Week 2- Historical Perspectives on Family & Work Part 2

Historical Perspectives on Family and Work 2

Joan Williams: Introduction & “Is Domesticity Dead?”

Williams begins her book with an introduction addressing the issue of whether we are seeing the end of the system of domesticity in this country. As we will later see in her writing, Williams disagrees with that assumption, and I believe her when she claims that “domesticity remains the entrenched, almost unquestioned, American norm and practice.” It is incredibly difficult for a system that has been the “norm” for so many years to just disappear. It is so entrenched in our society that it influences both the family and work dynamic. As Williams points out, the current work system demands “ideal workers” for success, and that is almost impossible to commit to as a mother. I know that my own mother is one of the most intelligent and driven women I know and would undoubtedly have been successful had she stayed in the working world, but she instead followed the path of domesticity set forth in our country and raised myself and my siblings. A telling fact from the Williams article is that nearly two thirds of Americans believe it would be best for women to stay home and care for the family and the children. This percentage was higher than I thought it would be at this day and age, but I do wonder if it has gone since the hay day of the domesticity era in the middle of the twentieth century. Williams has an interesting point in saying that domesticity did not die, but rather just mutated. It is true that there is more women in the workplace now, but still there remains double standards in reduced pay and hours for women, and especially for mothers.
On the surface it appears that a system of domesticity only limits and hurts women, but in reality it affects all. It has led to increased divorce rate as men are often too busy at work for their families (just under a third of fathers work fifty hours a week or more), and that not only negatively affects both the separated spouses but also any children. Before the Industrial Revolution, men were intricately involved in the raising of children because the spheres of work and home were one in the same. But now that they reside in separate arenas of life, men are often forced to make a decision between being the ideal worker necessary for success or constantly there for their children.
Williams stresses the need to change the definition of the ideal worker to be more inclusive. As it stands mothers are not able to work overtime or be flexible to move around without breaking the taboo of having their kids be raised by “strangers.” Williams says that studies have shown that businesses with “family-friendly” policies are both feasible and cost-efficient, which if is actually true is very encouraging. Williams next tackles the issue of the “he-who-earns-it-owns-it” argument. I disagree with this statement, and feel that in a marriage it is a partnership in which each person has a predetermined role but that the benefits are shared. As in my family, my father is the one earning the income but in no way does he lord it over or keep it from my mother because he realizes that she has just an important job as he does in maintaining our family.
Williams puts forth the idea that the negative aspects of domesticity can be brought to an end, but that first there must be more of a focus on them. Instead of focusing so much time and energy on sex and violence to shift to the family/work dynamic. I agree with Williams, but unfortunately I don’t know how effective this shift will be because people are drawn to the shock and awe value of the issues of sex and violence more than the blander family work issue. But that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t try to get her message across. As she says, around 90 percent of women will become mothers during their working lives, and unfortunately for them, the conventional family life just does not work well for those living in it.
Williams opens her first chapter entitled “Is Domesticity Dead?” with a good use of an anecdote to elicit the general viewpoint of women that she is trying to combat. She is adamant that many women use the excuse that they have personally made a choice to play their part in a domestic system, but that in reality they really do not have as much freedom to choose as they think. Williams believes that a lot of these women’s evacuation from work is done out of necessity of the system not of choice. There is much societal pressure on women not to be mothers who “say good night to their children on the telephone.” I agree with this and do feel that children are best suited to be raised by one of their biological parents, and hope that my future children will be, but every family and every situation is different. She also highlights how this system can be tough on men as well, often forcing them to choose between their highest success and their families. This is a decision that I hope I do not ever have to make, but as I’ve seen done with my father, the choice of family really should be an easy one.
Williams looks back at history, and contrasts it to the current system. It was interesting that in the early nineteenth century child care was not a full time task for the parents, and that the family was seen not as an intimate, emotional unit, but as an economic one. Women were seen as inferior and subordinate to men in all aspects, and it was even backed up by religious and legal practices. I found it interesting that Puritan women were supposed to hold toward their husbands an attitude of “reverence and awe,” qualities I normally associate with respect to God. In this sense, the eventual progression to domesticity was a welcomed step forward. It no longer highlighted that women were less than men, but rather that they were just different, and thus the system set about to exploit those differences.
The next major topic for Williams is the one that I believe is the major force keeping domesticity in play today. For years now, it has been the assumption of “masculinity with breadwinning.” Men feel like they have to be the ones to provide for their families and many would be too ashamed to admit that they could not do that. It is not that men do not feel that their wives could not work, but that they believe they should not have to. “Virtually all men believe that being a good father means first and foremost being a good provider.” I think that many women also understand this male desire to be the provider, and while some might not agree with it, they do understand that they are fighting years of precedence. Williams even quotes a housewife expressing this same ideal that no “good” wife would want to rob her husband of full masculinity. They believe that men should earn the living and women should have their time free to give to their children. It is this belief that fits nicely with the picture society paints as normal, and thus prevents many conflicts. Both parents usually want what is best for their children, and society says that in order for that to occur, children should not be raised by strangers. I personally would like to see statistics of success rates of kids raised by mothers and those with mothers who worked full time. I am not sure what those stats would look like, but I do know, as does Williams it seems, that domesticity is not dead at all, and as steeply entrenched it is in our culture and in the minds of many women, it might not be for a while.


Sharon Hays, “From Rods to Reasoning”

As seen in her creative title, Hays examines the evolution of mothering through the past from the age of beating in discipline to the age of scientific reasoning. At first, Hays importantly acknowledges that child rearing, as with most things, are very culturally dependent, and that what might appear weird in one culture is perfectly normal in another. For example, in America, child rearing is very mother dominated, and that is a rarity in most societies. Hays though, focuses on that mother intensive culture, and the changes it has undergone.
As far back as the Middle Ages, children were viewed as demonic and things to be feared. Children were often abandoned or led to be cared for by others. This might have been because many children died so young at that time that parents felt it fruitless to invest vast quantities of time until they knew the child would survive long enough to become a valuable asset. This view was maintained until the middle of the eighteenth century when Jean-Jacques Rousseau began to emphasize the importance of childhood and highlight their valuable innocence.
In the earliest Puritan American families, children were not held as special, and often there was no distinction made between a families own child and the slave child working for them. Outside of New England, there were many different practices, and as with all aspects of life, child rearing was dictated by religious beliefs. Hays said that it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that mothering was synonymous with mothering. I have to assume that this has to do the booming of the Industrial Revolution and beginning of the domesticity system. Mothers now had the valuable job of keeping children innocent and away from the viles of outside society. The good mothers built a morally acceptable home and were a model for their children to learn virtue from. Around this time, clothing and other items began to emerge that were child specific, which also increased the price of child rearing. Inevitably with the increased costs, the fathers had to work longer, thus making the mother’s role even greater. Also, gone were the days of land inheritance for a son’s future livelihood. Now a mother had to train their children to be independent and self motivated to succeed on their own as adults. Hays makes a great point that unlike the career mothers of today who face a challenge of where to place their time and energy, there was no doubt that those mothers dedicated their entire lives to domesticity.
However, as the industry began to boom, there became increased differences in class structure and wealth. It was much easier for the upper and middle class women to raise their children, but not always a viable option for those lower class mothers. Often these women had to still work and need the help of others to raise their children, who once they were old enough, had to find their own way to help contribute to the well being of the family. This did not sit well with the middle class and many tried unsuccessfully to impose their ideals on the lower class.
The most interesting thing about this whole movement though, was in the beginning of the twentieth century when a new belief that women had to “scientifically” trained to raise their children developed. New child experts insisted that children be kept to strict schedules and denied motherly affection. I think this is ridiculous, but many books were written and followed that read how to treat children and make mothers less nurturing. It can seen that this “Progressive Era” was just another way to solve the issues the middle class had with the child rearing practices of the lower classes. These “experts” genuinely believed they could solve societal conflicts with strict schedules and other technical solutions. However, this scientific revolution of mothering was short lived, and thankfully an return to the belief of nurturing and children’s innocence occurred quickly.
In the “Permissive Era” though, an ideal that I thought was common sense but apparently wasn’t came into fruition. Finally, child rearing became child centered and not guided with adult interests at heart. Also at this time, psychology and cognitive development theories began to emerge in manuals on how to once again appropriately raise children. I think it’s funny how each generation has their own “experts,” but I can understand that no one wants to raise their children wrong and taking advice from a so called expert does provide some insurance to one’s actions. One of these new theories called for children to have almost absolute freedom, which I do not think is the answer either. It will still be a few years before I have children of my own and I have to reexamine what parental style I want to use, but I think that there should be a happy medium between the “rod and the reasoning” as Hays describes it.

Joseph Pleck, “American Fathering in Historical Perspective”

In his article, Pleck recognizes that there has been a cultural change in the ideology of what fatherhood is all about, but that the application has been more gradual. This he claims is due to the fact that past ideals about fatherhood are so deeply engrained in our culture, that it is very hard to craft new ones.
In colonial times, the father’s role was one of moral leader and educational teacher. The basis for these roles were the beliefs that men were superior in almost all aspects to women, and that therefore they should be the ones who were shaping the youth. Pleck writes that children were viewed as inherently sinful, and thus men were the only ones morally strong enough to provide the right influence for them. Unlike today, in those times, the father was there daily, and “fathering was part of much routine activity.” Again the availability of the father to be relates back to the work and family sphere overlapping at this time, and I can only assume that the distant father would begin to emerge with industrialization. With this change, fathers not only began to be phased out of the picture, but mothering was thrust in its place. Now mothers were very involved in their children’s lives, all the way now from birth to adulthood. Also, an ideology shift about what demeanor was best for the children arose. Previously, it was thought that men were the only ones morally capable to raise children, but now women were seen as having the purity necessary for child rearing. Mothers began to achieve child custody in divorces and it was believed that in their formative, schooling years, children required a feminine influence. This rising maternal influence was met with mixed reviews in the scientific and psychological communities. Some preached about the importance of mothering, while others thought it was unnatural for the father to be so excluded.
As I thought, Pleck goes on to describe that as the realms of work and home separated, men were forced away from their hands on fathering roles. Instead now, their main job was to provide for their family. These new roles did not sit well with some fathers, as Pleck quotes one saying that he feels he is a “rotten dad” and he never spends any time with his children. In an effort to be more involved, the father after the war became a sex role model for the kids. This movement was part of a larger one that critiqued “over-mothering” and called for a change, as it was believed to be creating supposed negative influences, like homosexuality, in the culture. This is why fathers as an appropriate sex role model for their sons became the prevailing ideal. Now fathers were encouraged to be there for their children, but in appropriate gender contexts.
The “new” father of today is one still set in the breadwinner mold, but now is more involved in the lives of his sons and his daughters, from day one. There are pieces of old theories that still remain, like the father as a sex role model or moral leader, but a genuine change has been in the call for a father to be more of an active influence in the everyday working of their children’s lives. I agree with this model the most, and I can say from personal experience that a father’s role in a son’s life growing up is irreplaceable. I learned countless things about life and being a man from my own father, a fact that I know I am very lucky to have.