19th Nov 2008
Good Housekeeping Marriage Book
The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book: Twelve Steps to a Happy Marriage, from 1938 (reprinted 1949) has an inauspicious title if I ever heard one. It’s definitely going to be all about giving in and being a good cook and sewing your children’s clothes from scratch, snarked my feminist side. Just goes to show I don’t know everything. It had a neat essay from Eleanor Roosevelt… which rather shows just how far we have left to go.
This is not a case of whether you prefer marriage or a career. It is a case of marriage and work together, or no marriage and work alone. Work must go on in either case. For most women there is something so satisfying in creating a home that they do it frequently by themselves….
I know one young couple who were married when the boy was getting twenty-five dollars a week and the girl was getting the same as a stenographer. Both of them went on working. Everything seemed to be going very well, and she managed her two jobs quite successfully. The most successful part of it was the fact that she induced her husband to feel an equal responsibility for the house. I remember that when I dined with them, he put on an apron after dinner and helped wash the dishes as naturally as if that were the normal occupation for a man. When a marriage works out this way, it is very successful, especially if the man has a knack for doing things about the house, because it keeps him busy when his wife is busy.
So often these days, the question of whether women should work outside the home is framed entirely from the viewpoint of married, middle class families, who have the luxury of choosing between one or two incomes.
Of course, when it comes to the mothers of families who work in mills, factories, and stores, we know quite well that there is no question of choice—poverty drives them, and they work because they have to, and only a few would hesitate if they were offered an opportunity to stay at home and look after their home and their children.
I remember visiting a mill town once, and as the women came off the night shift—for there were no laws at that time in that particular state against women’s working on night shifts—they met their husbands going to work on the day shift. We followed one woman home. Tired from the hours in the mill, she nevertheless had to set to work immediately to get the children fed and off to school. Then she had her house to set to rights, washing and ironing to do, and dinner to get for the children and supper to be left for the man when he came back from work as she went on. In the afternoon she snatched a few hours of sleep, and the children who were not in school played unwatched and uncared for. She knew that her home life was not satisfactory, and she did not work long hours in the mill because she wanted to, but simply because there was not enough food to go around unless her earnings supplemented those of her husband.
At least today we have day care available.
The guilt trips from the “should women work” debate are laughably old. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and it’s tiresome to hear each side snark at the other.
The whole thing is worth reading if you’re interested. The rest of the book isn’t all that bad, either.
Of course, many of those books were published via male editors who were desperately trying to shoehorn woman back into traditional roles. But with woman having to find work due to the Great Depression and WWII (Rosie the Riveter, et al), and getting a taste for the career world (not to mention the extra income), there was no way that was ever going to happen.
And now, these days, most book editors are WOMEN.
As I recall, Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong believer that the most important rights for women to fight for were economic rights. Given what she saw touring America during the Depression, it’s not surprising. (I remember a much more recent first lady, Hillary Clinton, getting a lot of heat for taking the same position at a meeting in China. Her assertion that the best thing that could be done for women’s rights and human rights in general outside the first world was to expand economic opportunities. Many people felt she was kow-towing to the Chinese hosts by not discussing other political and social reforms that were needed.)
Thanks for this reminder that sometimes it’s like the twentieth century never happened. As an early Americanist, I find that I just assume a neater trajectory from there to here than there actually was. And as you point out, these debates are hardly new, they are depressingly old. Sea-of-Green makes a great point in that women today end up driving this false debate, in large part because provocative books and controversy sell. (Dr. Laura, anyone?) I’ve seen this recently at my blog with some posts earlier this autumn on Sarah Palin–man, does my hit count go WAY up when I post on Palin!
@Sea-of-Green — I was pleasantly surprised (1) that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an essay for the book, and (2) it was quite open to many possible ways of making marriage work. I wonder whether the Good Housekeeping magazine and associated books were managed by men or women that long ago… probably men.
@Historiann — I know, I was absolutely shocked to see such a “progressive” attitude in 1938. It could definitely use spreading about, even today. (And feel free to keep mentioning Palin in comments here, I’m sure it can only help my hits too
)