ABSTRACT
Within the family, these general social differences will find expression in the role in which the wife casts her husband. If he earns his daily bread by heavy bodily exertion, a man's sleep and food requirements are likely to be given a place of special importance, and the wife feels called upon to minister to these physical needs as a matter of first priority. For the man who works all day cramped at the coal face, in the hot vibrating cab of a heavy vehicle, standing at a clanging machine on the factory floor or out of doors in all weathers, home is still primarily the place where he finds his creature comforts and can enjoy physical relaxation in congenial surroundings. The wife must recognize such needs as basic and urgent, and be prepared to accommodate to them. Her first function is to feed him. Whether or not the rest of the family is due for a meal, the manual worker expects his dinner to be ready on the table within a few minutes of his return home; if his hours are irregular, he will eat alone rather than wait. If there are grown-up sons living at home, the same treatment will be accorded to them, and if necessary the housewife will provide hot meals at regular intervals as the men come in; one informant told us, as an example of the very domineering behaviour of a neighbour's husband, that he insisted that his son, coming home from work half-an-hour earlier than himself, should wait that amount of time for his meal. The wife will often take pains also to protect the wageearner from discomfort during his leisure hours; when he is at
home, she may deliberately avoid doing certain major chores, such as washing or floor-scrubbing, because she does not wish to upset the domestic environment while he is in the house.
