HISTORY MOVES SLOWLY

I am constantly reminded that history moves slowly. In college in the late 40s and early 50s, I decided that I would follow my passion for psychology on to graduate school and still see myself as an attractive woman, potential wife and mother. Beginning in 1970 I began teaching the psychology of women with textbooks just beginning to appear. Related to that I did talks about town on A Healthy Woman is a Crazy Person, usually beginning by singing, “This Little Light of Mine; I’m Gonna Let it Shine.” Contrary to the beliefs of the opposition, the point was not to hate men, send women out to work, and avoid wife and motherhood. The point was to make possible the full potential of women’s gifts. We talked about flex time, working from home, shared jobs, help with child care. Indeed, at Southern Connecticut State College where I taught, we pleaded for a day care center for faculty. It would have made sense, since SCSC specialized in Education training, so it would have provided practical training for Early Childhood majors. Even there, though, the culture wasn’t ready. My memory tells me the day care center at SCSU didn’t develop until after I had retired in 1986.

Much of what we longed for then has come to pass, spurred by the culture’s economic need and the development of amazing technological advances. These thoughts have been inspired by the book I’ve been reading on my Kindle-- Steven Hill’s “Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age.” Regarding the lesson of the influence of economic need, he refers to “the dependency ratio,” the ratio of dependent members of society to the wage-earning members who contribute to their support. A light bulb lit – like “of course” – when he referred to the dependents at both ends of the age scale. Kids are dependents too. While the number of aging is going up and is predicted to rise even more, childbirth rates are going down. On a short-term basis, that produces a ratio balance. Over time, however, aging will continue to increase, but fewer children will be growing into productive employment. That’s the problem. There will not be enough working folks to support both ends of the dependency ratio.

So, how does this relate to my opening points? Hill cites evidence that there are two potential sources for increasing the number of gainfully employed - immigration and women’s equality, which would have the effect of increasing the number of births. He says it more effectively than I can. “It is deeply ironic that a substantial part of the response to the continent’s dilemmas hinges on two solutions: less sexism and less racism. More immigration and better integration will help reverse the population decline and increase employment, which will positively affect dependency ratios; more women’s equality also will increase employment and the dependency ratio, and could lead to a higher birthrate.” (Kindle location 4669 – 74)

“Feminism is the New Natalism,” he says. Instead of forcing women to choose between career and motherhood, cultural and financial attitudes toward economic support of parenthood would have to change. Citing data from specific countries, he says. “Germany, Italy, Spain, and other countries need a new generation of women’s liberation, founded on freeing women to be both mothers and workers – working mothers. Fortunately, successful models already exist in neighboring Scandinavia and Britain.” (location 4612, Kindle) Those models include parental leave for both parents, high-level childcare facilities, business, insurance, or governmental subsidies for child wellness. The packages differ in different countries, but the goal is the same – to balance the economic health of the country.

The author is talking about Europe, but much of this may apply as well to the United States. I remember, for example, how quickly a child-care center was established in one wing of my grammar school during World War II. The emergency was clear. Similar centers were established in many businesses so mothers could work, knowing their children were cared for. We knew Rosie the riveter had to be freed up to work on the production line. There are employers today who are establishing similar care centers – a great way to help women to be gainfully employed and, not incidentally, providing jobs for the day care workers. It may not be so apparent, but we are in an emergency situation today as well.

I hope this will not be read to suggest that women should take the self-sacrificing role of providing financial as well as personal care of dependents at both ends of the age dimension. Rather, in a culture that cares about all its people, I read it – and I hope you read it – as encouragement for enriching women’s lives even as the health of the economic culture is supported. Remember, Rosie was paid men’s wages.

My favorite young critic (24) wants me to be sure to make the point that we won’t really be “there” until we talk about giving strength and encouragement to “parents.”

Oh, by the way. As revealed in one of my previous blogs and in this one, I’ve made the conscious choice to divulge and to take advantage of my age, knowing full well that our culture sees it not as an asset but a deficit. Who knows? Maybe my college friends and I can change that bias. In the meantime, I feel like a walking history book – a lesson in patience. It, whatever “it” is, takes time. That’s why I’m planning to hang in here at least for another 20 years so I can understand in retrospect what the heck is going on now.

WHEN DOES CAREGIVING BECOME CARETAKING?

This will be a short blog. I have the question but not much of an answer. It started a few days ago when a friend and I were discussing a book we had read. It took us to the issue of family systems and my comment that caregivers require people who need care.

She corrected my language, asserting that I should be distinguishing between “caregivers” and “caretakers.” The emphasis, she pointed out, should be on the last half of the word. I guess in a way it might even be biblical, with the assertion that giving should be done in quiet, without advertising one’s largess, with genuine concern for the person receiving the care. Given that distinction, the term “caretaker” would refer to folks who need some sense of control or competence or superiority or something else, with the emphasis on satisfying a need of one’s own by way of tending to the needs of others.

As you can see, I’m wrestling with the implications of this distinction, a very interesting one. Any reactions?

APPRECIATING GOOD FORTUNE (with special note of 1947 - 1979)

Snippets and snapshots have been dominating my thoughts these days, stimulated by working on “Riding in the Back Seat” and, recently, a request from Boston University for snapshots of memories of my time in the Ph.D. program there. Things that have hovered at the back of my mind are springing forward. How lucky I was that my father was the youngest of his family whose oldest brother was already here when he came from Sweden. There was a family waiting for him. Even though he never wanted to blow his own horn, he had friends at work who would, at appropriate times, tell the boss things like, “You’d better promote Carl Gustafson or you’ll lose him to another company that will appreciate him,” and so he made his way – almost in spite of himself, but based on his abilities – to a nice position.

How lucky I was to be the youngest in my family, born at the beginning of the depression, but old enough when we were pulling out of it so that I didn’t really experience it as my brother and sister did. My parents gave me the wonderful gift of a Connecticut College education. Years later I was fortunate to have a mentor in Bill Trinkaus at Southern Connecticut State College when “mentor” was just a word in the dictionary. And I was among the last group promoted to Full Professor there in 1978 before a long, dry season of limited spending on higher education set in.

All that is personal, but reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers this summer reminded me that my good fortune was directly related to broader demographic factors. My life and my career hit the years at just the right time. Remembering that my parents new home – which they moved into a month after I was born – relied on public events like new roads and electricity to the suburbs, I went back to one of my favorite books, Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were. There I realized how the home ownership my husband Lou and I enjoyed depended upon government action guaranteeing home loans with less than the 50% down payment that was often required before WWII.

Wondering how accurate my perception was that the economic divide had widened during my career and parenting years, I decided to get more specific and google the year I graduated from High School – 1947. (Now you know!) I knew I was among the lucky ones that WWII was over. (Never mind that we really believed wars had ended.) It turns out that 1947 was a significant enough year that it got mentioned in several places. Coontz points out (p. 78) that 1947 was the year when the government began a project to build 37,000 miles of new highway. Oh, and in 1956, the year after I was married and before we bought our first home, the Interstate Highway Act provided for an additional 42,500 miles – all of which helped the growth of suburbs.

Recently I have commented on the lives of the wealthy in Bristol. We had rich folks connected to the clock companies and to businesses that had been especially important during the war. They lived in mansions, quite similar to the starter mansions I see near my neighborhood in Minnesota. But they were a part of our community. Their kids went to High School with me. My boyfriend’s father owned a diner, disparagingly called “Dirty Bills.” by some. One year the daughter of the president of one of the clock companies was his date for the prom. (If you want to know more about why I wasn’t his date, you’ll have to read “Riding in the Back Seat” when it comes out in a few years.)

Were we an unusual community, or was there really not such a huge disparity between the wealthy and the rest of us in those years? I found the Internet loaded with references to 1947. It really was an important year! It didn’t take long to come up with a brief quotable reference. “For a quarter-century after World War II, Americans grew more prosperous and less unequal. Families in every fifth of income distribution saw their incomes double between 1947 and 1979. But the next quarter-century changed course dramatically. Between 1979 and 1998, the top fifth gained 38 percent, and the top 5 percent gained 64 percent, while the bottom fifth lost 5 percent of real income.” (If you copy and paste the following, it will take you to the source of the quote, Dec. 15, 1999 entry, “United For a Fair Economy.”)

file:///Users/mona/Desktop/Report:%20growing%20divide%20at%20decade's%20end%20%7C%20United%20for%20a%20Fair%20Economy.webarchive

See how personal these data are. It wasn’t just my imagination that wealth distribution was fairer in my family-raising and career years. I was part of the filling in a metaphorical sandwich between 1947 and 1959. So much for the bootstraps theory and more evidence of my good fortune just for when I happened to be born.

One last word. Mrs. Job needs readers – and purchasers. And remember, she is now available on Kindle for $6.00. Also, please, if you like her, a review on Amazon.com would be really nice.