Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free

by Wednesday Martin

In addition to requiring upper body strength, ploughing activity, which also introduced the unpredictability and relative danger of large animals, was incompatible with childcare. These two aspects of plough farming led to a new and rigidly gendered division of labor: men outside doing the farming; women specializing in secondary production, including childcare and food preparation inside the home. This distinction—outdoor/primary production versus indoor/domestic/secondary production—in turn gave rise to beliefs about the “natural role of women,” including that they should be “inside the home,” that mothers were “just naturally” primary parents, and that a woman’s labor was less vital to subsistence and income than a man’s.