ly, some children suffered the loss of arms or fingers due to the machinery and there was nothing parents could really do about it. Factory work during the industrial revolution also affected the family’s personal time, as people would be forced to work their entire day everyday in order to put food on the table. The average worker usually started at six in the morning and went late into the evening with only: a half hour for breakfast and tea, and an hour for dinner. This proved detrimental as each member of the family would be placed in different locations in the factory and would not see each other for the duration of the day. Unlike today, where people interact with their families on a fairly regular basis, if not daily, the definition of the family in the latter 19th century was changing. This would of course be a somewhat of a culture shock for county folk who were used to the isolation of family farms or small businesses and were now faced with the over shadowing of industrialized industry. Before industrialization, the family was the basic social unit. Most families were rural, large, and self-sustaining; they produced and processed almost everything that was needed for their own support and for trading in the marketplace. Basically, families were self-sufficient. In these pre-industrial families women had a lot to do and their time was almost entirely absorbed by household tasks. Under industrialization the household was no longer the focus of production as the production for the marketplace as well as sustenance had been removed. New industrialized families became smaller after the move from rural centers of employment to urban ones. The number of social functions they performed was reduced until almost all that remained was consumption, and the socialization of small children. As the family’s functions diminished, families became secondary to work and the social bonds that had held them together before...
