Head of household

“ And in the event of the failure of such a family business as I have described, the head of the household, however firmly convinced he might be that the true and only sphere of woman is the home, would probably do his level best to obtain for his daughter a situation and means of livelihood outside her proper sphere. ”

“ The number of men-servants in a family varies according to the wealth and position of the master, from the owner of the ducal mansion, with a retinue of attendants, at the head of which is the chamberlain and house-steward, to the occupier of the house, where a single footman is the only male retainer. ”

“ He may have household arrangements which cannot, without utter discomfiture, be altered; and if, being the father of an only daughter, he has no near female relative of mature years to undertake the management of his domestic affairs, he is committed either to an upper servant, or to the plan of putting his child at the head of his house and confiding to her youth a charge which demands a thoughtful care scarcely to be expected in early years. ”

“ I never knew a man who was so far removed from the traditional ideas of the proper position of the male head of a household. He felt, as I have said, that he was not the one to have control over finances—that was the wife's province. ”

“ Theoretically the power of the head of the family is still supreme in the household. All must obey the head. Furthermore the females must obey the males—the wives, the husbands; and the younger members of the family are subject to the elder members. The children must not only obey the parents and grandparents, but must observe among themselves the domestic law of seniority: thus the younger brother should obey the elder brother, and the younger sister the elder sister. ”

“ I wish that a young girl, quitting Écouen to take her place at the head of a small household, should know how to cut out her dresses, mend her husband's clothes, make her baby-linen, and procure little comforts for her family by the means usually employed in a provincial household ”

“ The lady of the house saw that the household, held together as an economic and social unit. The noble's family, retainers, guests, and the head servants, such as chaplain and children's tutor, and possibly a musician, dined together at one table. The family included step children and married sons and daughters with their spouses. Young couples often lived with the parents of one of them. ”

“ And look here, Ellis. I'm tired of hired housekeepers. Will your mother come up and live with us and look after things a bit? I've a good girl, and she won't have to work hard, but there must be somebody at the head of a household. ”

“ It is, indeed, not improbable, for there is in every clime the tradition of a time when household helpers were abundant, competent, and cheap,—a golden age when harmony reigned in the household and domestic discord was unknown. ”

“ The home department belongs exclusively to the wife; the province of the husband is to rule the house—hers to regulate its internal movements. True it is, that some inexperienced young creatures know but little of household concerns. If this occur, have patience, and do not become pettish or ill-humored. If too much money is laid out at first, give advice, kindly and firmly, and the young wife will soon learn how to perform her new duties. ”

“ Think of your husband as one to be made happier by your personal control of such household matters as touch his comfort; of your babes as tender, precious things, blessed by your sleepless care, or hurt by your neglect; of your domestics, as requiring orderly supervision, lest they bring discord into your home, or waste your substance. Every household, Delia, is a little government, and the governor must be as watchful over all its concerns as the governor of a state. ”

“ Likewise, domestic servants are excluded by some of these acts, who are they? "A household servant is one who dwells under the same roof with the family under circumstances making him a member thereof." ”

“ The small household must choose servants according to convenience and requirements. Where there are three or four grown-up daughters and the home is a small one, one maid and one butler are sufficient. ”

“ But like a mother in the midst of her young daughters we have desired to stand, answering such questions as they would naturally ask, pointing out mistakes that they are likely to make, showing where the error lies, and trying to offer a remedy; not in household affairs alone, but in many phases of the duties that belong to the wife and mother as well as to the housekeeper. ”

“ The presence of the domestic employee in the family is not essential to the existence of the family; the domestic employee comes and goes, but the family remains. More than this, it must be [114] said that the presence of the domestic employee does something to destroy the integrity of the family life. ”

“ Domestic life to the young and untried housekeeper is something of an ordeal. She may have had her own place in her father's home, her own special duties to attend to, even her own share of responsibility. Still, it is an altogether different matter to have the entire care of a household, to guide all its concerns, and be responsible for the domestic comfort of all within the four walls of the house. ”

“ Each family has a sort of a chief or official head, and the eldest son always looks for a wife among the families of his own class. Seldom, if ever, does the married son quit the paternal roof, so large households are the rule. ”

“ Is it true that you have taken the cares of the conduct of your household equally from the shoulders of your father and mother? In short, that you are the one who is consulted when there is any change to be made in the personnel of your service at home? ”

“ In a small family there is less work to be done; in a large one there are more hands to do the work, and many hands make light labour.
We would have no mistress of a family a household drudge, while her daughters lounge over fancy-work or a novel ”

“ Agents by means of whom the greater part of all Household Concerns are transacted, yet, there are many important branches of family arrangement, the direction and controul of which, either directly or indirectly, fall within the sphere of the Heads of Families, some of which are exclusively their own Concerns, and others necessarily and unavoidably connected with the business of Servants, but respecting which no instruction can be given to them. ”

“ The father has theoretically full power over his wife and children, but in practice his domestic jurisdiction is of the most lenient kind. Marital affection and filial devotion reign in the household. ”

“ The plan for housekeeping in this large establishment was for each wife in turn to take charge for a month. It was no small undertaking to provide for the household, with the growing flocks of children and the frequent addition of visiting sisters, cousins, or aunts. The women involved, being individuals, had differing capacities and ideas, and each had the desire for a home managed according to her own idea. Imagine sitting down to every meal with six parents, twelve children and half a dozen guests! Inevitably the communal plan could not but fail to be altogether ideal. ”

“ As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified, from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. ”

“ I do not bring up either dressmakers, or waiting-women, or housekeepers, but women for modest and poor households. The mother, in a poor household, is the housekeeper of the family."
The spirit of the age and the fascinations of luxury in an agitated epoch were too strong for the determined and reasoned will of the legislator. ”

“ In short, in place of regarding the household as standing in no special relation to the rest of the community, it ought to be understood that the function of the housewife is of the utmost importance, not only to her own family, but to the whole nation. ”

“ But 318 in the family a good servant is always considered. When ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has the family physician, and is subject to no deduction from her wages for loss of time. ”

“ The consideration of the house and its parts and furniture, and of the outward forms of domestic life, leads us naturally to that of the constitution of the family. It was the chief pride of the aristocratic class to live very extravagantly, and to support a great household, with an immense number of personal attendants of different classes. In the first place the old system of fostering, which was kept up to a comparatively late period, added to the number of the lord’s or knight’s family. ”

“ Those persons of either sex, who have no families, but occupy houses or lodging of their own, are, notwithstanding their being without families, requested to put down the amount of the monthly contributions they are willing to give to this institution upon a family-sheet, and to insert their names in the list as "head of the family." ”

“ In the household of a rich industrial, whose family consists of himself, wife, and four children, the man-servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200, the cook 45, the lady’s maid 35, the house-maid 25, kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks a month. ”

“ With right views of the true aims and enjoyments of life, it will be no impossible achievement to establish your household appointments within the limits of your income, whatever that may be, and to entertain the conviction that the duty of providing for possible, if not probable, future contingencies, is imperative with those who have assumed conjugal and paternal responsibilities. ”

“ Believing, however, in the value of "pursuits," I have been interested in observing the manner of hospitality in a family among my friends. The family consists of the father, mother, and three [Pg 160] grown-up daughters. All the daughters are earning their own living, and the mother is much occupied in household cares. It is a highly intellectual family. ”

“ Domestic serfs may be described, not incorrectly, as poor relatives who, generation after generation, earned a livelihood by performing menial household duties in families to which they were bound by ties of kith and kin. ”

“ I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and discussed, where there are no servants except the ladies of the household. I will venture to say, also, that these households, many of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which are conducted by the ministration of domestics. ”

“ But wherever the citizen becomes insensible to the interests of his fellow-citizen, the husband will contract feelings of cold indifference to the wife, and the father of a family towards the members of his household. ”

“ For the family of the ordinary type, with its many differing needs and its variety of claim upon some one person for its central direction and service, the various aids from without which have been indicated serve rather to relieve from excessive burdens than to remove altogether the special obligations of the woman-head of the family. ”

“ Now the household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and this in the best agricultural parts of the country. ”

“ In September 1818 I brought to the household, still further increased, and now so rich with children and brothers, its housewife, in the person of a lady whom a like love of Nature and of childhood with my own, and a like high and earnest conception of education, as the preparation for a life worthy of man, had drawn towards me. ”

“ After all, you have shown only the dark side of an establishment with servants, and the bright side of the other way of living. Mamma does not have such trouble with her servants; matters have always gone smoothly in our family; and, if we are not such wonderful girls as those you describe, yet we may make pretty good housekeepers on the modern system, after all. ”

“ The parts of household management correspond to the persons who compose the household, and a complete household consists of slaves and freemen. Now we should begin by examining everything in its fewest possible elements; and the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. ”

“ Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, and in the atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a respectable one, let them feel in the mistress of the family the charm of unvarying consideration and good manners, let their work rooms be made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments bear some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other members of the family, and domestic service will be more frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. ”

“ Observing closely the lives of the immense majority, I think we shall see, that, in conducting their household affairs, the object they have in view is one and the same. I think we shall see that they all strive, some by their own labors wholly, the rest by covering over and piecing out the shortcomings of "help," to present a smooth, agreeable surface to husbands and company. ”

“ Instead of this, God ordains that parents shall have a home of their own, where they can [56] have their children to themselves, to train them up in love and peace and plenty. And one main support of this blessed institution of family and home is, those domestics who are hired to do the chief labours of the family. Just take away from this country all the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up. ”