Female Householding in Late Eighteenth-Century America and the Problem of Poverty

Abstract

Families in early modern England were more than twice as likely to be headed by a woman as were white households in late eighteenth-century America. On average, in a preindustrial English community, women headed between one-sixth and one-fifth of all households. In the United States in 1790, by contrast, less than one-thirteenth had female household heads or householders.1 The incidence of female householding provides an important window on preindustrial American society. Its magnitude and ramiScations deserve analysis and discussion for at least four reasons. First, householder was a significant status, particularly because households were very important units of social and economic life in the preindustrial era. Householders served as the directors of the predominant institution of economic production. While not a primary category in thinking about the family, householding nevertheless was a consequence of other statuses that mattered more centrally, at least for men. Since newlywed couples established households, becoming a head (and wives were considered co-heads, especially with respect to matters that were internal to the household) conveyed independence from the control of parents. Indeed, the contrast between autonomy and dependence was at the heart of legal definitions and other perceptions of social roles in early modern Anglo-America. The category of female household heads thus is crucial for assessing one critical arena of social autonomy for women.2 Second, like their current counterparts, women who were particularly likely to head households in preindustrial England and America also were disproportionately prone to be impoverished. Consequently they were subjects for support from and intervention by agents beyond the household: informal aid from kin, charity from private individuals or voluntary groups, and poor relief from public authorities. As the wages and assets of these female household heads were lower than those enjoyed by male family heads, on average they were closer to poverty. Additionally, as women householders frequently had responsibility for the support of minor children, they shared their meager incomes with others, increasing the numbers facing poverty. A heterogeneous group, women who headed households had some stability of residence and thus status in the community. Some were even widows of means, who had the inherited resources and practical skills to support themselves and their families comfortably. But for many women familially unattached to the households of husbands or fathers, private troubles became, in many instances, public problems. The study of the incidence of female-headed households proS vides an indirect entry into the analysis of one large segment of the population of the poor of preindustrial society, a portion that was relatively larger in England than in America.