The 1833 parliamentary testimony of Dr. Hawkins, an English medical practitioner, is typical of the middleclass answer to the burdens that working-class women faced as wives, mothers, and workers: that is, he would make the working-class mother more like her middleclass counterpart.

But let us suppose one of these young females about to assume the character of wife, mother, nurse, housekeeper, —which she too often undertakes prematurely and improvidently. She has no time, no means, no opportunities of learning the common duties of domestic life; and even if she has acquired the knowledge, she has still no time to practice them. In addition twelve hours' labor is an additional absence from home in going and returning. Here is the young mother absent from her child above twelve hours daily. And who has the charge of the infant in her absence...