ABSTRACT
Early in her study of farm wives’ work, completed just before the First World War, rural sociologist Maria Bidlingmaier identified a fundamental dilemma facing German family farms. On the one hand, they were under pressure to produce more and more food for sale to urban consumers. On the other, the shortage of agricultural hired laborers, or Gesinde, had become chronic and widespread.1 Bidlingmaier listed three alternatives for managing the problem but noted that the first two, either to revert to extensive cultivation or to decrease the size of their enterprises, would be excessively risky and might well lead to impoverishment. She described the third option, that family members simply work harder, as the only viable one for the vast majority of family farms. She concluded:
This means above all the farm wife … Two recent developments, the move toward greater intensification on the one hand, and the labor shortage on the other, shape the fate of farm wives in reciprocal ways. Neither happens in isolation. Both demand an increase in women’s labor.2
