The New Poor Law and the Breadwinner Wage
Contrasting Assumptions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9080304 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Clark (0000-0003-1003-9673), Kim Clark (0000-0001-8044-6069, University of Minnesota, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 261-281 |
| Publication date | 2000-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-4529 • E-ISSN: 1527-1897 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jsh.2000.0138 |
| OpenAlex | W2059844706 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 27 |
It has often been assumed that the nineteenth-century English New Poor Law enshrined women's dependence on men and upheld the breadwinner wage. However, three very distinct understandings of the breadwinner wage shaped poor law policy from 1834--1908, each with different implications for women's work. First, inspired by Malthus, the promulgators of the 1834 New Poor Law believed that if a man could not support his family, he should not marry, and if a woman could not find a husband who earned enough, she must support herself and her children by earning wages. Second, by the 1870s, poor law officials and social reformers understood the breadwinner wage as a reward ordinary working men should be able to earn by proving their respectability. Charities aided respectable wives of ill breadwinners so they would not have to go out to work, but they still expected "unrespectable" wives, and all single women and widows, to work to support themselves. The notion that working men had a right to earn a breadwinner wage and to keep their wives at home only became enshrined in the welfare system by 1908, and derived not from poor law traditions, but from trade union agitation, Liberal policies, and eugenic concerns
Demographic economics · Economic history · Economics · Political science · Sociology · Wage · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
Oikopolitics, and Storms
Cuerpo y metáforas de género en la historia del pensamiento económico político
"Building Their Readiness For Economic "Freedom
The Wages of Relief
Masculinity, Social Mobility, and the Plan to End Pauperism in Mid-Victorian England
The Obligation to Support the Widow
Poor relief and families in nineteenth-century Ireland and Italy
The Law's a Bachelor”
The Insurrectionist Moment
Did Soldiers Really Enlist to Desert Their Wives? Revisiting the Martial Character of Marital Desertion in Eighteenth-Century London
The Gendered Economy of Family Liability
The fiction of female dependence and the makeshift economy of soldiers, sailors, and their wives in eighteenth-century London
Fatherhood, Providing, and Attachment in Late Victorian and Edwardian Working-Class Families
Sentiment and Prejudice
Women's Fabian Tracts
Sin, Organized Charity and the Poor Law in Victorian England
Patriarchy stabilized
Gender antagonism and class conflict
Parson Malthus, Professor Huzel, and the Pelican Inn Protocol
Localities, Class and Gender
Whigs and Paupers
The Origins and Expansion of the Male Breadwinner Family
The Rise and Decline of the Male Breadwinner Family? An Overview of the Debate
The New Poor Law
Poor law policy, unemployment, and pauperism
The Power of Persuasion
Poor-Law Reform
The Working Class and State ‘Welfare’ in Britain, 1880–1914
Tories and Paupers
The Poor Have a Claim Founded in the Law of Nature
English Poor Law Policy and the Crusade Against Outrelief
Imperialism and Motherhood
Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England
Social motherhood and the sexual communion of labour in British Social Science, 1850-1950
The Making of the New Poor Law Redivivus
The Poor Law Report of 1834
Bastardy and the New Poor Law
The Voluntary Sector, the State and Social Work in Britain
Political Economists and the English Poor Laws
Spencer's Sociology of Welfare
The 'Family Wage' and Working Women's Consciousness in Britain, 1880-1914
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,64 |
| Citation span | 2004 - 2024 (21) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |