|
By Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D.
My academic training is as a social historian, and it is with history that I
wish to begin. Contemporary issues surrounding family life, gender roles, and
child care usually generate controversy. Accordingly, it is important to
remember that the “collision” between home and work – in its origins at least –
was not the result of ideological conflict. The child care problems
facing the member states of The European Union and other economically developed
nations all derive from a common event: what the Hungarian-born economic
historian Karl Polanyi called “The Great Transformation.”
Prior to the breakthrough of industrialism, the normal human condition had been
the unity of work and home. For the vast majority of persons, over thousands of
years, men and women lived and worked in the same place, be it on the peasant or
family farm, in the artisan’s shop, or around the fisher’s cottage. While
subsistence was certainly at a much lower level, this unity of life around the
home economy had advantages. There was no real conflict over gender roles in
such homes; male and female, husband and wife both worked so that the small
family enterprise might succeed, specializing in tasks according to their
relative strengths and skills. Moreover, children were usually welcomed into
these productive homes as potential little workers, and their “care” fit into
the normal rhythms of life.
[Continued...]
|
|
|
Comstockery, Contraception, and the Family The Remarkable Achievements of an
Anti-Vice Crusader
By Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D.
The only effective laws
suppressing birth control information and devices in American history were pure
products of evangelical Protestant fervor; nary a single Roman Catholic was
involved. In key respects, these measures were actually the
construct of one man: Anthony Comstock, a son of
Connecticut, the last and—in a certain respect—the greatest of the Puritans.
He won passage of a sweeping federal measure that banned nationwide the
import, sale, and distribution of contraceptive devices or information; another
24 state laws that effectively banned their possession or use: and judicial
determinations that spread similar provisions to still another 22 states.
Adopted mostly during the 1870’s, none of these measures had been either
repealed or significantly amended prior to his death in 1915; some residual
aspects of the federal “Comstock Law” survive to this day.
[Continued...] |
|
