Why does everyone act like this is how it's always been?

Because "always" usually only reaches back two or three generations — not fourteen centuries. Before industrialization, most families worked together, in or near the home — farming, trading, crafting — with no hard line between "work" and "domestic life." The idea of a woman's place being strictly the home, separate from productive work, is largely a product of the last 150–200 years, when factories physically moved work outside the home and someone had to stay to run it.

That arrangement isn't ancient. It's recent — recent enough that it can be questioned without questioning your deen at all.