This text describes the history and culture of women and men in early 20th century Northern England. It focuses on family life and on the coal communities of Yorkshire and the North East.

Focusing on the family, this book offers perspectives on how mining life of the early 20th century influenced the dynamics of male and female relationships. Depicting women as the CEOs of mining families, it describes how miners depended upon their wives and sometimes daughters to help them recuperate from their hard hours of underground labor. Responsible for meals, laundry, money management, and social planning, these women, young or old, shouldered the burden of maintaining a healthy family among the rigors of strikes, closures, accidents, and deaths within mining communities.