February 18 Morning Session

CONFERENCE ADDRESSES Working Women-Their Home Obligations

Family Responsibilities of Earning Women, Hazel Kyrk

Social Patterns for Women, the Present and the Prospects, Ordway Tead

FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES OF EARNING WOMEN' Hazel Kyrk, Professor of Home Economics and Economics, University of Chicago

A

T THE latest report there were about 17 million women in the labor force in the United States. We do not know exactly how many of these women with a job have home responsibilities appreciable in amount. We do know, however, that there are great variations among working women in this respect, as there are among men and women in the financial responsibility they must assume for the support of others. Both types of responsibilities vary in the main with marital and parental status. It is necessary, therefore, to analyze separately the situation of the single, widowed, divorced, and married women in the labor force. Generalizations about working women without such differentiation are not likely to be illuminating.

In 1940 half of the women with jobs were single in spite of the fact that decade by decade as the school-leaving age has advanced and the age of marriage has lowered, the relative importance of this marital group in the labor force has declined. The responsibility that single women in the working force must assume for housework and care of children has caused us and probably need cause us little concern. They are a relatively young group. In 1940 more than a fifth were under 20 and more than a half under 25. There was undoubtedly a mother in the households in which most of them were living. Almost a fourth were lodgers in 1940 and although about a tenth were labeled "heads" of households, well over half of these heads were living alone or sharing their dwelling with an unrelated person. We can be fairly certain that not more than one in ten of these households of which single women earners were heads included children.

1 See charts 7 and 8, Appendix IV, in connection with this address.

cerning the financial relation of single women workers to members of their families in the same household or outside. Investigations have clearly shown that within certain occupations these workers have earnings insufficient for self-support at an acceptable level. Some of these, the more fortunate ones, undoubtedly had their earnings supplemented from the earnings, or by the unpaid services, of other family members. There are also undoubtedly some, both those with earnings below and those with earnings above an acceptable level, who wholly or partially support others. Data that unmistakably indicate the proportion who are partially supported by others or who support others are difficult to secure. But although we cannot measure with exactness the extent of either of these situations, the social judgment about them is fairly well crystallized and our thinking can proceed on assumptions that are generally agreed upon. It is fairly well agreed that the full-time earnings of an able-bodied person admitted to the labor market should be sufficient to maintain her at an acceptable level without subsidy in any form from family or others. It is also fairly well agreed that wage rates which will not provide such earnings should be declared illegal and that we should seek for causes and correctives.

In the case of those who wholly or partially support others, guiding principles reflected in public policies are at least inp rocess of crystallization. Such actual dependents of single women earners are not their presumptive dependents; that is, this is not the way society avowedly wants or expects these persons to be supported. Single women who are supporting or helping to support a parent or parents, siblings, or the children of siblings, are the victims of a break-down in the system defining rights to, or responsibilities for, support. In our culture, support of children is the parents' responsibility. If they cannot or do not meet it, various policies are proposed or in operation to deal with the situation, none of which involves passing the responsibility to older children or other relatives. Another avowed goal of social policy is economically independent old age and, in lieu of that, public assistance. The care of the ill and the aged is recognized as a problem we have scarcely begun to attack. Until we do so successfully, and until we attain our goals with respect to the economic situation of those too young and those too old to earn, the burden will fall upon those bound to them by ties of blood and affection.

If we could be assured that all employed single women were earning sufficient for self-support at a minimum level and that none had responsibility for the support or care of others, could we dismiss their economic situation from our minds as the occasion for special concern? Single women earners, we should always remind ourselves, are not

simply a group of working women. They represent a period in the economic life history of practically all women. Relatively few now go directly from school to marriage; larger and larger numbers have the experience of earning. In 1940 four-fifths of the urban single women not in schools or institutions were in the labor force. This period of employment is becoming part of the accepted life pattern. In one particular, at least, we can say that the employed single women present no problem. Their presence in the labor force is accepted and approved. We do not fear that they are neglecting home responsibilities, or that their ability to earn will affect adversely the marriage age or rate. It is generally agreed that their skills and energies should be usefully employed and that their social contribution is greatest in some form of specialized work for pay. Family restraints upon their employment are increasingly regarded as ill-advised since some may not marry and some who do may find it necessary later to enter the labor market. The presumption that the single women shall earn is practically as well established as that single men shall do so.

We cannot, however, withdraw our attention from single women earners without raising one further question. Do they suffer from any special disadvantage in the labor market due to limited preparation or opportunities for employment or advancement? Are their preparation and opportunities adversely affected by the fact that the duration of their employment is uncertain and that for many it will be brief? This situation would not be corrected by "equal pay." Nor can "equal" vocational or professional preparation be invoked as a remedy without examining our presumptions in regard to the whole life history of women and certainty that our proposal is not inconsistent with other desired objectives.

The second group of earning women whose economic and domestic state should be separately examined are the widowed, the divorced, and those living separately from their husbands. It would be useful if the facts about the three components of this group were more precisely known since they vary in age and family status. The widows who make up over half of the group are the oldest; probably less than a fifth are under 40. The divorced women, probably less than a fifth of the group, are much younger, probably two-thirds under 40. The third group are also relatively young, two-thirds under 40. The increase in this last group, married women separated from their husbands, was a wartime phenomenon as husbands went overseas or to army camps. It is the women in this group whose separation from their husbands is permanent with whom we are concerned from a long-run standpoint.

The family and economic status of many of the younger divorced, separated, and widowed women is very similar to that of the single. Their present family responsibilities, their economic history, and prob

lution. That would be true of those who are about the same age as the single, whose marriage was of short duration, and who have no children. But there are others, who are in the middle years or beyond, whose marriage was not of short duration and who do have children.

Just the description of this latter group is almost enough to answer the questions we would raise about them. If they have in effect two jobs or one and a half, they are at a disadvantage in the labor market. One scarcely needs to spell out why this is so. As a group they labor under another disadvantage as compared with single women and men of the same age. Few among them worked continuously before and during their marriage. Many have returned to the labor market after an absence of several years. Those whose work before marriage required no special skill or experience will have suffered least in level of earnings from the discontinuity of their employment. Those who left a depressed labor market and reentered in a boom area or period will have felt no adverse results of their absence. But there will be some whose leaving and return were not so fortunately timed. There also will be some whose special skills and knowledge will have become rusty or obsolete.

It is impossible to say exactly how many widowed, divorced, or separated women earners have children-probably at least a fourthor how many of the mothers support or care for their children singlehanded. Since most of the mothers are under 40, and in that age group divorced and separated women outnumber the widowed four to one, one might assume that the children are partially supported by the fathers. But since circumstances lessen both the willingness and ability of the latter to make contributions, this assumption seems less tenable in the majority of cases.

It is not the intent of our society that widowed or divorced mothers be the sole support of their dependent children. A legal responsibility, often unenforced and unenforcible, rests upon the living father and a weak and uncertain moral responsibility, weak and uncertain because behind it there are no strong social sanctions. The "good" father insures against the risk of death before his children are of earning age, but none is provided against the risk of separation or divorce which may have equally adverse effects upon the children and their mother. Margaret Mead alleges that our arrangements for providing children with status, security, and support are weak and defective as compared with those in other types of social organizations. If responsibility is limited to two adults, it places the child, she says, "in an indeterminate position economically, socially, and affectionally" since the care and support of one or both can be lessened or disappear with a single blow. Our attempts to improve the situation through greater assumption of social responsibility are shown in the Federal

State provision of aid to dependent children, survivors' benefits under the Social Security law, and provision of institutional or foster-home care. Complacency disappears when the adequacy of this social provision and the extent of the problem it leaves untouched is examined. When we turn from the single, widowed, divorced, and separated to the married women in the labor force, questions concerning their homes and families are the first that are generally raised. Are they neglecting, or discharging inefficiently, responsibilities that are theirs by virtue of their marital and parental status? If they are not, do they discharge them at the expense of health and leisure? Or have they reduced their housework burden by alterations in the family mode of living in ways adverse to family welfare? Or is it possible that they have found ways of shifting these responsibilities, or better and more efficient means of discharging them, which should be made available to and adopted by all wives and mothers?

Answers to these and similar questions in regard to married women who are earners have implications for the much larger group who are not, a group whose numbers run into the tens of millions. Only an eighth of the able-bodied married women not in school or institution had jobs in 1940. Are the seven-eighths of the married women without jobs employing their knowledge and skills to the greatest social advantage? Does their withdrawal from the labor force make for a higher level of personal development, child care, and family living?

Our thinking with respect to married women earners is made difficult by the fact that we have not clarified our value judgments as in the case of the single, widowed, and divorced. We agree that the single should be in the labor market and that their responsibility is for selfmaintenance. We agree that the widowed and divorced without children should earn and that those with children should not singlehanded maintain homes and provide money income. With respect to married women one principle could surely be defended. No restrictions should be placed upon their freedom to enter a gainful pursuit. None should be barred from employment unless some are compelled to take jobs, and the same principle is applied to other workers and nonworkers.

We cannot analyze the economic situation of married women, earning or not earning, without making explicit another value judgment that is a constant in our problem. This judgment or assumption is that people will live in small family groups in independent households. The moment we assume anything else, husbands and wives or parents and children separately domiciled, or arrangements for communal living, we shall have altered the situation entirely. At present the most pervasive and fixed part of our pattern for living is the independent household made up increasingly of the nuclear family without other