Religion and domesticity

Catholics and Protestants assumed that God instituted the family and that it had certain spiritual functions to perform. In 1985, Colleen McDannell addressed changes in Christian perceptions of the home and family in nineteenth-century America. This chapter focuses on Christian ideas of the home and family in nineteenth-century Europe and touches on similar themes to those discussed by McDannell, including new insights from gender history as well as work on lived religion and material culture. It focuses primarily on Christian denominations, discussing some trends under the umbrella terms of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’. Christian families were seen as the cornerstones of a Christian society, and thus time and effort were put into creating good Christian families. The nineteenth century was the heyday of the cult of domesticity, the idealization of the home as a calm and safe haven from the hectic and dangerous external world. (Less)