Caring
for Children
and Working:
Dilemmas
of
Contemporary
Womanhood
Leon Eisenberg, M.D.
From the Departnzents of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical Se/wv!, and Children s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts
ABSTRACT. American women are entering the labor force in increasing numbers; currently 53% of women in intact families are in paid employment as are 41% of those with children under 18; this despite the fact that women earn less than 60% of the wages paid men in similar occupations. Women are responding to the pressures of an inflationary economy, to the costs of higher education for their children, to opportunities for personal fulfillment, and to a growing market for service occupations. Yet married women continue to carry 70% to 80% of child care and household duties when
both parents work. Conventional stereotypes of feminine passivity, formalized in the last century, grossly misperceive women’s roles and abilities and constitute a psychological barrier to self-realization for both men and women. Social innovations in child care will be necessary if we are to pro-vide optimal conditions for child development at a time
when family roles are in sharp transition. The pediatrician, as family counselor, can help to support mothers and fathers seeking to fulfill parental, occupational and personal needs in a rapidly changing society. Pediatrics, 56:24, 1975,
MOTHERING, FATHERING, CHILD CARE, WORKING MOTHERS, SEX
ROLES.
As the person responsible for the wording of the title, if not for the choice of the topic, the need for full disclosure prompts me to acknowl-edge a degree of verbal guile. As formulated, the
title of this paper is both a statement of the
problem and part of the problem. Its wording makes the challenge of caring and working a dilemma for women. In a limited sense, that statement may be regarded as an accurate description of current perceptions. Yet, precisely because the dilemma is put as a problem for
#{176}Sincesubmission of this article, Hamburg’s manuscript has been scheduled for publication in Washburn, S. L., and Dolin, P. (eds.): Perspectives in Human Evolution, vol. 3. San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975.
women rather than for men and women, the proposition constrains discussion by omitting
from the universe of discourse half the population of parents. Had I chosen the title: “Caring for Children and Working: Dilemmas of Contemp-orary Men and Women,” I might have deterred some readers who anticipated a text that
proposed identity in sex roles. I make no such simplistic assumption. Betty Hamburg, in her
unpublished0 manuscript, “The Biosocial Bases of Sex Difference,” has reviewed the available
evidence on the matter as well as pertinent
considerations from evolutionary theory and concludes that there may well be biologically based behavioral differences between the sexes. Yet, when such differences exist, they are differ-ences in population dLtributions with the
van-ance far greater than the distance between the
means. The relationship between behavioral
phenotype and genotype is such that culture is a decisive influence in maximizing or minimizing differences between the observed mean values.
Thus, respect for human variability demands of us that we attend to individual dispositions and preferences and that we not imprison members of each sex by imposing Platonic ideal types upon them.
Let me, then, begin with my conclusion: In a
(Received
November 21; revision accepted for publication December 26, 1974.)fully human society, the goal of social institutions should be to maximize the possibilities for personal choice for women and men.
Three generations ago, when perhaps one in five American women were employed, the wom-an who worked violated Victorian norms of role definition; even when compelled by sheer economic necessity, she was made to feel that she was neglecting her primary responsibility to her children. Today, when one out of every two married women works and when a new ethic pro-claims work a cardinal virtue for the liberated woman, the one who can, and chooses to, stay at home begins to feel herself a traitor to her class. A lifestyle that was once defined as deviant has
become modal; although role redefinition has
lagged behind role change, the descriptive is becoming prescriptive. A freer world would be one in which the economic means might be avail-able, and the social encouragement provided, to allow women-and men-more rather than fewer choices-to work to the extent that work is fulfilling-to stay at home as house-father or house-mother when child care is more gratify-ing-to share working and caring roles when that best meets needs for personal growth as well as child development.
Our society changes at breakneck speed. Only
rarely is change planned, the result of deliberate social policy undertaken with due regard for sec-ondary fallout. Most often the technological imperative pushes us in this direction or that; our rationalizations come after the fact and serve only to speed the process further.
Any discussion of the way we would prefer things to be must begin from a consideration of the way things are.’ Whether we wish it so or not,
38% of the labor force of 91,000,000 people is female-up from 20% in 1900 and 29% in 1950.2
Of the 64,000,000 children under 18, 41% have working mothers; of the 6,000,000 under 6, 31%. In the past ten years, 60%-more than one half-of
the increase in the labor force has been female.4
This is, however, no reflection of a meritocratic workplace; on the contrary, it reflects the increase in demand for workers in labor force occupations (service roles) that are the main employers of women.’ And, when women work full-time and year-round, they earn only 60% of men’s wages.4 In all occupations, white men earn more than black men, white women earn more than black women, in a descending series.6
Why do women work? Many clearly prefer to, just as men do. How satisfying work is, to a given
individual, depends on expectation as well as on the degree of concordance between ability,
edu-cation, and job characteristics. Even when the job
isn’t all it might be, it provides a network of personal interactions in contrast to the social isolation that is a major psychological burden for many homemakers. Most women work because they have to and because society presses them to (as it did during World War II when the govern-ment supported day-care actively, a posture it abandoned when the war was over and the
supply-demand ratios in the labor market changed). It is not simply single, separated, and
widowed women who work. Currently, 53% of the women in intact families do. Economic forces
are the major determinant. In addition to the
erosion of purchasing power through inflation, there is the phenomenon aptly named by V. K. Oppenheimer the “life cycle squeeze” (#{252}npub-lished manuscript). Family expenses peak when
children are in late adolescence, yet the average
male income remains stationary; the come-sponding press from economic deficit drives
women in the labor force. There are marked class
differences in women’s work patterns. Among
middle-income families, the proportion of wives who work tends to decline as husbands’ incomes
increase. Among low-income families, wages for men must be adequate for family needs before wives can “choose” whether to work or not. The female head of the household will only be a free agent when we have meaningful income-mainte-nance programs. Many women may prefer to work, but there can be no question of “prefer-ence” when poverty is the alternative.
The most compelling argument for the libera-tion of women does not come from work-force statistics. It might seem reasonable to contend that, in a “liberated” society, women should be no less subject to the demands of the workplace than men. The price women pay emerges from studies of weekly time budgets. Whether capitalist West or socialist East is surveyed, employed married
women work far more hours in toto than either employed men or housewives; the working wife continues to carry 70% to 80% of child care and household responsibilities in addition to her job duties.7 If an ethic of justice is to prevail, a
revolution in male behavior in child care and
house care must parallel the growth of women’s
participation in the labor force.
According to successive opinion polls, an
ever-larger percentage of Americans, from 18% in 1946 to 65% in 1973 (and 83% of those under 30) state
that they approve of married women working.8 At
overaged reader joins the overaged writer in calling for a return to the virtues of the past in which we were reared, when mothers were gourmet cooks who cared for children and loved
their husbands, as they obviously should, and husbands were the primary wage-earners and decision-makers, as they clearly were meant to be, I urge you to consider the consequences when
women are excluded from the workplace. Let me
do so by way of two contrasting historical vignettes, one the transition from a hunting-gathering to an agricultural society, the other from an agricultural to an industrial one.
The !Kung bushmen have lived in the Kalahari desert of southern Africa for at least 11,000 years
as hunter-gatherers in a remarkably precise
adap-tation to the particular features of their ecological
niche. In the very recent past, within a
genera-tion, they have begun to settle in agrarian villages near the Bantu at so rapid a rate that only 5% of the 30,000 !Kung still maintain their ancient nomadic form of life. With that change, !Kung
women have undergone a transformation in status
from high to low.9 In the hunter-gatherer economy, women, who are primarily gatherers, contribute not less than 50% of the food con-sumed by the group; they travel with the men in bands of very few people; those men and women who do not go out to seek food on a particular day share duties at the home camp. The nomadic life, with its high level of physical exertion and its nut, vegetable, and meat diet, is associated with a lean physique, late menarche, and low fertility, in part as a function of body weight.’#{176} The nomadic
!Kung have no soft food for their babies and thus
mothers of necessity nurse their infants for three to four years. The contraceptive effect of prolonged lactation has been an important factor in limiting population increase to an estimated 0.5% per year.
Once the !Kung settle near Bantu villages, the women are less mobile, contribute less to the food supply, and assume major responsibility for food preparation, shelter maintenance, and child care. The men who leave the villages to work learn the
Bantu language. They alone participate in the
all-important negotiations with the Bantu from
which women are now excluded; they gradually
emulate the male-dominated Bantu society. With the change in diet and life pattern, the women menstruate earlier, become pregnant at shorter intervals, and take principal responsibility for child came as the population increases at a more rapid rate. There are many fascinating social and health ramifications of this ecologic transition,” but for our purposes I wish only to call attention
to a loss in status of women associated with a demographic change usually described as “pro-gressive,” because we view it from the vantage
point of contemporary Western industrial society
which represents a culmination of a series of such transitions with the arrow of time pointed in our direction.
Indeed, the allegedly feminine virtues which,
until recently, have been celebrated in our society
are a much more recent invention than most of us
are likely to recognize.8 Until the Industrial
Revolution in England, the family was the
primary economic unit with mothers, children, and fathers sharing in the work of the farm or the cottage industry that generated family subsist-ence. The persistence of this state of affairs in much of the developing world is a major barrier to limiting population growth because children begin to contribute to economic productivity early in life as well as being a built-in form of social security for old age. As men moved from farm to city to work in factories, they were employed away from the home, leaving home care and child care to the woman who derived her status as well as her economic sustenance from her husband’s social position. As women
contrib-uted less visibly to family income, they had less to
say about the disposition of family resources. Further, because of their peripheral role vis-a-vLi
economic productivity (for there was never any calculation of the woman hours of labor in child care and home care’2 in the measures of gross national product), they were more likely to be regarded as esthetic investments and they them-selves learned less and knew less about the central
business of society. Since the major reason for
education was preparation for a vocational role, its focus was more on men than women. There were always women who were forced to work, those who didn’t marry or those who lost their husbands, and their situation was the worst of all. There is a long history of legislative struggles to better the lot of this underclass of women and of the children who were forced into mines and factories. But the public perception of the woman’s role was principally concerned with the modal family unit. Now that women were rele-gated to economic dependency and assigned the role of homemakers, society made a virtue of
I have thus far not mentioned child care. Each of us who has enjoyed a happy family life is
persuaded by experience that the nuclear family
certainly can provide a healthy foundation for
child development. That, however, does not
justify the statement that it is the only or even necessarily the best foundation. The evidence
indicates that collective child-rearing as
devel-oped in the Israeli kibbutz is equally compatible
with healthy growth.’4 The kibbutz-reared child continues to enjoy strong primary ties with his
family of origin even though most of his time is spent in the children’s house. I do not argue for the appropriateness of that model for our society; that issue is far more complex. I stress only that there are a number of social institutions, of which the family is one, that can foster child
develop-ment. The task for the future is to devise the
social means that can allow women the full development of their own personalities and the realization of their own goals at the same time
that these means provide equal guarantees for the generations of children to come.”
At least two social innovations suggest
them-selves for this role: the rediscovery of
grandpar-ents and the reestablishment of intergenerational ties between adolescents and toddlers.’6 Those as fortunate as I, who have warm recollections of
what grandparents can contribute to the
develop-ment of a child’s self-confidence, joie de vivre, and conviction that he will amount to something, will at once recognize the potential of a surrogate grandparental role for child care. In our mobile society, the nuclear family is increasingly isolated from its families of origin; grandparents and grandchildren are alike bereft.’7 The elderly are
sequestered in what are mockingly called golden age communities; neither golden nor communal,
they must conjure up socially useless “activities” to fill time. How much more rewarding for them
if they found personally meaningful employment as supplemental child-rearers in individualized
foster care, small-group care, and day-care cen-ters. And what an untapped source of caring for the children who are simultaneously their benefi-ciaries and their benefactors! As I read the evidence, Mainland China’s success in rearing healthy children owes much to tapping the
poten-hal of the traditional Chinese grandmother. We
can outrevolutionize them by adding grandfather to the mix. (Here I must confess to a degree of seff-interest in securing a future role for myself as
retirement nears.)
In similar fashion, the housing of child
develop-ment centers in close physical proximity to sec-ondamy school and colleges could provide
oppor-tunities for young men and young women to enjoy children, to learn about child development, to provide person power for child care, and to prepare themselves for their own parenthood. The larger family of the past and the neighboring extended family of earlier decades almost guaran-teed that growing children would have young siblings to care for and learn about. The isolated nuclear family and the sharp sequestration of age groups in today’s society have combined to pro-duce a radical deprivation of that experience. New social inventions are required to guarantee the development of competence in parenting, the skill on which the progressive humanization of our society depends. Thus, the search for new ways to unchain women opens avenues to new possibilities for children and adults alike.
The growing movement for women’s rights and its equally formidable opposition both profess to speak for womankind with no acknowledgement of individual differences and of class differences. I am myself completely in sympathy with the thrust to facilitate opportunities for women who wish to work but I think it no service to thrust
those who are unwilling into jobs that men would
not choose to do, had they the choice. The impassioned rhetoric of the women’s movement all too often speaks of “work” in an undifferen-tiated fashion. One cannot lump the occupational role of a mathematician or a physician with that of a worker on a production line or in a mine. As physicians we are among the privileged of the world in having work which is not only remune-rative but personally satisfying. If that is what work is, who would not choose to have it? But what about the vast majority of the jobs in an industrial society which one does to make ends meet but hates the doing of?
Indeed, one serious social hazard in the press
for day-care is a political decision to provide facilities as cheaply as possible with the covert aim of forcing mothers supported by Aid to Dependent Children programs into the labor market to meet needs for domestic and other sex-typed service roles. A.D.C. programs-or better yet, income-maintenance programs-are far bet-ter ways to foster child care than nursery ware-housing. Day-care, yes. But only as well-staffed, comprehensive child development centers. The women’s movement dare not let its middle-class leadership be seduced into yet another form of subsidy for the privileged at the expense of the disadvantaged!
points but in the long-run will require the libera-tion of men as well as women by creating differ-ent types and arrangements of work so that an ever-increasing proportion of the population will find the work they do intrinsically satisfying as well as necessary.’9 And it will make life more rewarding for men if their lifestyle is modified too include substantially larger fractions of time in the enjoyable role of parent. Up to now, all to many of us men have been excluded, and have co-operated in our exclusion, from one of the most rewarding human activities. Our sharing that role will be no charitable contribution to our wives. It may indeed relieve them from what has been excessively burdensome because it had been a solitary task but it is one of the many opportuni-ties to have fun and to earn credit, both at the same time. It will, in most instances, redound to the benefit of our children as well.
To state my position baldly: The liberation of women requires the liberation of men; the libera-tion of men requires the liberation of women. In the world we must move to, occupational,
child-care, and household care roles will be more completely shared than they have been in the past. I do not foresee, nor would I propose, a precisely 50:50 distribution. Individual differ-ences in people and in marriages will likely result in a variety of family patterns. This will be made all the more possible by the social provision of child-care programs which will permit greater flexibility for those families choosing to avail themselves of such facilities. I object strongly to
the deprecation of the parenting role that is implicit in arguments that a woman or a man who chooses to devote herself or himself primarily to this role is not socially responsible. Until men change, not many are likely to face this problem; many women are already being made to feel inadequate by peer pressures because they find their gratification in the home. Others who are employed are coerced to feel that they have abandoned the role the Lord or Evolution has fashioned them for. As physicians, we have a major responsibility in family practice to respect individual preferences, to provide professional counsel in making employment decisions compat-ible with personal as well as family needs, and to work as citizens toward establishing a climate in
which the possibility of male and female choice is
maximized.
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