BALANCE IN MARRIAGE Part 1

In the 19th century, there was lots of tension and even fear among both men and women over the idea of changing the balance between men's and women's roles in marriage. Men feared the loss of control over their households and thus their lives. Women feared the freedom and thus the loss of structure, routine and ultimately security that might come with change.
So it was that women fighting for women's rights found themselves fighting against women as well as men. Perhaps some saw their less than equal lives as the price they had to pay for security and the right to be able to bring up their own children. It was not a legal foregone conclusion that their mother should care for them. Men had all the rights and final say over their children's lives and how they were raised. At the time there were cases of men, who could afford child care arrangements, throwing out their wives and preventing her children from seeing her ever again.