African American Families In The 19th Century

In the early nineteenth century, a new pattern of family arose based primarily on companionship and affection. Many of productive tasks and jobs of married women were assumed by unmarried women working in factories, and the workplace moved some distance from the household. So, a new kind of urban middle class family had begun to emerge and a new division of domestic roles appeared, which assigned the wife to care full-time for her children and to maintain the home. The divorce rate during the early and mid-nineteenth century began to rise, many states adopted permissive divorce statutes and judicial divorce replaced legislative divorce. If marriages were to rest on mutual affection, then it divorce had to serve as a safety valve from loveless and abusive marriages.

A growing awareness of wife beating and child abuse also occurred in the early nineteenth century, which may have reflected an actual increase in assaults and murders committed against blood relatives. Families became less subject to communal oversight, and traditional assumptions on patriarchal authority were challenged, in addition, an expanding market economy produced new kinds of stresses, so the family could become an arena of explosive tension, conflict and violence. On the other side, African American family faced tragic suffering; various groups have developed different family strategies in response to their social and economic circumstances. No group faced graver threats to family life than enslaved African Americans. Debt, an owner's death, or the prospects of profit could break up slave families. Between 1790 and 1860, a million slaves were sold from the upper to the lower South and another two million slaves were sold within