The Family Wage

Society should include in its economic structure some form of direct financial provision for the maintenance of children, instead of proceeding on the assumption that, save in cases of exceptional misfortune, this is a matter which concerns only individual parents and should be left to them because normally men's wages or salaries are, or ought to be and can be made sufficient for the support of their families (Rathbone, 1940:ix). wrote Eleanor Rathbone in 1940 in a book called The Case for Family Allowances. By then she had been a leading campaigner for a national scheme of family allowances for over twenty years and one of the central strands of her argument was that the wage system did not, and could not, ensure that the needs of a worker's family would be met at all times as they varied over the family life cycle. Even if all men could receive a wage high enough to meet the needs of a 'normal' family (then considered to be a couple with three children) families did not come in standard sizes. There were significant numbers of children in larger families and at any point in time, half of all male workers had no dependent children while a significant proportion of female workers did. Moreover, she argued that in order to enhance their status as mothers, women should have a source of income independent of their husband's willingness or ability to provide it from their wages.