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"Few wives in antebellum America enjoyed a life free from labor. Family life depended on the smooth performance of an extensive array of unpaid occupations in the household, and on the presence . . . of someone to provide that work—to supervise the children through the vicissitudes of a changing social and economic order; to make and mend clothes, quilts, pillows, and other household furnishings; to shop for items the household could afford . . . , and scavenge . . . for those it could not; to clean, cook, and bake; and, whenever necessary, to move from unpaid to paid labor to bolster the household income. The growth . . . of the cash [economy] of the Northeast had not rendered this labor superfluous. Nor had it reduced housework to unskilled labor."

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