Family, Migration, and Social Values in the Industrial Era

The family of the industrial era was the battlefield where matters of gender were resolved and cultural contacts were mediated at a time of great demographic change. Urbanization and westward expansion proceeded simultaneously, the South and Northeast lost population to western and north central states, and immigration accelerated after 1900, with women participating in these upheavals sometimes as prime movers and at other times as reluctant venturers. This demographic and economic turmoil prompted the state and other external agencies to intervene increasingly in family life in an attempt to bring all sectors of the population into conformity with reformers’ and lawmakers’ views about appropriate gender and age relations. They regarded the white middle-class urban model of wage-earning father, home-making mother, and dependent children as the ideal family, yet the discrepancies between ethnic and racial groups over women’s individual interests and those of the family continued to characterize population trends in this era.