The "Ideal" Family.

One of the most popular songs of mid-nineteenth-century America was the sentimental ballad "Home, Sweet Home," written by American expatriate John Howard Payne in 1823. It was sung in soldiers' camps on both sides of the Civil War, as well as in parlors for the rest of the century. Like their European counterparts, Americans envisioned an ideal family life in which a strong, authoritative father figure was the main breadwinner and a loving mother ran the household and provided its moral center. This "angel of the house" tried to create a refuge from a corrupt modern world, a quiet, clean, and comfortable place of repose for the weary father at the end of his working day.

New Roles for Women.

Most Americans still lived and worked on independent farms, where the mother and children played a...