The Welsh Mam (mam means "mother" in Welsh) was an archetypal image of Welsh married women, especially popular in 19th-century industrial South Wales, and depictions of that place and era. The mythologised Welsh Mam was seen as a matriarch ruling her household, "the pivot, around which all family life revolved". In reality many Welsh women were economically dependent on male wage-earners, and suffered poverty and ill health exacerbated by regular childbearing.