Working class men in this time period went to work 12 hours a day then came home and went directly to bed after dinner more or less. Women would stay at home and raise the children properly without the aid of a TV to keep the children mindlessly fixated for hours on end. There was so much work to be done around the house that a moment to sit on the couch and reflect was a luxury, not sheer boredom like it is for us in the information age.
The reason having children seems so unappealing in this day and age is that we know it will take time away from our entertainment media addiction. At the same time, media addiction makes life so meaningless that we feel having children is inhumane.
In short, life wasn't boring in the days before modern technological conveniences; it was challenging and fulfilling, and running a household was a full time job in and of itself. The invention of the the TV, followed by the home computer, followed by the smart phone, has turned humanity into a terrifyingly unrecognizable sci-fi abomination that would have been difficult for people in the early 20th century to comprehend.
