You will write a paper of 3-5 pages that makes a historical argument based on the primary sources provided (1-14). Consider what you have learned from the primary sources about the American past, and

Sources:

The Sources: Documents on Women, Work, and Family, 1950–20001Meeting of Union of Auto, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW-CIO)

Public debate. March 27–April 1, 1955

The members of this UAW affiliate were debating a resolution that upcoming contract negotiations include the requirement that employers end customary discrimination in hiring and wages based on sex and marital status.

Delegate Barry, Local 835: I urge the adoption of this resolution for the reason that … many women … are the breadwinners of the family. In the case of Negro women, if they don’t work in the plant they are forced to go out and do day work [domestic service] for $6 a day and carfare. In some instances that I personally know about some of them are taking care of crippled husbands and a lot of children that nobody else will help to support….

Delegate Carrigan, Local 887: In my Local there are approximately 2,000 women members…. Many of us have ten or more years seniority in our jobs and are still in the lowest classifications…. The resolution states that an average income is forty-four percent less for women than for men. This forty-four percent represents purchasing power which should be in the workers’ pockets instead of in management’s till….

Delegate Hill, Local 961: I rise to oppose the particular resolution on the floor at this time for the simple reason that I think our International Union is trying to create a condition whereby it will require two paychecks in every home in order that we might live like decent human beings….

I am not opposed to single women and widows working in the shop, but I am opposed to married women working….

Delegate Murphy, Local 3: Two paychecks in a family are fine. I happen to be married. My husband happens to be one of those unfortunate people with twenty-two years seniority in Hudson Local Union No. 154. Today he has no job. What would happen if I wasn’t able to work? My family would be going hungry….

Delegate Rutt, Local 195: … as long as there are single women looking for jobs the married woman’s place is in the home…. As long as the husband is working it is his place to provide for his wife and family.

Delegate Szure, Local 174: … Who is to say a woman should work or not? Where is our democracy in this country if a woman cannot be a free individual and make up her own mind? I think that when you start telling women you can or cannot work, you are infringing on their civil rights, which I as a woman resent.

Source: Excerpt from transcript of Meeting of Union of Auto, Aerospace and Agricultural Implementation Workers of America (UAW-CIO). Reprinted by permission of United Auto Workers.

Modern American Housewife

Letter to the editor.

Ladies’ Home Journal, March 1956

Dear Editors: I am furious! I have just read an article in which a psychologist says that the American male has spoiled his wife and made her useless by the purchase of automatic equipment in the home. He then adds, “Women don’t feel needed. They know the house will almost run itself.”

I am one of those women lumped together as a group of nonworkers. I am an average American housewife. I have laborsaving equipment in my home. The wife of a county official, I have three children. And I have found none of these four to be a laborsaving device. I find that it is I who must change bed linens, wash clothes, hang clothes, take clothes down, iron clothes, mend clothes and put them away. No one has invented a laborsaving device for these chores, or an automatic diaper-changing device! I have yet to find on the market an automatic push-button control for picking up articles not in the proper place.

I prepare three meals a day, by the best methods revealed in the women’s magazines. I make most of our pastry and our freezer has a considerable supply of fresh fruit pies ready to bake, corn on the cob, and a side of beef. All were prepared by me, usually at night….

The activities one gets into to provide a happy, wholesome life for her children are all time-consuming. As mother of a boy, I was a Cub Scout assistant den mother. As mother of two daughters, I have co-led a Brownie troop. As a member of the community, I have been twice elected to our elementary-school board of trustees…. As a member of a church, I have taught in the Sunday school. For none of these activities am I paid….

We American women need every laborsaving device there is. There are more demands on our time than it is humanly possible to fill, and we are anything but useless….

Sincerely yours, A Reader from Castro Valley, California

Source: “Modern American Housewife,” letter to the editor, written by a reader from Castro Valley, CA. Originally published in the March 1956 issue of Ladies Home Journal,® magazine. All rights reserved.

Women Know They Are Not Men: When Will Business Learn This Valuable Secret and Arrange Women’s Working Conditions Accordingly?

Survey report. Florida Scott-Maxwell, Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1958

In this article, Scott-Maxwell reported on the results of a survey the Ladies’ Home Journal conducted with “hundreds of young mothers.” Ninety percent of the respondents had experience working for pay; half were working outside the home when the survey was taken. Although the survey itself did not ask women for solutions to their problems, the title and conclusion of the article imply that the author thought that there were tangible solutions.

Whether they work at outside jobs or not, today’s young mothers find their greatest satisfaction in home, husband and children. They realize they are not men, and they don’t want to be…. And yet they are faced with a dilemma peculiar to women and to our times…. Will their families, and they themselves, be better off and happier if they work, or if they remain at home? …

Can a mother of young children satisfactorily fulfill her family responsibilities and hold a full-time job besides? A majority of those who are doing it say yes, though they admit the dual role produces considerable strain. On the other hand, can a young woman who has enjoyed the stimulation and contacts of outside employment find satisfaction when and if she quits to devote herself full time to home and children? Again, the answer is yes, though not without some qualifications.

All agreed that the first responsibility is to home and family…. Those who do not work feel that they could not earn enough to justify the added strain and expense of being away from the children while they are young…. Meanwhile, they sometimes feel restless, frustrated, that they are wasting special talents and training….

Young mothers who now hold jobs show conflicting feelings. Nine out of ten give finances as a major reason for working, yet…. fifty-eight percent of these women say that they prefer working at a paid job to staying at home!….

On the debit side of the ledger, most young working mothers suffer to some degree from the fear that they are not adequately fulfilling their duties to husband, home and children. And yet eighty-one percent say they are satisfied with the arrangements they have made for the children’s care, and sixty-one percent think the children would be no better off if their mothers had more time with them…. The young working mother’s second problem is…. she returns from work to take over the housework herself…. Her race with the clock goes on from Monday to Monday, evenings and weekends included….

The present situation presents no problem to the young mother who never did like working and who doesn’t need to. She simply doesn’t work. The opposite decision is almost as simple (not quite) for the woman who is highly trained and talented in a specialized field. But for the majority of women in between the question is difficult, and the answer not likely to be entirely satisfactory. One thing is certain: if women had organized business and industry, the system would be different. And it might be better.

Source: “Women Know They Are Not Men: When Will Business Learn This Valuable Secret and Arrange Women’s Working Conditions Accordingly?” by Florida Scott-Maxwell. Originally published in the November 1958 issue of Ladies Home Journal,® magazine. All rights reserved.

American Women: Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women

Government report. October 1963

From 1961 to 1963, twenty-six prominent men and women with experience in labor, economics, politics, race relations, education, and social services served on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Their deliberations were informed by research submitted by numerous subcommittees. President Kennedy appointed former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the commission, a position she held until her death in November 1962. The final, seventy-five page report was issued in October 1963, just weeks before Kennedy was assassinated.

American women work in both their homes, unpaid, and outside of their homes, on a wage or salary basis. Among the great majority of women, as among the great majority of men, the motive for paid employment is to earn money. For some, work has additional — or even primary — value as self-fulfillment…. Women’s participation in paid employment importantly increases the Nation’s labor force: 1 worker in 3 is a woman….

Because personnel officers believe that women are less likely than men to want to make a career in industry, equally well-prepared young women are passed over in favor of men for posts that lead into management training programs and subsequent exercise of major executive responsibility…. Reluctance to consider women applicants on their merits results in underutilization of capacities that the economy needs and stunts the development of higher skills….

The Commission recognizes the fundamental responsibility of mothers and homemakers and society’s stake in strong family life. Demands upon women in the economic world, the community, and the home mean that women often simultaneously carry on several different kinds of activity. If the family is to continue to be the core institution of society … new and expanded community services are necessary. Women can do a far more effective job as mothers and homemakers when communities provide appropriate resources….

Child care services are needed in all communities, for children of all kinds of families who may require day care, afterschool care, or intermittent care. In putting major emphasis on this need, the Commission affirms that child care facilities are essential for women in many different circumstances, whether they work outside the home or not. It is regrettable when women with children are forced by economic necessity or by the regulations of welfare agencies to seek employment while their children are young. On the other hand, those who decide to work should have child care services available….

The gross inadequacy of present child care facilities is apparent. Across the country, licensed day care is available to some 185,000 children only. In nearly half a million families with children under 6 years, the mother is frequently the sole supporter…. Failure to assure such services reflects primarily a lack of community awareness of the realities of modern life.

Source: American Women: Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 1963 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), 18, 19, 27, 29–30.

Should Mothers Work?

Advice column. Dr. Benjamin Spock, Ladies’ Home Journal, January–February 1963

Dr. Spock was an American pediatrician whose child-rearing manual, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, is the seventh best-selling book of all time. He regularly delivered advice to mothers in the pages of popular magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. The subhead for this column stated, “A drastic change has taken place — half of our mothers have given birth to their last child by the age of twenty-six.”

For years I’ve shied away from writing on the subject of working mothers. It has so many prickly aspects that there is no simple way to tackle it. But the proportion of mothers working has risen steadily, especially since the beginning of World War II, so there’s no use my trying to dodge the topic….

If it’s essential from a financial point of view for a mother of a young child to work, she is spared some of the doubts and guilt that are apt to trouble the woman who wants a job primarily for her own adjustment. For guilt about leaving a child will cut down on the satisfaction she receives from working, and it will complicate the mother-child relationship….

Quite a few mothers say that they work to help meet the payments on the house and its equipment, or to give their children special advantages, even though their husbands are earning ordinary salaries…. [These mothers]1 seem to be saying that the things they can earn are more important for their children than taking care of them themselves. This line of thought doesn’t make too much sense to me unless the mother is referring to a very temporary financial emergency, or unless her real reason is that she would be miserable taking care of her children all day long….

Most of us who are fairly well adjusted — men as well as women — have an enjoyment of accomplishment. The real question is why one job gives it and another does not. In most parts of the world women feel thoroughly fulfilled in having motherhood as their main career….

I’m one of those who believe that women are basically different from men in temperament as well as in anatomy and physiology. In some cultures and in some periods in history these differences have been exaggerated. I think that in America they have been unnaturally minimized. How is this process carried out in the rearing of each generation? Lots of girls from infancy are dressed like boys, encouraged to play like boys. Their mothers don’t think of giving them a sense of pride and distinction in being female…. There are very few teachers who emphasize or even hint that motherhood (or fatherhood) is potentially, in itself, an exciting and distinguished career. The academic focus is all on the work of the world that exists outside the home…. Then when these young women’s feminine instincts lead them into marriage and child rearing, they feel shut out of the world they envisioned. Never having thought of motherhood as demanding high skills or bringing rich rewards, knowing that any uneducated female above the age of fourteen can enter into it with no credentials at all, they may come to regard it more as a chore than as a challenge….

I am not trying to dissuade any woman from having a career in addition to child rearing. I am only expressing the opinion that since most women will spend at least fifteen years of their lives mainly rearing their children, they themselves should be brought up and educated in such a way that they will derive the maximal satisfaction and enjoyment from it, even if they have other strong aspirations in addition.

Source: “Should Mothers Work?” Advice column by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Ladies Home Journal, January–February, 1963. Originally published in the January–February, 1963 issue of Ladies Home Journal,® magazine. All rights reserved.

Why Feminists Want Child Care

Position paper. National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), 1969

The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966 in Washington, D.C., during a national conference of members of state commissions on the status of women whose task was to extend the work of the presidential commission. When conference participants learned from Representative Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan) that the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) was not investigating the thousands of sex discrimination complaints it was receiving, they decided to form a nongovernmental lobbying organization, made up of both men and women, to press for compliance with existing laws and passage of new laws aimed at equal rights.

A basic cause of the second-class status of women in America and the world … has been the notion that woman’s anatomy is her destiny … that because women bear children, it is primarily their responsibility to care for them and even that this ought to be the chief function of a mother’s existence. Women will never have full opportunities to participate in our economic, political, cultural life as long as they bear this responsibility almost entirely alone and isolated from the larger world. A child socialized by one whose human role is limited, essentially, to motherhood may be proportionately deprived of varied learning experiences. In a circular fashion, the development of children has been intimately influenced by the development of women.

N.O.W. believes that the care and welfare of children is incumbent on society and parents. We reject the idea that mothers have a special child care role that is not shared equally by fathers. Men need the humanizing experiences of nurturance….

Developmental child care services are a right of children, parents, and the community at large, requiring immediate reallocation of national resources. In general, existing day care programs are a national disgrace in quality and availability. Therefore, the National Organization for Women, Inc. (N.O.W.) proposes the following….

Comprehensive child care and developmental services available to all children whose families seek it….
Government support of a coordinated network of developmental child care services as an immediate national priority….
Major responsibility for planning and operating the services must be a function of local control….
Developmental child care service is to be interpreted as including family child care, group home child care, child care centers, home visiting programs, and other innovative approaches to be developed in the future.

N.O.W. is committed to work for universally available, publicly supported, developmental child care and raising the national consciousness to public investment in this national priority. As interim steps, we support flexible fees, if any, to reflect the urgent needs and various resources of families now.

Source: National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), “Why Feminists Want Child Care” [Position paper] (1969, NOW, New York City Chapter, Box 10, Taminent Library). Reprinted by permission of NOW-NYC.

Veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Act

Presidential message. President Richard M. Nixon, December 9, 1971

The Comprehensive Child Development Act sought to make prekindergarten programs available to all children, as a matter of right, regardless of economic status. Programs were to be free to families earning less than half the median U.S. income; other families would pay according to a sliding scale based on income. Its across-class design conflicted with President Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, which proposed a guaranteed annual income and child care for the nation’s poorest families. In late 1971, heading into a reelection campaign, Nixon needed to appeal to right-wing members of his Republican Party. They were concerned about the Family Assistance Plan and about Nixon’s friendly overtures to communist China. For that reason, Nixon’s veto message argued beyond the practicalities of fiscal restraint and appealed to anticommunists’ cultural devotion to the self-supporting, male-headed nuclear family.

I return herewith without my approval S.2007, the Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1971….

The most deeply flawed provision of this legislation is Title V, “Child Development Programs.” Adopted as an amendment to the OEO1 legislation, this program points far beyond what this administration envisioned when it made a “national commitment to providing all American children an opportunity for a healthful and stimulating development during the first five years of life.”

Though Title V’s stated purpose, “to provide every child with a full and fair opportunity to reach his full potential,” is certainly laudable, the intent of Title V is overshadowed by the fiscal irresponsibility, administrative unworkability, and family-weakening implications of the system it envisions. We owe our children something more than good intentions.

We cannot and will not ignore the challenge to do more for America’s children in their all-important early years. But our response to this challenge must be a measured, evolutionary, painstakingly considered one, consciously designed to cement the family in its rightful position as the keystone of our civilization…. Specifically, these are my present objections to the proposed child development program:

neither the immediate need nor the desirability of a national child development program of this character has been demonstrated.
day care centers to provide for the children of the poor so that their parents can leave the welfare rolls … are already paid for in H.R. 1, my workfare legislation.2 …
given the limited resources of the Federal budget, and the growing demands upon the Federal taxpayer, the expenditure of two billions of dollars in a program whose effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated cannot be justified….
for more than two years, this administration has been working for the enactment of welfare reform … to bring the family together. This child development program appears to move in precisely the opposite direction….
good public policy requires that we enhance rather than diminish both parental authority and parents involvement with children — particularly in those decisive early years when social attitudes and a conscience are formed, and religious and moral principles are first inculcated….
for the Federal Government to plunge headlong financially into supporting child development would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over, against the family-centered approach.

Source: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/240367.

What’s Wrong with “Equal Rights” for Women?

Political newsletter. The Phyllis Schlafly Report, February 1972

Phyllis Schlafly has been a prominent conservative since the mid-1960s. A lawyer, author, public speaker, and mother of six, Schlafly has advocated for the preservation of women’s private domestic role throughout her long public career. In 1972, she founded the Eagle Forum, a lobbying and fund-raising organization, and started publishing her newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, which is now published online. In her successful STOP ERA campaign, Schlafly articulated her beliefs that women in the United States had a guaranteed right to economic support from their husbands and that the Equal Rights Amendment would abolish that right.

Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged. We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties…. We have the immense good fortune to live in a civilization which respects the family as the basic unit of society. This respect is part and parcel of our laws and customs. It is based on the fact of life — which no legislation or agitation can erase — that women have babies and men don’t.

If you don’t like this fundamental difference, you will have to take up your complaint with God because He created us this way. The fact that women, not men, have babies is not the fault of selfish and domineering men, or of the establishment, or of any clique of conspirators who want to oppress women. It’s simply the way God made us.

Our Judeo-Christian civilization has developed the law and custom that, since women must bear the physical consequences of the sex act, men must be required to bear the other consequences and pay in other ways. These laws and customs decree that a man must carry his share by physical protection and financial support of his children and of the woman who bears his children…. The family gives a woman the physical, financial, and emotional security of the home — for all her life…. American women are … the beneficiaries of a tradition of special respect for women…. the traditions of the Christian Age of Chivalry. In America, a man’s first significant purchase is a diamond for his bride, and the largest financial investment of his life is a home for her to live in….

Under present American laws, the man is always required to support his wife and each child he caused to be brought into the world…. By law and custom in America, in the case of divorce, the mother always is given custody of her children unless there is overwhelming evidence of mistreatment, neglect, or bad character. This is our special privilege because of the high rank that is placed on motherhood in our society. Do women really want to give up this special privilege and lower themselves to “equal rights.” …? I think not….

Women’s libbers are trying to make wives and mothers unhappy with their career, make them feel that they are “second-class citizens” and “abject slaves.” … If women’s libbers want to reject marriage and motherhood, it’s a free country and that is their choice. But let’s not permit these women’s libbers to get away with pretending to speak for the rest of us. Let’s not permit this tiny minority to degrade the role that most women prefer. Let’s not let these women’s libbers deprive wives and mothers of the rights we now possess.

Source: “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” by Phyllis Schlafly, February, 1972. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Parents Are People

Children’s song. Carol Hall for

Free to Be You and Me, 1972

Free to Be You and Me is an album of eighteen original children’s songs produced and performed by profeminist artists. Actress Marlo Thomas organized the project to raise funds for the Ms. Foundation, an offshoot of Ms. magazine, that funds educational programs for women and girls. As of 2006, the album had sold more than half a million copies. In 2010, the Target company used the title track in children’s clothing advertisements. To hear “Parents Are People” (performed by Marlo Thomas and Harry Belafonte) and other selections from the album, visit http://www.freetobefoundation.com.

Mommies are people, people with children

When mommies were little, they used to be girls

Like some of you, but then they grew

And now mommies are women, women with children

Busy with children, and things that they do

There are a lot of things a lot of mommies can do

Some mommies are ranchers, or poetry makers

Or doctors or teachers, or cleaners or bakers

Some mommies drive taxis, or sing on TV

Yeah, mommies can be almost anything they want to be

Well, they can’t be grandfathers, or daddies

Daddies are people, people with children

When daddies were little, they used to be boys

Like some of you, but then they grew

And now daddies are men, men with children

Busy with children, and things that they do

There are a lot of things a lot of daddies can do

Some daddies are writers, or grocery sellers

Or painters or welders, or funny-joke tellers

Some daddies play cello, or sail on the sea

Yeah, daddies can be almost anything they want to be

They can’t be grandmas or mommies

Parents are people — Parents are people

People with children — People with children

When parents were little, they used to be kids

Like all of you, but then they grew

And now parents are grown-ups — Parents are grown-ups

Grown-ups with children — Grown-ups with children

Busy with children, and things that they do

There are a lot of things a lot of mommies

And a lot of daddies, and a lot of parents can do

Ms. Magazine Cover

Illustration. Miriam Wosk, Spring 1972

Ms. magazine was the mass media face of the feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s. For this cover of the preview issue in the spring of 1972, artist Miriam Wosk adapted the image of the multiarmed Hindu goddess Kali to the modern image of the multitasking American mother. The hugely successful preview issue included articles that have become icons of feminist literature, including “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” “Down with Sexist Upbringing,” and “De-sexing the English Language.” Indeed, the magazine’s title referred to a long-standing movement to confer a title on women that, like the title “Mr.,” indicates gender but not marital status. Ms. magazine is still published today and continues to advocate for feminist reform around the world.

The magazine is titled Ms. The new magazine for women and the caption below the title reads, Jane O’ Reilly on The Housewife’s Moment of Truth. The text on the top left of the magazine reads, Gloria Steinem On Sisterhood Letty Pogrebin On Raising Kids Without Sex Roles. The text on the top right of the magazine reads, Sylvia Plath’s Last Major Work Women Tell The Truth About Their Abortions. The housewife holds a telephone, a mirror, a steering wheel, an iron box, a clock, a broom, a pan with egg, and a printer in each of her eight hands. A cat stands on the ground beside the woman.

Source: Ms., Spring 1972.

The Second Stage Book. Betty Friedan, 1981

Betty Friedan was the author of The Feminine Mystique, a best-selling 1963 book that was instrumental in launching the second-wave women’s movement. Friedan was a founding member and first president of the National Organization for Women and continued to be an outspoken feminist until her death in 2006. In The Second Stage, Friedan focused on the needs of the family and reported, in one section, on the 1980 White House Conference on Families, held at the end of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, which brought together activists from both feminist and antifeminist organizations.

Though the women’s movement has changed all our lives and surpassed our dreams in its magnitude, … it’s not easy to live, with or without men and children, solely on the basis of that first feminist agenda. I think, in fact that the women’s movement has come just about as far as it can in terms of women alone…. And yet the larger revolution, evolution, liberation that the women’s movement set off, has barely begun. How do we move on? What are the terms of the second stage? …

I believe that feminism must, in fact, confront the family, albeit in new terms, if the movement is to fulfill its own revolutionary function in modern society…. To the degree that feminists collude in assuming an inevitable, unbridgeable antagonism between women’s equality and the family, they make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, the media, which take that antagonism for granted now, reported about the White House Conference in those terms, and missed the significance of what really happened. For when we feminists broke out of our own rhetoric and dealt with women’s most basic concerns within the larger family context, we were able to bridge that polarization and win overwhelming majority support for second-stage solutions….

The most strongly supported demands of the entire conference, along with action to counter drug and alcohol abuse, were “the development of alternative forms of quality child care, both center and home based” (547 to 44), and “creative development” (by business, labor, and government) of “policies that enable persons to hold jobs while maintaining a strong family life,” including “such work arrangements as flex-time, flexible leave policies for both sexes, job-sharing programs, dependent-care options, and part-time jobs with pro-rated pay and benefits,” which passed 569 to 21.

Should We Expect Black Women to Be Supermothers? Magazine article. Claudia Tate, Ebony, September 1984

Ebony has been a successful monthly magazine since its founding in 1945. It is directed at the African American audience, both male and female. When this article was published, Claudia Tate was a professor of English at Howard University.

The label “supermother” refers to … an extremely competent working mother, who both works and mothers with a singularly high degree of proficiency. She always seems in control of the situation, whether she’s fixing breakfast and applying mascara after four hours of sleep, or preparing dinner after working eight hard but successful hours, or engaging in stimulating conversation with her husband after checking homework and tucking the children in their beds…. But no one is “super” successful on one front, let alone so many, without making difficult choices and paying high prices. That simply is the way of the world. Although the role of the working mother, let alone “supermother,” is a difficult one filled with stress and exhaustion, the degree to which she is even moderately successful may dictate whether many households survive, let alone prosper…. [But] is the supermother image a nurturing one for Black mothers and the Black community?

First, the mythic supermother is very destructive, for it promotes the erroneous belief that Black women (who are ready victims for both racial and gender discrimination) have somehow “got it made.” Consequently, many people mistakenly believe there is no need to eliminate racial and gender discrimination for Black women because they are already free as women and free as Blacks. This myth … makes Black women, as a group, appear to have social and economic advantages they do not, in fact, possess.

Second, the mythic supermother image is self-destructive because it is a delusion. It sets Black women up for defeat by encouraging them to believe that they can provide for their families alone, when most of them can do nothing more than contribute to the growing number of poor households. Before a Black woman (or any woman) decides to maintain a household alone, she’d better check her resources as well as her emotional needs. To leap before checking is foolhardy….

But the demythologized supermother, known as the hardworking, working mother, is an exemplary figure in the Black community. She is not only real, she is someone we must support if the Black community is to prosper. We must celebrate her success, applaud her ambition, acknowledge her hard work, comfort her pain, and provide her willing assistance.

Source: From “Should We Expect Black Women to Be Supermothers?” by Claudia Tate, Ebony, September 1984. Used by permission of the author’s estate.

For Better or For Worse Cartoon strip. Lynn Johnston, 1984

Johnston began publishing her widely read comic strip about the Patterson family in 1979 and followed the family’s development in real time until 2008. In the early 1980s, Elly Patterson, married mother of three, took a job outside the home. Johnston chronicled that change in the family’s life in her newspaper comic strip and published portions of that chronicle in her 1984 collection, Just One More Hug, from which these examples are taken.

National Opinion Research Center Poll: Women, Work, and Family

Survey data. 1972–1998

From 1970 to 1998, researchers conducted a survey about women, work, and politics; Figure 1 shows the results. The solid line, “Agree that women should run homes …,” reflects the percentage of people who agreed with the statement “Women should take care of running their homes and leave running the country up to men.” The dashed line, “Disapprove of married woman working,” reflects the percentage of people who said they disapproved “of a married woman earning money in business or industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her.” The dotted line, “Would not vote for woman for president,” reflects the percentage of people who answered “no” to the following question: “If your political party nominated a woman for president, would you vote for her if she were qualified for the job?”

Figure 1

Responses to Questions about Women’s Employment

A key at the top denotes the following interpretations for the three lines. Light grey line, Agree that women should run homes and let men run government; Dashed line, Disapprove of married woman working if she has capable husband; Dotted line, Would not vote for woman for president. The horizontal axis has values from 1970 to 2000 at intervals of 5 years. The vertical axis has values from 0 percent to 40 percent at intervals of 5 percent. The light grey line begins at (1974, 36) continues along the same path to (1975, 36), slopes up to (1976, 36), then slopes down to (1978, 31), declines to (1983, 26), inclines back up to (1985, 27), and then slopes down to (1990, 18), again moves up to (1991, 81), gradually declines to (1994, 13), slopes up again to (1996, 16), and terminates at (1998, 15). The dashed line begins at (1992, 32.5) and falls to (1975, 38.4) and then up rises to (1977, 33.5) and drops to (1983, 29) though (1973, 31) and (1982, 22.5) again climbs to (1985, 21.5) then abruptly drops to (1994, 13.5), (1989, 20.5), (1990, 17.5), 1991, 81) and ends at (1998, 15). The dotted line starts at (1972, 23), declines to 1982, 14) slopes (1985, 16.5) and then slopes down to (1987, 12) and moves up to (1989, 17.5) slopes down to (1993, 10 percent and terminates at (1998, 7). All data are approximate.

Figure 2 shows the results of a survey conducted from 1975 to 1998, in which researchers asked respondents about women, work, and home life. The dotted line, “Do not agree that husband’s career is more important,” reflects the percentage of people who disagreed with the statement, “It is more important for a wife to help her husband’s career than to have one herself.” The dashed line, “Agree that working mothers can establish warm relationship with children,” reflects the percentage of people who agreed with the statement, “A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.” The solid bold line, “Do not agree that preschool child will suffer if mother works,” reflects the percentage of people who disagreed with the statement, “A preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works.” The solid light line, “Do not agree that family is much better off if man works …,” represents the percentage of people who disagreed with the statement, “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.”

Figure 2

Responses to Questions about Women Combining Work and Family

A key at the top denotes the following interpretations for the four lines. Dotted line, Do not agree that husband’s career is more important than wife’s; Dashed line, Agree that working mothers can establish warm relationship with children; black line, Do not agree that preschool child will suffer if mother works; Light grey line, Do not agree that family is much better off if man works and woman stays home. The horizontal axis has values from 1975 to 2000 at intervals of 5 years. The vertical axis has values from 30 percent to 90 percent at intervals of 10 percent. The dotted line starts at (1977, 41), steeply slopes up to (1989, 71.1), declines to (1991, 70) rises up to (1994, 79) and terminates at (1987, 80.8). The dashed line begins at (1977, 49) steadily slopes up to (1985, 65) declines to (1987, 62) rises to (1989, 62.5) drops to (1990, 63) inclines to (1991, 66.5) climbs up to (1994, 70) slopes down again at (1996, 65.4) and terminates at 1997, 67.5). The black line begins at (1977, 31.5) abruptly slopes up to (1988, 51) slopes up again to (1989, 51.4) slopes down to (1991, 50.2) slopes up again to (1994, 59) declines to (1996, 52.5) and slopes upwards to terminate at (1997, 57). The light grey line begins at (1977, 32.5) abruptly slopes up to (1986, 52) slopes up again to (1990, 60.5) declines to (1991, 59) slopes up again to (1994, 63) slopes down again to (1996, 62) slopes up and finally ends at (1993, 65). All data are approximate.

Source: Tom W. Smith, Peter Marsden, Michael Hout, and Jibum Kim, General Social Surveys, 1972–2010 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2011).