Masculine Domesticity

Abstract

Male domesticity emerged as a distinct aspect of male identity, particularly among white middle-class men, when the market revolution of the early nineteenth century began to separate social life into private and public spheres. As income-generating labor was removed from the home, and as the home became redefined as a place of consumption and child-rearing (both associated with women), middle-class articulations of manhood became differentiated into two aspects—domesticity and breadwinning—that were both oppositional and mutually dependent.