In the heyday of premodern aristocratic dominance in Europe, median life expectancy at birth was ~10 years, so about half the children died before they turned 11 (though the ones that survived the fragile first decade tended to live a lot longer after). Between this grim statistic, stillbirth, other accidents that could kill them later on, women had a lot more children than today and spent a longer time pregnant or nursing.
The result of this, of course, is that women could spend less time working the fields and were more dependent on their family and partners to do the bread-winning labour (they were by no means idle; spinning thread, fetching water, spinning thread, making food, spinning thread, weaving, making clothes, spinning thread, cleaning the house and so forth all took a lot of time and work (particularly spinning thread, if it wasn’t clear enough), it just didn’t suffice to make a living.
Before that background, I suspect that there is a method to this, whether consciously planned or a byproduct of chasing a past where men were even more dominant than they still are: Chaining women to childcare and domestic work to render them dependent on their male family members.
Maybe it’s a crackpot conspiracy theory. At this point, it’s getting hard to tell what’s intentional bigotry and what just suspiciously looks like it.
In the heyday of premodern aristocratic dominance in Europe, median life expectancy at birth was ~10 years, so about half the children died before they turned 11 (though the ones that survived the fragile first decade tended to live a lot longer after). Between this grim statistic, stillbirth, other accidents that could kill them later on, women had a lot more children than today and spent a longer time pregnant or nursing.
The result of this, of course, is that women could spend less time working the fields and were more dependent on their family and partners to do the bread-winning labour (they were by no means idle; spinning thread, fetching water, spinning thread, making food, spinning thread, weaving, making clothes, spinning thread, cleaning the house and so forth all took a lot of time and work (particularly spinning thread, if it wasn’t clear enough), it just didn’t suffice to make a living.
Source: https://acoup.blog/2025/08/08/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-iiib-children-and-childrearing/
Before that background, I suspect that there is a method to this, whether consciously planned or a byproduct of chasing a past where men were even more dominant than they still are: Chaining women to childcare and domestic work to render them dependent on their male family members.
Maybe it’s a crackpot conspiracy theory. At this point, it’s getting hard to tell what’s intentional bigotry and what just suspiciously looks like it.