ABSTRACT
The demand for women's market labor clashed with the terms of the colonial family ethic, which favored economic productivity by women only if it occurred within the confines of the home. The industrial family ethic first appeared in the 1790s, became institutionalized in the 1830s, and was further refined after the Civil War. Marriage, the seat of private and personal service, remained essential to the proper exercise of domestic virtues under the industrial family ethic. The industrial family ethic also held women to be subordinate to men. Within the home, mutual responsibility and family love would counter the cash nexus and the individualism of exchange – an antidote to the harsh reality of capitalist work relations. Motherhood, one of the Puritan woman's many tasks, became the central responsibility for women in the industrial era. The decline of women's economically productive role in the home, for example, violated the colonial family ethic's mandate against idleness.
