Family Life

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The coming of war, war itself, and the aftermath of war have profound effects upon individual families and family life generally. Such was the case in the nineteenth century, especially with respect to the Civil War (1861–1865).

The nineteenth-century family was as important and complicated as families are today. Most people regarded marriage as both desirable and necessary. A legal or religious ceremony usually formalized marriage, though some couples in far-flung areas merely moved in and lived together as husband and wife. Among rich and poor alike, the household often included aging parents, single brothers and sisters, and parentless nieces and nephews. Newly married couples often lived with parents until they could establish their own households. According to coverture laws, wives were secondary to their husbands and could not claim their own property.

Divorce rarely disrupted family life, but not because married couples were happier than they are today; people of that era did not expect that marriage would necessarily mean lifelong happiness. Obtaining a divorce was extremely difficult, and women found it hard to survive independently because job opportunities were limited. The major cause of family instability in the nineteenth century was death, for mortality rates were high, especially among infants and young children and women of childbearing age. Over the course of the century, as health and medical care improved, mortality declined, more babies survived infancy, and adults lived longer.

Nineteenth-century families tended to be large, especially in rural areas where children were expected to be productive workers. Though birth control methods were unknown to most people and were generally ineffective, the number of children born to women of childbearing age declined significantly during the nineteenth century, which suggests that couples made some effort to limit family size.

Among the poor, roles tended to overlap, and everyone pitched in to ensure family survival. Women and children often worked in the fields, and older children cared for younger siblings. For the middle and upper classes, society defined proper family roles. Fathers were to support the family. As the nation urbanized and industrialized, more men began to work outside the home, and their dayto-day contact with the family declined. Mothers had charge of nurturing their children, inculcating moral and religious views, and overseeing domestic chores. Men left most household and child-related responsibilities to their wives. Often mothers home-schooled their offspring until children were old enough to go to a more advanced school. Attending boarding school was common among privileged children.

The Civil War had an enormous impact on family life. With millions of men participating in the four-year war, eligible young women found it difficult to find partners. Women whose husbands served in the military were left alone to oversee the family and, in rural areas, to run the farm. With the death of some 618,000 men, the war created many widows who now had permanent charge of their families. Those who did welcome home a returning soldier often found him physically or psychologically wounded. Thus, at least temporarily, women often became the major bread-earners in their families or turned to their surviving children for help. In the South in particular, both rich and poor families encountered severe poverty and the loss of their homes, crops, and farm animals due to four years of war fought on their soil.

The importance of the family was especially evident after slaves gained their freedom in 1865, for many African-American spouses who had been separated before the Civil War traveled widely in search of their partners and children. Slave owners had controlled slave marriages and family life and encouraged family formation in order to enhance the stability of the slave community and foster reproduction. Special laws dictated family structure. For instance, slave children fathered by free men had the status of their slave mother. Laws stated that slave marriages were not legally binding, for this would have prevented an owner from selling a married slave. Nevertheless, slaves did marry, either in an actual ceremony or by moving in together. Because slave marriages were not legal, they could dissolve easily merely by one party leaving the relationship. A number of slave families had both a father and mother present. But slave sales and "abroad marriages" (when a husband and wife lived on different plantations) created many single-parent slave families. Many children were raised by their mothers, perhaps with the help of extended family members living on the same plantation. Slave children were always accountable to two "fathers"—their biological father and their master. After the Emancipation, the family continued to be an important tool for survival as African Americans eked out a living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

By the late nineteenth century, families experienced some change. New state laws passed after the Civil War gave women greater access to their own property and wages. Divorce procedures became easier. The family became more child-centered, suggesting that perhaps those who had lived through the Civil War were well aware of the fragility of life and began to express more concern for their offspring. Society placed increasing emphasis on the importance of early nurturing and the need for institutions to play a greater role in a child's upbringing. Public schools, kindergartens, Sunday schools, and literature published especially for children reflected this trend. Families, then as now, were an important institution for survival, love, education, and support, and were both resilient from and vulnerable to the destructive effects of war.

Children and the Civil War; Education; Slavery.

Censer, Jane Turner. North Carolina Planters and Their Children, 1800–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.

Degler, Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.

Malone, Ann Patton. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Marten, James Alan. The Children's Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

McMillen, Sally G. Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth and Infant Rearing. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

Mintz, Steven and Kellogg, Susan. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press, 1988.

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