Men's Group
In reply to the discussion: Is it a privilege to be able to stay at home and not work? [View all]lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)The industrial revolution didn't reduce labor in the home or out. Modern hunter gatherer tribes work less than 8 hours each day, usually more like 4. Farming was hard work, but men who moved from the farms to the city saw their workweek shoot up to nearly 70 hours weekly in the 1830's.
I don't think the IR freed women from their crucial indispensable role, nor did it materially reduce the time required to perform it. What it did do was artificially divide men and women in the home, particularly when it came to child-rearing. In the early pioneer days of this country, it was considered the father's job to homeschool the kids. Parenting was largely shared, even if the tasks of fathering and mothering were dramatically different.
As working hours (both inside and outside the home) declined, the new artificial parenting firewall persisted.
I think this has caused some nontrivial harm to kids, particularly boys, who have been told, generation through generation that when they become fathers the wellbeing of their kids is only their business in a financial sense.
So the more I think about this, I think it's not so much about "privilege" as "unrecognized responsibility".