Feminists

before people understood the idea of germs, etc. Septicaemia, or massive infection because someone used unwashed hands to delivery babies, for instance, was a big cause of death for women.

A friend of mine had a great-great-great-great (however many) grandmother who delivered babies back in "old Europe." Sometimes the uterus would prolapse because of multiple childbirths - the "cure" was to use a potato to prevent the uterus from falling out of the vagina.

good times. good times.

but, yeah, because so many women died in childbirth or from multiple childbirths - there were lots of remarriages to take care of children and just simply survive. That's one reason why there are so many "wicked" stepmothers in old stories - no doubt some of these stepmothers favored their own children, especially in times when resources were scarce, because of that whole "selfish gene" idea, sadly. But no doubt, also, stepmothers were common, whether they were kind or mean.

people learned to love one another - romantic love wasn't the reason for lots of marriages. the love came after the marriage. hopefully came after. once a woman was married, tho - that was usually it.

my mother was divorced back when people just didn't do this. her husband abandoned her and her small child. it was a big "embarrassment" in my family because my half-brother, who is 11 years older than me, spent time in daycare. I learned about this when I was older - including the "shame" part. no "respectable" family put a child in daycare - but my mom had to go to work. She lived in the city. Her other choice was to live on the farm and work there - but since she had been doing that since she was 8 years old, I guess she wanted to do something else and not be isolated out in the middle of nowhere around some very, very strict religious believers.

in the rural south in the U.S., conditions were horrid for people into the 1960s, until Democrats worked to elevate their situations - before that, FDR helped by bringing electricity via the "horrible" govt. program, the TVA. I don't get why so many southerners vote for Republicans when the south has only benefited from Democratic policies, but... they do.

I do think the societal "norm" is that people will pair off and have children - it's only been a few decades since women could have sex without the idea that children would result. It's amazing to me that the Republicans want to take women back to that time, or want to punish young women who have sex before marriage with abstinence programs. It seems barbaric to me.

I grew up with the idea that of course women would use birth control and plan their families. My mother was among the first generation of women who did so.

But in that earlier post - wondering about women's behavior vis a vis economic parity - the reality is still that women earn less than men, on avg. and divorce can be a path to poverty. So, yes, still, economics plays a big part in issues like marriage. Not to say that women marry for money, but divorce can be out of the question for many when children are involved b/c of economics, even in bad situations. Women have to accept that they are often making the decision to move from middle to lower class economic status with divorce.