Women and the Family

Two Decades of Change

Beth Hess, Marvin B Sussman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317953999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Le genre et la loi

Despite the pervasive changes that have taken place in women's lives in the past twenty-five years--increased participation in the labor force, the attainment of higher levels of education, and higher salaries--comparable changes in the division of family labor and in the roles of men have lagged considerably. In this timely book, the editors and other experts in feminism and family studies examine the effects of two decades of influence by the women's movement on sex roles and child rearing. While applauding some positive changes, the contributors point to powerful forces of resistance to equality between the sexes, especially "the question of family"--the fear of depriving children of maternal attachment and the belief that working mothers are placing their own interests above those of other family members--as an issue that, until fully addressed, prevents genuine equality between the sexes.

Chapter 1
Women’s Roles in Mythic Tradition and a Planetary Culture

Marvin B. Sussman

The epic myth of Eros and Psyche is a tale of trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Aphrodite, alias Venus, subjects Psyche to a series of impossible tasks. The reason for this godless action is that Venus is jealous of Psyche's beauty as a mortal. Fearful of the competition, she sends her son, Eros, alias Cupid, to destroy Psyche. Instead, Cupid falls in love with Psyche and Psyche becomes with child. Angry, fretful, alienated, and a bit fearful, Venus sends her agents to bring Psyche to her. She treats her abominably and subjects her to a series of trials, intended to guarantee defeat, depression, and succombing behaviors with the only recourses being death at the hands of the angry goddess or suicide.

The first trial involved the sorting of mixed grains. Venus called for large quantities of wheat, barley, millet, beans, lentils, poppy seeds and similar grains and mixes them together in a pile. The task is for Psyche to sort and stack the grains in separate heaps and to do this before nightfall. The test was for Psyche to demonstrate her industriousness, and to warrant having Eros as a lover and husband would require her to demonstrate hard work.

Psyche completely frustrated, overwhelmed, and in a deep depression made no attempt to set about this stupendous task. A small ant had witnessed what had occurred, had heard the wild curses of the cruel mother-in-law who was trying to destroy Psyche, the wife of the god of love, Eros. As quick as his six legs could carry him he went about the countryside rounding up all the ants telling them what has occurred and they came in waves working furiously sorting out the piles of grain and putting them in the appropriate piles. Venus returned at the setting of the sun, somewhat tipsy from an afternoon garden party, and to her surprise and great disbelief found the grains all sorted. She accuses Psyche of not doing the task but having the ability to beguile and bewitch some wretched soul or many of them to help her with the sorting test.

In this myth of trials, tribulations, and triumphs, animals and human beings, gods and goddesses, nature and the environs rise to the occasion and save the poor and stricken Psyche in ingenious and creative ways. Another illustration is the task of the second trial. Psyche is asked to fill a crystal cup with pure water from a stream on top of the mountain. To scale this mountain involves passage through the deeper realms which are inhabited by wild creatures, demons, quick sand, illusions, extremes in temperature, dragons, ghosts and witches. One has to cross the river Styx. The water must be delivered to Aphrodite before the sun sets in the west.

Psyche is in despair and decides to commit suicide. But a voice on high believed to be that of Jupiter angrily admonished her for giving up. His utterings take the form of an impassioned lecture and with concern and compassion knowing in his heart that he wants to bring Psyche to a godly status without diminishing the ego of Aphrodite, dispatches one of his faithful carriers, the royal eagle, who with the speed of Mercury, comes out of the heavens and seizes the crystal cup and on strong wings soars and takes it high over the grasping limbs of the demons of the deep. The eagle, exhausted from the mission, convinces the stream, which is reluctant to give up its pure waters, that it is Venus' desire, and fills the crystal cup. It is brought to Psyche who subsequently delivers it to a shaken and angered Venus.

Voices on high, emanating from above, metaphorically represent the great controllers of culture, of our lives. It is the metaphor of the tower. It is from the oracles or from the mounts, or from the burning bush on the hill to which we have lifted our eyes and hearts, for the important message, to determine the tower in our life, our calling. Is it a profession, family, friendship, network, or spirituality?

From a close examination of the eclectic writings of experienced authors on the women's movement and families whose work is represented in this volume, there are many voices or towers which pur sort to clarify and enlighten the primary mission of the women's movement, one which is achievable and in keeping in the long cultural, social, biological and genetic history of humankind and womenhood. The many voices juxtapose the rights of the individual for self fulfillment, particularly women, and the primacy of the family as a unit with the consequential commitments to its endurance, providing a safe haven for the nurturance and development of its young. Other voices call for the transformation of long ingrained and almost instinctual ideologies which emphasize generosity and the giving of one's self, especially the giving nature of women. The Tower in the Eros and Psyche myth tells her to curb her generosity, to avoid giving away critical parts of herself automatically and spontaneously before integration and wholeness of self occurs. The issues today of women's jobs or careers and families and the very survival of the planet remain unresolved. The reeds in waters are multivoiced and are playing a score not inconsonant with the tunnel visioned perspective of a male dominated corporate world.

Another emergent theme from this collection of articles on the women's movement and families is that the movement and its advocates and scholars are using paradigms and endemic behaviors suited to current institutional patterns. This explains why the success rate in the drive towards equity in gender relationships is less than robust. The movement would prosper if those in it supported a paradigmatic revolution suggested by T.S. Kuhn. Such a revolution would transform current states of consciousness attuned to cultural practices and societal constraints and the symbolic imagery of current institutions, their demands and functions. Only with the unfettering of the symbolic universe of current institutional patterns can the linkages between gender equity, human needs and planetary resources be established.

As Kuhn indicates, a paradigmatic transformation of consciousness and institutions cannot be achieved using current educational, managerial, media, scientific and technical processes. The desired outcomes of the gender revolution can be realized by adoption of beliefs and values alternative to existing ones. These beliefs and values provide new perceptions and uses of administrative, educational, and technical processes in the quest of gender equity (Gutting, 1980).

A change in paradigms for our planetary culture of high complexity and integration is necessary to obtain a complementarity of men and women's roles. We cannot use existing paradigms whose behaviors are inhibited by cultural constraints, habitual patterns, and symbolic universes which provide the realities for current institutional forms and practices. Ours is a social order built around corporate and bureaucratic structures and ideologies with paradigms supporting acquisitive, competitive, hierarchical, inegalitarian, and self oriented tendencies and practices. A dramatically different paradigm, and requisite for the success of the gender movement, professes egalitarian and cooperative practices and horizontal over vertical structures with relationships based on trust, negotiation, and cooperation. Internalized in the consciousness of society's members and imbedded in its institutional forms are the values and norms of equity and shared decision making. The consequences are harmony with nature, the thoughtful use of natural resources and humaneness in interpersonal relationships. There is a high identification with the belief systems of the social order; social institutions and structures are people oriented, which work for the benefit of individuals and groups. A sense of harmony, belonging, and security prevails.

To transcend the prevailing paradigm with its foci on acquisition, competition, control, and me-ness requires beliefs, techniques, and strategies that are not derived from current corporate structures, or its symbolic universe and consciousness. A new paradigm which incorporates concerns for human emotions and reason demands a transformation strategy which can promulgate democratic, cooperative practices, and equitable relationships.

A transformation strategy should aim to correct the fallacious perceptions of interest which are now dominant in people's consciousness, according to which security, need satisfaction and survival can be attained within prevailing institutional arrangements. People everywhere, but especially in the privileged, powerful, and supposedly developed countries, have to be challenged to discover that in spite of their statistical wealth and their military power, the quality of their lives is now deeply unsatisfactory and continues to deteriorate; their basic needs go often unmet; their social and psychological needs for meaningful human relations, meaningful work, self-direction and self-actualization are generally unfulfilled. They are afflicted with a pervasive sense of insecurity; and their own future and that of their children seems threatened (Houston, 1982).

This change in paradigms, essentially a humanistic revolution provides possibilities for strategies and tactics toward decentralized yet co-ordinated, cooperative, egalitarian social orders, in which people can become self-directing, self-reliant, self-actualizing, and above all rational in the conduct of their public affairs. It should be stressed that the social orders implied here do not require a return to "primitive," tribal ways of human existence. Rather, these should be social orders in which people will make optimum use of science and of a humanized technology and industry. People will be subjects and masters of these processes rather than their objects and slaves. They will use and control scientific and productive resources and processes for their shared well-being.

Implicit in the strategy and goals suggested is a notion of self-interest which is fundamentally different from both selfishness and altruism. It is a notion of self-interest that affirms the self-interest of one's ego along with the self-interest of the "generalized other." It incorporates the realization that the liberty, security and needs of the self will be assured only when everyone's needs, security and liberty are assured. As such a redefinition of self-interest takes hold in the consciousness of growing numbers of people, values and motivations will emerge which will be supportive of an institutional order geared to everyone's free and full development, need satisfaction and self-actualization.

Women roles will change grudgingly and slowly as part or the evolutionary process, as current corporate paradigms modify to accommodate change induced by "have nots" in the system. The equity or fairness in the role behaviors and status of men and women will not be achieved in a millennium or until the messages from the reeds in the waters or towers on high are listened to and accepted. A cosmic unity evolves on what men and women should want for each other and from one another and their families, and the complementarity of independent and autonomous self with well being of the family and other primary groups.

Concomitant with this illumination is the acceptance and implementation of behaviors endemic with new paradigms, those which lead to a transformed culture and society, those which lead to horizontal connectedness with multiple prospects for rooting deeply, fostering a balanced, systematic and sensible relationship between needs and resources, rather than vertical, hierarchial structures rooted in power and control. There is a Don Quixotic tone to this posture, at first blush. Yet my perception of reality is that, to the contrary, the current struggles for gender equity are truly Quixotic, thrusting at the windmills of encrusted paradigms and attendant behaviors is action without fulfillment.

You, the reader, experienced in the ways of life and living in the not so brave new world of 1984, will after reading these juicy, penetrating and convoluted papers, accept or reject my thesis. I had to take this position, it was my "calling." I chose to be a lion for a day rather than a mouse for a life time. So it goes.

© 1984 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

References

Houston, J. Lecture, Possible Human in A Possible Society Seminar, 1982.

Gutting, G. Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.

Chapter 2
The Women’s Movement and the Family: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Constraints on Social Change

Maren Lockwood Carden

Introduction

In this paper I discuss why the nineteenth and the twentieth century women's movements have been shown to have relatively little impact on patterns of family life (Bird, 1979; Hoffert and Moore, 1979; Hunt and Hunt, 1982; Oakley, 1981; Vanek, 1980; Weinman-Schram, 1983). Chapters in this issue of Marriage & Family Review provide additional evidence that even today's supposedly enlightened middle-class families are not equalitarian, and that, in all social classes, the responsibilities of motherhood still make it exceedingly difficult for women to take full advantage of the world outside the home.

Historical Perspective on the Movements

Although agitation began earlier, the nineteenth-century women's movement was formally inaugurated in 1848, the date of the first women's rights convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott and held in Seneca Falls, New York. These women became involved in feminist issues while working for abolition, while others were brought directly into the women's movement through the organizing skills of such talented women as Susan B. Anthony. During this early period, feminist leaders explored a range of ideas. While by today's standards, their agenda for change was modest, by nineteenth century standards, such ideas were radical. Women, it was argued, should be educated, admitted to the professions, have increased opportunities for employment outside the home, and receive higher wages. They should attain an independent legal status and not be dependent on their husbands. In dress, social, and recreational activities they should not be restricted by the excessive sensibilities of the nineteenth-century view of women. In all these areas, feminists fought for change. They achieved it in only a few.

By 1870, these broader objectives had been abandoned and feminists limited their actions, if not always their discussions, to the issue of suffrage. In fact, the first major organizations devoted exclusively to women's rights were the suffrage groups: the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Women Suffrage Association. Fifty years later, in 1920, women gained the vote.

In discussing the work or the nineteenth century feminists, I shall concentrate on the period before suffrage became the dominant concern; that is, on the years between 1848 and 1869 when women sought the greater range of changes. I shall refer to the feminist movement of this period as "the mid-nineteenth century movement."

Once suffrage was achieved in the twentieth century, the organized feminist movement virtually died. It revived suddenly in the 1960s. At first, the then conservative National Organization for Women (NOW) and the radical "women's liberation" consciousness-raising groups were its sole proponents. But soon the movement diversified into hundreds of small and a few very large groups (such as NOW, the Women's Equity Action League, and the National Women's Political Caucus) working for change at local and national levels. Later, these independent groups were joined by feminist constituencies working within such established organizations as the YWCA, or the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, the major political parties, and academic disciplines.

The contemporary feminists' objectives have been even more varied than their forms of organization. Although the extreme radicals of the late 60s and early 70s are less visible today, feminists still hold a wide range of views about such matters as the extent of inherent differences between men and women, the degree to which male and female roles should become androgynous, and about the relative importance of working for change in areas like the rights of minorities, working class and poor women, employment opportunity, party politics, lesbians' rights, older women's rights, and child care.

Neither the contemporary movement nor the mid-nineteenth century movement is or was composed, therefore, of a single organization pursuing a single set of objectives. Each is a loosely coordinated collection of groups, different in size, degree of formality, styles o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Women's Roles in Mythic Tradition and a Planetary Culture
• Chapter 2: The Women's Movement and the Family: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Constraints on Social Change
• Chapter 3: In Defense of Traditional Values: The Anti-Feminist Movement
• Chapter 4: Women's Work in the Home: Seems Like Old Times
• Chapter 5: The View from Below: Women's Employment and Gender Equality in Working Class Families
• Chapter 6: Working Wives and Mothers
• Chapter 7: Dual-Earner Families
• Chapter 8: Afro-American Women and Their Families
• Chapter 9: Men in Families
• Chapter 10: Changing Family Roles and Interactions
• Chapter 11: Missing Links: Notes on an Impossible Mission
• Chapter 12: Family Roles and the Impact of Feminism on Women's Mental Health Across the Life Course
• Chapter 13: Cinderella: Her Multi-Layered Puissant Messages Over Millennia
• Selective Guide to Current Reference Sources on Women and the Family
• Afterword