources of income.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aldous, Joan and Reuben Hill.1969. "Breaking the Poverty Cycle: Strategic Points for Intervention." Social Work14:3-12.
2.
Barrows, Robert G.1977. A Demographic Analysis of Indianapolis, 1870-1920. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington.
3.
_. 1981. "Hurryin' Hoosiers and the American 'Pattern'." Social Science History5:197-222.
4.
Broadman, Anthony E. and Michael P. Weber .1977. "Economic Growth and Occupational Mobility in 19th Century Urban America: A Reappraisal." Journal of Social History11:52-74.
5.
Degler, Carl N.1980. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6.
Doherty, William J.1981. Indianapolis in the 1870s: Hard Times in the Gilded Age . Bloomington, Indiana: Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University.
7.
Doyle, Don Harrison.1983. The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-1870. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
8.
Elman, Cheryl.1993. "Turn-of-the-Century Dependence and Interdependence: Roles of Teens in Family Economies of the Aged." Journal of Family History18:65-85.
9.
Easterlin, Richard A., George Alter, and Gretchen A. Condran .1978. "Farms and Farm Families in Old and New Areas: The Northern States in 1860." Pp. 22-83 in Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Tamara K. Hareven and Maris A. Vinovskis.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
10.
Fletcher, Stephen J.1992. "The Business of Exposure: Lewis Hine and Child Labor Reform." Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History4:12-23.
11.
Fraundorf, Martha Norby.1979. "The Labor Participation of Turn-of-the-Century Married Women." Journal of Economic History39:401-417.
12.
Glasco, Lawrence A.1979. "The Life Cycles and Household Structure of American Ethnic Groups: Irish, Germans, and Native-born Whites in Buffalo, New York, 1855 ." Pp. 268-339 in A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women , edited by Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck.New York: Simon and Schuster.
13.
Goldin, Claudia.1981. "Family Strategies and the Family Economy in the Late 19th Century: The Role of Secondary Workers."Pp. 277-310 in Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Theodore Hershberg.New York: Oxford University Press.
14.
Griffen, Clyde and Sally Griffen.1978. Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
15.
Haines, Michael R.1979a. "Industrial Work and the Family Life Cycle, 1889-1890 ." Research in Economic History4:289-356.
16.
_. 1979b. Fertility and Occupation: Population Patterns in Industrialization . New York: Academic Press.
17.
Hale, Hester Anne.1987. Indianapolis: The First Century. Indianapolis : Marion County/ Indianapolis Historical Society .
18.
Hareven, Tamara K.1975. "Family Time and Industrial Time: Family and Work in a Planned Corporate Town, 1900-1924." Journal of Urban History1:365-389.
19.
Heckman, J.J.1979. "Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error." Econometrica47:153-162.
20.
Hershberg, Theodore and Robert Dockhorn .1976. "Occupational Classification ." Historical Methods Newsletter9:59-89.
21.
Hirsch, Susan E.1978. The Roots of the American Working Class: The Industrialization of Crafts in Newark, 1800-1860. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
22.
Hogan, David John.1985. Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880-1930 . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
23.
Horan, Patrick M. and Peggy G. Hargis .1991. "Children's Work and Schooling in the Late Nineteen-Century Family Economy." American Sociological Review56:583-596.
24.
Hunter, Andrea G.1993. "Making a Way: Strategies of Southern Urban African-American Families, 1900 and 1930." Journal of Family History18:231-248.
25.
Indiana Department of Statistics.1894. "Domestic Labor." Pp. 173-229 in Fifth Biennial Report for 1893-1894 . Indianapolis: William B. Burford .
26.
Kaestle, Carl F. and Maris A. Vinovskis .1978. "From Fireside to Factory: School Entry and School Leaving in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts." Pp. 135-186 in Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective , edited by Tamara K. Hareven.New York: Academic Press.
27.
Katz, Michael B. and Ian E. Davey.1978. "Youth and Early Industrialization in a Canadian City." American Journal of Sociology84:81-119.
28.
Katz, Michael B., Michael J. Doucet, and Mark J. Stern.1982. The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
29.
Kershner, Frederick D., Jr. 1949. "From Country Town to Industrial City: The Urban Pattern of Indianapolis." Indiana Magazine of History45:327-338.
30.
Kessler-Harris, Alice.1982. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31.
Kett, Joseph.1977. Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present. New York: Basic.
32.
Kobrin, Frances E.1978. "The Fall in Household Size and the Rise of the Primary Individual in the United States." Pp. 69-81 in The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, edited by Michael Gordon. Second edition. New York: St. Martin's.
33.
Madison, James H.1972. Businessmen and the Business Community in Indianapolis, 1820-1860. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington.
34.
Modell, John.1978. "Patterns of Consumption, Acculturation, and Family Income Strategies in Late Nineteenth-Century America." Pp. 206-240 in Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Tamara K. Hareven and Maris A. Vinovskis.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
35.
Modell, John and Tamara K. Hareven .1973. "Urbanization and the Malleable Household: Boarding and Lodging in American Families." Journal of Marriage and the Family35:467-479.
36.
Phillips, Clifton J.1968. Indiana in Transition: The Emergence of an Industrial Commonwealth, 1880-1920. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society.
37.
Pleck, Elizabeth.1978. "A Mother's Wages: Income Earning Among Married Italian and Black Women, 1896-1911." Pp. 490-510 in The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, edited by Michael Gordon. Second edition. New York: St. Martin's.
38.
Robinson, Robert V.1989. "Economic Differentiation and Wages in a Nineteenth Century City: Indianapolis, 1850-1880." Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society, St. Louis, Missouri.
39.
. 1993. "Economic Necessity and the Life Cycle in the Family Economy of 19th Century Indianapolis." American Journal of Sociology99:49-74.
40.
Robinson, Robert V. and Carl M. Briggs.1991. "The Rise of Factories in 19th Century Indianapolis, 1850-1880." American Journal of Sociology97:622-656.
41.
Robinson, Robert V. and Ana-Maria Wahl.1990. "Industrial Employment and Wages of Women, Men, and Children in a 19th Century City: Indianapolis, 1850-1880." American Sociological Review55:912-928.
42.
Rotella, Elyce J.1980. "Women's Labor Force Participation and the Decline of the Family Economy in the United States." Explorations in Economic History17:95-117.
43.
Schellekens, Jona.1993. "Wages, Secondary Workers, and Fertility: A Working-Class Perspective of the Fertility Transition in England and Wales." Journal of Family History18:1-17.
44.
Smuts, R.W.1959. Women and Work in America. New York : Columbia University Press.
45.
Tilly, Louise A.1979. "The Family Wage Economy of a French Textile City: Roubaix, 1872-1906." Journal of Family History4:381-394.
46.
Tilly, Louise A. and Joan W. Scott.1978. Women, Work, and Family. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston.
47.
U.S. Bureau of the Census.1864. Report on the Population of the United States in 1860. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
48.
. 1872 . The Statistics of the Population of the U.S. Ninth Census. 1870. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
49.
. 1883 . Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880), Vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
50.
_. 1902. Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900. Population: Part IIWashington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
51.
. 1914 . 13th Census of the United States, Vol. IV, Population, 1910: Occupational Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
52.
. 1921. Population: Number and Distribution of Inhabitants, Fourteenth Census— 1920, Vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
53.
. 1923a. 14th Census of the United States, Vol. IV, Population, 1920: Occupations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
54.
. 1923b. Manufactures: Report for States, with Statistics for Principal Cities, 14th CensusWashington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
55.
_. 1975. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
56.
Van den Eeckhout.1993. "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families Ca. 1900 ." Journal of Family History18:87-110.
57.
Weiner, Lynn Y.1985. From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States: 1820-1980. Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press.
58.
Welter, Barbara.1966. "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860." American Quarterly18:151-174.
