In a major new history of the dramatic and enduring changes in the daily family lives of poor European women in the nineteenth century, Rachel Fuchs powerfully conveys the extraordinary difficulties facing women in this period. She offers a fascinating study of their experience of birth, sex and death, as well as the changing responsibilities of individual family members and the transformations in society's responses to the problems of poverty. This accessible synthesis will be essential reading for students of women's and gender studies, urban history and social and family history.