This chapter highlights the impact of the war on women’s private everyday lives and explores how the wartime state increasingly reached into the home. It demonstrates how previously personal issues became political as women were urged to express their patriotism through their careful household management and by maintaining model homes and families for their absent husbands. The chapter also assesses the impact of the war on the standard of living of women in Ireland, interrogating previous interpretations of wartime prosperity and contrasting the urban and rural experiences. It explores the impact of the war on maternal and infant health, and the consequences of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic for women in Ireland. The chapter argues that the war resulted in much greater intervention of the state in women’s everyday and personal lives and brought significant hardship to many women. Far more women became reliant on governmental welfare through separation allowances, pensions and initiatives under the Prince of Wales National Relief Fund. Memoirs, diaries and letters are used to explore the experience of separated couples during the war and how women coped with the emotional hardship of the soldiers’ war service.