"A household is the smallest sustainable economic unit. Until recently (in evolutionary scale) a household accommodated a woman of childbearing age caring for her children and simultaneously producing economic output that benefitted the household -- she spun, she knit, she brewed, she tended the garden, she tanned hides. "
I agree in general. But also disagree with the specifics.
In general you are absolutely right that the industrial revolution and all the subsequent aftershocks totally changed our way of life and we are all still adapting to it.
But ...
Agriculture has only been around for 8000 years. Call it 200 generations. At best. Before that for humans were hunter gatherers in small groups. That is likely the way it was ever since some human ancestor decided not to be a monkey in the trees, and possibly it was the case before then too. That's millions of years. Agriculture (and pastroralism) is a recent development in evolutionary terms.
And agricultural villages were not nuclear families (are not if you go visit the more primitive ones that still exist all over the place today) of just two parents and their children. Typically they are siblings + spouses + parents + children. And your cousins live next door and your other cousins live at the end of the village and so on. It's not quite the same as the hunter gatherer band but it isn't that far off.
The two parents and their children on their own thing is an industrial age development.
To push back a little, I think what generations X and later are pissed at the boomers about is they started out as idealistic hippies in the 1960s and by the 1980s became "the wolves of Wall St." I think it's a fair point that it wasn't your fault, and that there were larger forces at work, that a leftist would call late capitalism, and a right winger would call Spenglarian decline.
We could all generations stand to benefit from rejecting urbanism and office work, and reground in a more agrarian and small home business oriented way of life IMO. It will be harder though for later generations as the price of land has risen more quickly than wages, due to the inflationary nature of post industrial societies.
"A household is the smallest sustainable economic unit. Until recently (in evolutionary scale) a household accommodated a woman of childbearing age caring for her children and simultaneously producing economic output that benefitted the household -- she spun, she knit, she brewed, she tended the garden, she tanned hides. "
I agree in general. But also disagree with the specifics.
In general you are absolutely right that the industrial revolution and all the subsequent aftershocks totally changed our way of life and we are all still adapting to it.
But ...
Agriculture has only been around for 8000 years. Call it 200 generations. At best. Before that for humans were hunter gatherers in small groups. That is likely the way it was ever since some human ancestor decided not to be a monkey in the trees, and possibly it was the case before then too. That's millions of years. Agriculture (and pastroralism) is a recent development in evolutionary terms.
And agricultural villages were not nuclear families (are not if you go visit the more primitive ones that still exist all over the place today) of just two parents and their children. Typically they are siblings + spouses + parents + children. And your cousins live next door and your other cousins live at the end of the village and so on. It's not quite the same as the hunter gatherer band but it isn't that far off.
The two parents and their children on their own thing is an industrial age development.
To push back a little, I think what generations X and later are pissed at the boomers about is they started out as idealistic hippies in the 1960s and by the 1980s became "the wolves of Wall St." I think it's a fair point that it wasn't your fault, and that there were larger forces at work, that a leftist would call late capitalism, and a right winger would call Spenglarian decline.
We could all generations stand to benefit from rejecting urbanism and office work, and reground in a more agrarian and small home business oriented way of life IMO. It will be harder though for later generations as the price of land has risen more quickly than wages, due to the inflationary nature of post industrial societies.