I think people are confused by seeing influencers and/or rich people and thinking what they have is normal.
In the 1500s it was sun-up to sun-down, 6 days a week for the work outdoors. Once the sun set, nothing could really be done. If you were a typical peasant you couldn’t even afford to keep a candle lit. So, people went back to their one-room huts with their livestock in the same room and slept and/or waited for morning. They didn’t have to work Sundays, but they were absolutely required to attend church on Sundays, so it wasn’t a free day. There were other days off, but many of them were days where you had to do a certain prescribed activity.
In the early 1800s it was 12 hours of work, 6 days a week. Industrial era lighting technology meant that work could continue after the sun had set, so there were no winter days where you only worked 8 hours. Also, because this was the era of the factory, people had to commute to the factory and back, so if you were lucky you had a full 10 or 11 hours when you weren’t working or commuting. If you wanted to sleep for 8 hours, you’d have 2-3 hours to do your cooking, eating, cleaning, bathing, mending, socializing, etc.
Thanks to tireless and bloody protesting by labour unions, 6 days of 12 hours each was shortened to 5 days of 8 hours each. It started in Chicago. The “Haymarket Affair” was a protest that led to a riot which led to public hangings. But, eventually, as a result of that, the work day was shortened to only 8 hours. Then, in the years that followed, a 2 day weekend became standard.
It might not feel like it, but your ancestors would be jealous about how much free time you have these days. Your distant, peasant ancestors might actually have had fewer work hours. But, they only stopped working when it was too dark to do anything, and then they basically sat or slept in a tiny, drafty, stuffy, one-room hut along with their livestock until the sun came up.
If we kill and eat the rich and use their bones as decorations, it would be possible to keep a bit more of the value of our labour. But, we’re nowhere near a situation where we can all live like the rich. Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc. Life is hard, and has always been hard.
Back in the 50s they thought people in the year 2000 would only work 20 hours a week and the biggest problem would be too much free time.
If we don’t make permanent retirement for all of humanity a goal we won’t get there. But the unifying factor for every political party is MOAR JOBZ. Hell, even the ancoms think people should work.
And we basically did that with agriculture already. In industrialized nations less than 10% when just a couple hundred years ago it was over 90%.
Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc. Life is hard
This is only true because capitalism is limiting technology to the point where all these mundane tasks can’t be automated or improved with tech so that it can be possible for all to self-maintain. Yes, not that simple and yeah someone would need to program things and maintain things, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to believe that humanity can waste so much time and money on something as unethical as AI but somehow can’t come up with technology to let people maintain crops without having every piece of the puzzle we have now.
They can do it. Everybody talks about how crazy it is about how in such a short time span we’ve gone from flying planes to landing on the moon and it is ridiculous. It’s not that inconceivable to believe that we can come up with tech to better maintain society beyond what we have now. People want to keep the status quo because they limit their minds to what has been.
Capitalism dictates that profit means everything. We don’t need pot holes to be filled every other year just because people get a job. People shouldn’t be dependent on such a system to survive. Pot holes can be filled with a solution that will not dissipate over time but capitalism doesn’t want that. It wants to make sure there’s a demand to pay someone despite the penalty of the many.
I think it’s more likely that people saw their parents or grandparents living on a single income, so between two people there was a lot more “free” time. When one adult is managing the home, and the other is making money, both get to be more off duty after work. The grocery shopping, meal prepping, social calendar finagling, and cleaning were happening simultaneously with the money making job.
Managing a household is a whole ass job and a lot of people are expected to do it on top of their day job and that’s why we feel like we have no time. I don’t think we’re comparing ourselves to celebrities, just our own family members.
I think it’s more likely that people saw their parents or grandparents living on a single income
If their parents were white and American and this was just after WWII, that’s possible.
Just after WWII the US was basically the only advanced economy in the world that hadn’t been flattened by war. While European and Asian states had had all their factories and cities bombed, the only attack on the US was an attack on strictly military targets in a far-off place that wasn’t even a state yet. In addition, during the Great Depression FDR put into place all kinds of New Deal policies that blunted the power of the ultra rich and strengthened the power of workers. So, when WWII ended a lot of workers benefited from strong unions and weak rich people. In addition, there were now modern grocery stores, running water, electrical appliances, etc. so a housewife had a much easier time of it than her great-grandmother might have in the early 1900s.
That period wasn’t typical though. It definitely wasn’t like that in the Gilded Age, the 1920s. The 1930s had the Great Depression. The 1940s of course had WWII. Before that, in the 1800s and early 1900s it was often common for a woman to stay home while her husband worked. But, she had a pretty gruelling job. She had to get groceries (or garden (which was closer to farming than the hobby people have today)) and cook, but without any modern appliances, including a refrigerator. That also meant creating a lot of preserves or canning. She had to do laundry with a washboard and soap. Cleaning meant a broom, mop and bucket. Cleaning also meant making your own cleaning supplies from scratch. Clothes were expensive, so a lot of time was spent either sewing new clothes at home, or mending old ones. So, even though it was 1 income for 2 adults, both adults were doing a really gruelling day of work, not like the nicer version of that from the 1950s.
So, while it’s true that some women today “manage a household” on top of a 9-5 job, modern appliances and stores mean that they do a fraction of the work that their great-great-great-grandmothers did.
Do we actually archaeologically/anthropologically know that this is the amount of time that people spent working in those different periods?? Would love to see sources because I always think this is one of the most valuable things those fields can bring to us, but I’ve had trouble finding clear answers.
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is right now doing a series on how peasants lived. Arable land is limited, people really don’t want to watch their family members starve, and the entire economic system is maybe kind of reliant on squeezing peasants to do the things necessary for society to function, so there’s strong incentives of all kinds to work a lot
There’s a lot of evidence of what life was like for peasants back in the Medieval period. But, it’s hard to be exact because there were a lot of things that were taken for granted so nobody bothered to write them down and clarify.
What’s well known, for example, is how many sundays and feast days there were. What’s less known is what actually happened on those days. For example, the Monday and Tuesday after easter were ale-drinking feasts. What was a feast though? In some cases it was a “party” where attendance was mandatory and you had to pay a fee. Yes, there was drinking, but was it a party, or was it one of those “work parties” where you had to go, had to be on your best behaviour, etc.?
Because it varied a lot century-to-century and also varied location-to-location, it’s hard to pin down what it was like unless you’re looking at a specific location at a specific time, and it’s a location and time where there’s good data. What is pretty well known is that nights were really dark. Even candles were expensive for a peasant. So, when the sun set, work more or less stopped
Beautiful, thank you so much! Will read momentarily.
Update: Good and pretty compelling source. May not be primary, but I appreciate the easier reading and I enjoy that they basically put confidence intervals on their answers.
But also, wow the rest of this site is hilarious. Bookmarked!
Yeah, that particular article is a serious more historical one and then most of the others on the site are satire written in a cheesy old English style and medieval setting and it’s killing me
I think people are confused by seeing influencers and/or rich people and thinking what they have is normal.
In the 1500s it was sun-up to sun-down, 6 days a week for the work outdoors. Once the sun set, nothing could really be done. If you were a typical peasant you couldn’t even afford to keep a candle lit. So, people went back to their one-room huts with their livestock in the same room and slept and/or waited for morning. They didn’t have to work Sundays, but they were absolutely required to attend church on Sundays, so it wasn’t a free day. There were other days off, but many of them were days where you had to do a certain prescribed activity.
In the early 1800s it was 12 hours of work, 6 days a week. Industrial era lighting technology meant that work could continue after the sun had set, so there were no winter days where you only worked 8 hours. Also, because this was the era of the factory, people had to commute to the factory and back, so if you were lucky you had a full 10 or 11 hours when you weren’t working or commuting. If you wanted to sleep for 8 hours, you’d have 2-3 hours to do your cooking, eating, cleaning, bathing, mending, socializing, etc.
Thanks to tireless and bloody protesting by labour unions, 6 days of 12 hours each was shortened to 5 days of 8 hours each. It started in Chicago. The “Haymarket Affair” was a protest that led to a riot which led to public hangings. But, eventually, as a result of that, the work day was shortened to only 8 hours. Then, in the years that followed, a 2 day weekend became standard.
It might not feel like it, but your ancestors would be jealous about how much free time you have these days. Your distant, peasant ancestors might actually have had fewer work hours. But, they only stopped working when it was too dark to do anything, and then they basically sat or slept in a tiny, drafty, stuffy, one-room hut along with their livestock until the sun came up.
If we kill and eat the rich and use their bones as decorations, it would be possible to keep a bit more of the value of our labour. But, we’re nowhere near a situation where we can all live like the rich. Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc. Life is hard, and has always been hard.
Back in the 50s they thought people in the year 2000 would only work 20 hours a week and the biggest problem would be too much free time.
If we don’t make permanent retirement for all of humanity a goal we won’t get there. But the unifying factor for every political party is MOAR JOBZ. Hell, even the ancoms think people should work.
And we basically did that with agriculture already. In industrialized nations less than 10% when just a couple hundred years ago it was over 90%.
This is only true because capitalism is limiting technology to the point where all these mundane tasks can’t be automated or improved with tech so that it can be possible for all to self-maintain. Yes, not that simple and yeah someone would need to program things and maintain things, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to believe that humanity can waste so much time and money on something as unethical as AI but somehow can’t come up with technology to let people maintain crops without having every piece of the puzzle we have now.
They can do it. Everybody talks about how crazy it is about how in such a short time span we’ve gone from flying planes to landing on the moon and it is ridiculous. It’s not that inconceivable to believe that we can come up with tech to better maintain society beyond what we have now. People want to keep the status quo because they limit their minds to what has been.
Capitalism dictates that profit means everything. We don’t need pot holes to be filled every other year just because people get a job. People shouldn’t be dependent on such a system to survive. Pot holes can be filled with a solution that will not dissipate over time but capitalism doesn’t want that. It wants to make sure there’s a demand to pay someone despite the penalty of the many.
and herein lies the paradoxy. how is that compatible with there being an unemployment crisis at the same time?
I think it’s more likely that people saw their parents or grandparents living on a single income, so between two people there was a lot more “free” time. When one adult is managing the home, and the other is making money, both get to be more off duty after work. The grocery shopping, meal prepping, social calendar finagling, and cleaning were happening simultaneously with the money making job.
Managing a household is a whole ass job and a lot of people are expected to do it on top of their day job and that’s why we feel like we have no time. I don’t think we’re comparing ourselves to celebrities, just our own family members.
If their parents were white and American and this was just after WWII, that’s possible.
Just after WWII the US was basically the only advanced economy in the world that hadn’t been flattened by war. While European and Asian states had had all their factories and cities bombed, the only attack on the US was an attack on strictly military targets in a far-off place that wasn’t even a state yet. In addition, during the Great Depression FDR put into place all kinds of New Deal policies that blunted the power of the ultra rich and strengthened the power of workers. So, when WWII ended a lot of workers benefited from strong unions and weak rich people. In addition, there were now modern grocery stores, running water, electrical appliances, etc. so a housewife had a much easier time of it than her great-grandmother might have in the early 1900s.
That period wasn’t typical though. It definitely wasn’t like that in the Gilded Age, the 1920s. The 1930s had the Great Depression. The 1940s of course had WWII. Before that, in the 1800s and early 1900s it was often common for a woman to stay home while her husband worked. But, she had a pretty gruelling job. She had to get groceries (or garden (which was closer to farming than the hobby people have today)) and cook, but without any modern appliances, including a refrigerator. That also meant creating a lot of preserves or canning. She had to do laundry with a washboard and soap. Cleaning meant a broom, mop and bucket. Cleaning also meant making your own cleaning supplies from scratch. Clothes were expensive, so a lot of time was spent either sewing new clothes at home, or mending old ones. So, even though it was 1 income for 2 adults, both adults were doing a really gruelling day of work, not like the nicer version of that from the 1950s.
So, while it’s true that some women today “manage a household” on top of a 9-5 job, modern appliances and stores mean that they do a fraction of the work that their great-great-great-grandmothers did.
Do we actually archaeologically/anthropologically know that this is the amount of time that people spent working in those different periods?? Would love to see sources because I always think this is one of the most valuable things those fields can bring to us, but I’ve had trouble finding clear answers.
Yay! A chance for me to link to my favorite blog: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/12/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivc-rent-and-extraction/ (may require reading part IV.a and IV.b first).
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is right now doing a series on how peasants lived. Arable land is limited, people really don’t want to watch their family members starve, and the entire economic system is maybe kind of reliant on squeezing peasants to do the things necessary for society to function, so there’s strong incentives of all kinds to work a lot
There’s a lot of evidence of what life was like for peasants back in the Medieval period. But, it’s hard to be exact because there were a lot of things that were taken for granted so nobody bothered to write them down and clarify.
Here’s an article about it:
https://www.yeoldetymenews.com/p/do-you-work-more-than-a-medieval
What’s well known, for example, is how many sundays and feast days there were. What’s less known is what actually happened on those days. For example, the Monday and Tuesday after easter were ale-drinking feasts. What was a feast though? In some cases it was a “party” where attendance was mandatory and you had to pay a fee. Yes, there was drinking, but was it a party, or was it one of those “work parties” where you had to go, had to be on your best behaviour, etc.?
Because it varied a lot century-to-century and also varied location-to-location, it’s hard to pin down what it was like unless you’re looking at a specific location at a specific time, and it’s a location and time where there’s good data. What is pretty well known is that nights were really dark. Even candles were expensive for a peasant. So, when the sun set, work more or less stopped
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-price-of-lighting-has-dropped-over-999-since-1700
Beautiful, thank you so much! Will read momentarily.
Update: Good and pretty compelling source. May not be primary, but I appreciate the easier reading and I enjoy that they basically put confidence intervals on their answers.
But also, wow the rest of this site is hilarious. Bookmarked!
Solid review of the source, now I need to make a note to check it out later…
Yeah, that particular article is a serious more historical one and then most of the others on the site are satire written in a cheesy old English style and medieval setting and it’s killing me