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>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-endin

• catlover76 11mo ago
  The fuck? Who do you think built the houses? > army, fight to defend their country (at least not as soldiers), and many other things. In most places and times, didn't all men just get conscripted into war frequently? > Running the house was hardly "brutal", neither did it consume "all waking hours until the day she died". Why do you think it didn't consume all waking hours?
  • coldtea 11mo ago
    >Who do you think built the houses? The men. Again, I'm writing there about what women didn't have to do. >In most places and times, didn't all men just get conscripted into war frequently? Yes, and thus what I wrote is that women didn't have to do it. (My point was: "yes, women did the house tasks, but on the plus side, they didn't have to do those other far more dangerous and hard things"). >Why do you think it didn't consume all waking hours? I don't think it didn't, I know it didn't. For starters it was shared among larger family units (including several kids). And even when it wasn't, like some people living on their own, it hardly took a few hours each day, and that's including maintaining a fire, cooking, some cleaning, feeding some nearby hens, bringing water, and things like that. Modern people over-dependent on modern conveniences overestimate how hard all those things were, as if it was some horror survival movie. In these here parts, people in the country did all the same things people did in the 19th century or the 15th century well into the 20th century (with cars and electricity not reaching many places until the late 1950s), all with plenty of time to spare and socialize.
    • WalterBright 11mo ago
      I'd sure hate to build a house without power tools. Just doing the sawing would break me.
      • phil21 11mo ago
        First few dozen cuts would suck. After that it gets pretty easy, just time consuming. Keeping an old school saw sharp would be far more challenging. I grew up in a household without power tools, and helped gut rehab a few friends houses. Certainly not exactly comparable, but you learn pretty quick sawing is at least as much about technique and skill vs brute strength and stamina.
    • decimalenough 11mo ago
      You're completely missing the single largest source of domestic work, which was clothing. Spinning thread and weaving by hand are incredibly time consuming and consumed 40% of women's working hours. Here's an overview by an actual historian, who estimates that women in a medieval peasant household worked 3,760 hours per year, which averages out to 80 hours per week. https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ive-the-no-rest-of-it/ https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-an...
    • catlover76 11mo ago
      [dead]
• politelemon 11mo ago
  This is a fairly common misconception, based on the incorrect notion that housework back then looks like it does today.
  • coldtea 11mo ago
    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