One factor that hasn't been discussed here is simply time-consuming daily chores. Today's professional/managerial households often have both dual incomes *and* shared spousal responsibility for the onerous, endless housekeeping tasks that in earlier times were tackled solely by housewives or servants.
The US consumer society that evolved after World War II bought into the notion of electric household appliances as labor-saving devices that provide a life of ease unimaginable in, say, the drudgery-filled world of the Victorians. That would have given the Victorians a good laugh. For the Victorian middle and upper classes at least, the world was not filled with drudgery; it was filled with servants, a labor-saving device far more versatile and less prone to glitches than the most advanced digitally enhanced gizmos of today. For the Victorian middle class, servants weren't a luxury; they were as much necessities as automobiles are to the middle class today. Even Karl Marx had (in every sense of the word) a maid, Lenchen.
Carl
Everybody ought to have a maid, Everybody ought to have a working girl, Everybody ought to have a lurking girl To putter around the house. Everybody ought to have a maid, Everybody ought to have a menial Consistently congenial And quieter than a mouse. Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delicious, Tidying up the dishes, Neat as a pin. Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delightful, Sweeping out, Sleeping in. ...
-- "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"
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