Family Wage

The ideal-typical construction of the family wage is one designed for a male breadwinner to support his wife's in-home caretaking responsibilities. The initial impetus for the family wage can be traced to the increased industrialization and labor activism in the early 1800s. With the shift from the agrarian eighteenth century to the early industrialization of the nineteenth century in the United States and Britain, there developed a view of separate spheres that ideologically located the primary role of women within their homes. The ideological separation of public and private spheres provided justification for employers to deny employment to married women, to regulate the type of work women performed, and to treat women as secondary workers who were supplementing the wages of the primary worker, namely, the male head of household.

The family wage ideology first developed in connection with pressures to increase the wages for workers in the growing industrial sector. Labor activists and social reformers both emphasized the importance of so-called living wages for the economic survival of working-class families. The family wage ideology was used to justify an increase in the wages of male workers, who would then be able to support their dependent wives and children. The assumption of the family wage ideology was that all women workers would eventually become wives and mothers. Therefore, a woman would indirectly benefit from a male wage earner's income if it were adequate to support a dependent wife and children. Single women workers did not require a family wage, since it was presumed that they did not have households to support. Economists and labor organizers built their arguments for a family wage on beliefs that an increase in women's employment would lower wages for all workers and would upset the so-called natural order. The employment of married women would also take a toll on the well-being of their children; therefore, a family wage was viewed as an effective economic solution to a social problem.

However, for many male workers, the idea of the “family wage” rarely translated into the income needed for a single wage earner to support an unpaid caregiver and children. Payment of a family wage was dependent on a number of criteria set by employers that distinguished between worthy and unworthy workers. For example, in the Ford Motor Company, only male workers who could demonstrate that they were over the age of 22, married, and taking care of their families in a manner acceptable to company representatives could qualify for the family wage ($5 a day in 1914, when it was established). Women were initially not covered by the family wage policy, but after protests by reformers such as Jane Addams, the policy was amended to include women, though only those who could demonstrate that they were sole providers for their families.

In the case of the Ford Motor Company, the family wage reduced turnover and mitigated against threats of unionization at the time. However, the wage set at one moment in time inevitably became devalued during periods of economic downturn and inflation, thus requiring ongoing demands for wage increases to keep up with the cost of living. Despite the family wage's short-lived existence and circumscribed reach, it had a very significant effect on women's labor market participation and income. It helped keep women's wages low and support continued discrimination against married women workers. According to the ideology of the family wage, women's relationship to the paid labor market was defined as peripheral to male wage earners. Women's economic needs and work experiences were masked in discussions of the family wage. In fact, many working-class women continued to work for wages because the family wage never materialized for many male [Page 268]wage earners. Furthermore, discussions of the family wage failed to acknowledge the economic needs of single mothers and wives of unemployed male workers. Since the construction of the family wage was designed to support so-called respectable households (as defined by white, middle-class values), recent immigrant families and African American families rarely received a family wage.

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