II. What seems to have remained the same?

While wives and mothers are getting out into the workplace and no longer confined to the house, they are still primarily responsible for most of the housework and men are still the primary breadwinners.

My mother didn't work outside the home until she and my father needed to supplement his income to put their children through college. Like my husband the 1980s and 1990s, my father did not increase his contribution to the housework in the 1960s when his wife worked outside the home. Our families were like the Holt family in "Joey's Problem" where Nancy remained responsible for childrearing, household chores, and emotional family dynamics even though the economic burden was shared. We all "...suffered from double duty and remained responsible for the lion's share of child care and housework."5 In some instances a modern man will share in housework, but more often a woman does double duty, starting her "second shift" at home after working outside the home.

Neither my mother's salary nor my own (nor Nancy Holt's) compared to our husbands' when we worked. Since primary responsibility for a family often remains with the man, a woman is more likely to take a part-time or less demanding job to cope with the demanding double duty. So the financial burden of supporting the family is still largely on men.

Then and now, women adjust to dissatisfaction in marriage to maintain a family relationship. My mother was typical of 1950s housewives in that she didn't complain of the constraints on her, although she was an educated woman who hated housework. Her early ambitions of changing the world with her social work degree were put aside to do her duty by staying home to raise her family. Both Nancy Holt and I, when "forced to choose between equality and marriage...choose marriage."6 And looking around at the struggling single, unwed mothers and divorced women with children, both their emotional anguish and financial hardships explain why so many women decide to make adjustments and work within marriage to strive for a fulfilling life.

Sexual containment to marriage has changed to accept premarital sex and sex between unmarried people, yet fidelity to one's spouse is still the norm. Infidelity was and is taboo.

III. How would you evaluate the significance of these changes for American society?

Although there are more divorces, the frequency of remarriage shows that people want to have a stable, fulfilling family lifestyle and are even willing to suffer through divorce in order to be in a better marriage. Problems and pressures caused by rigid family expectations in the 1950s created changes with new problems and pressures in the years in between then and now. Society is changing rapidly now, much faster than in previous decades and centuries.

Technological advances in communication increase awareness of other cultures and lifestyles, further eroding the idea of one ideal family type and increasing acceptance of a variety of definitions of a family. One of the last variations on family life to be accepted is the gay family. Their family structure is far from the 1950's normative family, but eventually their threat to society will appear as benign as the other previously unacceptable families that are now accepted into mainstream society.

The "family values" movement is being encouraged by congressional conservatives and others trying to "conserve" what they see as good about the past in the light of the problems that the changes in the family structure have created. Their solution is to go backwards to 1950s values, but that is unlikely to happen. While change is not always seen as forward progress by all, rarely do patterns revert back to an earlier period despite glorification by conservatives of the "good old days."

I am continually struck by the contrast between my mother and my daughters in their values and lifestyle opportunities. They entered young womanhood with very different expectations, and it will be interesting to follow my daughters' journey of womanhood as they marry (or don't) and have children (or don't). I expect that they will work outside the home -- they will not be confined to the house as my mother was. I mostly hope that they figure out how to have a satisfying relationship, raise children, and have a rewarding career. I couldn't make it work, and that is one of my greatest hopes for them.

NOTES

1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988) 225.

2 May 79

3 Arlie Hochschild, "Joey's Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt," in America Since 1945, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991) 348.

4 Carol B. Stack, "Sex Roles and Survival Strategies in an Urban Black Community" Women, Culture & Society, Rosaldo, M. Z., and Lamphere, L., eds., (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974) 128.

5 May 223

6 Hochschild 363