> id still argue they had a better standard of living than someone that works 8-10h/day and then comes home to cook and clean?

You're somehow succumbing to the fallacy of the edilic life of old.

The same life where you had to have a dozen of kids to overcome infant mortality, and each time a woman gave birth it was like a Russian roulette.

And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years? You didn't had a midlife crisis because you'd be dead by then.

Looking back at my family tree, before 1900 a third of the babies would die. My great grandmother and great great grandmother died in childbirth. A great great aunt also died in childbirth, and her brother went after the father with a shotgun.

Life expectancy was low mainly due to childhood diseases

If you lived to 20 you had a pretty good chance of making it to 70

> And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years?

The answer to this riddle lies in the previous paragraph