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430 points mhb | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.453s | source
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PeterHolzwarth ◴[] No.46179223[source]
"A woman's work is never done."

In our agrarian past, the cultural division of labor at the time said that men worked the field, women ran the home. And that later job was brutal, never-ending, and consumed all waking hours until the day she died.

Men broke their backs in the field, women consumed their lives doing the ceaseless work that never ended, every waking moment. (And occasionally helped out in the field, too).

Running a family was a brutal two-person job -- and the kids had to dive in to help out the second they could lift something heavier than a couple pounds.

We forget so easily that for the entire history of our species - up until just recently - simply staying alive and somewhat warm and minimally fed was a hundred-hour-a-week job for mom and dad.

There are important downsides, but the Green Revolution - and dare I say it, the industrial revolution - was truly transformative for our species.

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coldtea ◴[] No.46183746[source]
>In our agrarian past, the cultural division of labor at the time said that men worked the field, women ran the home. And that later job was brutal, never-ending, and consumed all waking hours until the day she died.

On the plus side, they also didn't have to do the hard dangerous jobs like mining coal, building houses, and the like, nor did they have to go to the army, fight to defend their country (at least not as soldiers), and many other things.

Running the house was hardly "brutal", neither did it consume "all waking hours until the day she died".

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1. politelemon ◴[] No.46184181[source]
This is a fairly common misconception, based on the incorrect notion that housework back then looks like it does today.
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2. coldtea ◴[] No.46184601[source]
Yeah, that it was "brutal" is a common misconception.

Beside the fact that duties were shared among extended family members, it was really not that brutal, and that's including "heavier" chores like bringing water from the well and firewood.

Another common misconception is that what they did "back then" is something ancient or medieval. People in the country did pretty much all the same chores with the same tools well into the 20th century. x