L 13.12:Am 3/6 MANAGING HOME AND JOB Family Responsibilities of Earning Women by Hazel Kyrk University cf Chicago --\ . 'J Address Wednesday Morning, February 18, to the Women 's Bureau "THE AMERICAN WOMAN Her Changing Role as Worker, Homemaker, ary 17, 18, 19, Washington,· D. C. Conference 1948 Citizen," Febru­ . The Women's Bureau publishes at. freq_uen t intervals estimates of the number of women in the labor force. We do no.t know exactly how many of these women with a job have home resnonsibilities appreciable in amount. do We know, however, that there are great variations among working women in this respect as the re are among men and women in the financial responsibbility they must assume for the support of others. Both types of responsibilities vary in the main with marital and parental status. It is necessary, there­ fore, to analyze senarately 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 mari tal 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 causes us and probably need cause us little concern. TThey 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 labelled "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 th2n one· in ten of these households of which single women earners were heads included children. Concern has long and frequently been expressed, however, concerning 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 the workers have earnings insufficient for self-support at an acceptable level. Some of these, the more fortunate ones, undoubtedly had their earnings supplemen ted from the earnings or by the un­paid services, of other family members · There are also undoubtedly some, both those wi th 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 diffic1J.lt to secure. But although we can not measure with LIBRARY UNIVERstTY OF WASHINGTON JUL271948 -2­ 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 ma intain 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 shoulcl be declared illegal and that we should seek for causes and correctives. In the case of those who wholly or partifallysupport others, guiding principles reflected in public policies are at least in process 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 in fact the victims of a breakdown in the sys tem defining rights to, or responsibilities for, support. In our culture support of children is the parents I responsibilityty. If they cnnnot or do not meet it, various policies are proposed or in operation to deal wi th the si tua tion, none of which involves passing the responsibbility to older children or other relatives Another avowed goal of social nolicy 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 gorcls with respect to the economic situation of those too young and those too old to earn, the burden will fall upon those bound to then by ties of blood. ;:ind affection. women If we could be assured that all employed single were earning suf­ ficient for self-support at a minimumlevel and that none had resnonsibili ty for the support or care of others, could we dismiss their economic situation from our mi nds 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 t:1e laborforce. This period of employment is becoming. part of the . • accented . life pattern.. - In this one particular at least, we can say that the employed single women present no problem, Their presence in the labor force is accented and approved. We do not fear that they are neglecting home responsibilities, or that t their ·ability to earn will affect adversely the marriage age or rate. It is generally agreed that their skills and energies should be usefully enployed 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 ay find it necessary later to enter the labor market. The presumption that the single women shall earn is practically as well es tablished as that t single men shall do so. We cannot, however, withdraw our attention fron single women earners without raising one further question. Do they suffer from any special di sadvantage in the labor market due to limitted prepara tion or opportuni ties for employmentor advancement? Are their prepara tion and opportunities adversely affected by the fact tha t 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 presunptions in regard to the whole life history of women and certainty that this proposal is not inconsistent with other desired ob.jectives. · The second groun of earning women whose econonic 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 fanily status. The widows, who probably make up aboutt half of the group, are the oldest; probably no more than a third are under 45. The divorced women, probably about a fifth of the group are much younger probably two-thirds under 45. The third group about 30 per­cent of all, are also relatively young, probably two-thirds under 45. 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 senaration fron their r husbands is permanentlyt wi th whom we are concerned from a long-run standpoint. The family and econonic status of many of the younger divorced, separated and widowed women is very sinilar to that of the singl. Their present family responsibilities, their econonic history and probably fu tu.re have been little affected by their marriage and its dissolution. That would oe true of those who are about the same age a s the single, whose marriage was of short duration and who have no children But there are others who are in the niddle vears 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 ano ther disadvant tage as compared with single wonen and men of the same age. · Few among them worked continuously before and during their marriage Many have re turned to the labor narket after an absence of several years. Those whose work before marriage reouired 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 re-entered 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 be come rusty or obsolete. --4--­ It is imposs i ble to say exactly how many widowed di vorced or separated women earners have children, probably at least a fourth, or how many of the mothers support or care for' their children singlehanded. Since. most of the·· mo the rs are under 45, and in that age-group divorced and separated women far outnumber the widowed, 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 responsibilityty, 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 wi th status, security and support are weak and defective as compared with those in other types of social organi­zation. If responsibility is limited to two adults it places the child, she says, "in an indeterminate position economically, socially and af­fectionally11 since the care and sunport 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, survivors1 benefits under the social security law, and :provision of insti tutional or foster-home care. Complacency disappears when the adequacy of this social provision is examined and the extent of the problem it leaves untouched When we turn from the single, widowed, divorced and separated to the married women in the labor force, q_uestions concerning their :1omes and families are the first that are generally raised Are they neglecting, or discharging inefficiently, responsibilities that are their's by virtue of their marital and parental status? If they are not, is it at the expense of heal th and leisure? Or, have they reduced their housework burden by alterations in the family mode of living in ways adverse to family welf are? Or, is it possible, tha t 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 hod jobs in 1940, Are the seven-eighths of the married women without jobs employing the ir 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? -5­ Our thinking with respect to married women-earners is made difficultt 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 resnonsibility is for self-maintenance. We agree that the widowed and di vorced without children should earn and tha t those with children should not singlehanded maintain homes and provide money income. With respect to married women one principle could surely be defendecl. No restrictions should. be pl0ced 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 non-workers. 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 peope will live in small family groups in independent households. The moment we assume anything else, husbands and wives, parents and children, se·narately domiciled or assume arrangements for communal living, we shall have altered the si tua tion entirely. At present the most pervasive and fixed part of our pattern for living is the independent household made un increasingly of the nuclear family without other members related or unrelated. There is no visible tendency for the household to fall belpw the minimum set by the size of the nuclear family, and the way it desires to live continues to be re­flected in separate dwellings equipped with sleeping, dining, cooking, and pther facilities. Obviously, a basic question is how great is the work load in a modern home. What is it now? What could it be reduced to, and what is it likely . . to be in the foreseeable future? For some married women now earning this is an irrelevant question., Their earnings are so high relative to those of skilled household hel·n that they can hire what is needed. Among these are the women likely to be publicized as successfuly combining marriage, children, a home and a career. · Everyone gains and no one loses under these condi tions. We have here, however, no ·solution of the problem for most married women with jobs, and the proportion for whom it is a solution is likely to become smallerif we attain some goals to which we are committed; viz,, greater equality of opportuni ty for education and employment Good domestic help . on a full-time· basis has been a by~product of an inequality which we are attempting to lessen. The household helpers of the present day constitute; moreover, an important part of the married wonen-earners with whose recon­ciliation of job and home responsibilities we are dealing Light on the question of the burden of housework may be sought through logical .analysis. Unfortuna tely, many who have a ttempted it have not seen the whole picture and have reached faulty conclusions. What they have seen is the decline in home manufacturing and processing and in the number of children, the in­crease in labor-and time-saving devices. What they have. not seen are the new duties .added by the very condi tions they emphasize, the change in standards, the increased time as well as money cost of new modes of living, the decrease in the number· to do the work, and the fact that the presence of one child even for part of the day or for unforeseeable and occasional -6­ days may tie the mother almost as comple tely as if there were ten there all the time. What has been happening in. the home is in part the counterpart of what has ·been happening in the economy as c whole. the decline in the proportion of time given to agriculture and manufacturing and the increaes in that t. given to dis tri bution and service' less to producing the fundamental necessaries, and nore to producing amenities and comforts. We have no accura te measure of the change in the length of the. working day and. week: of home-keeping women in the la st two or three generations. If. their working hours have not declined 30 to 40 percent, they have not fared_ as .well .as others·, The few· attempts to gather factual data gave rathe r surprising results. Even in ci ty homeesof the busi nes s and pro­fessional: cla ss aan average workweek.of 46 hours was recorded, not over-all time but the sun of :periods of 15 minutes or longer. If the hours spent by other familymembers and paid workers are added, the figure rises to the amazing total of 80 hour('j per week. It may be argued that these figures refelct the inefficiency and dawdling of these women, the amount of time spent iri useless ways. A famous economist has said. that two hours labor in the home .should .suffice for a;; rational daily needs, Bu the same criteria the hours of all workers could be. reduced far below the present number Needless to say, the length of the work~week of women with young children decidedly exceeded that of those without by almost 50· percent. I_t is this latter fact u:-9on which we can profi tably concentrate; To sneak of the average length of the working week of all homemakers is to obscure t!1e facts. The major fact, and the one tha t sets the problem, is the variation among then at any one time and the variation for each one at differe.nt periods of her life. Ignoring differences in s tandards and ef­ficiency which .alter the length of tbe working week qf these workers as they .do not that of wage-earners there are differences due to the place of resJdence with i ts concomitant smoke, soot, accessibili ty to markets, commercial and community services and, of greater importance differences due to the si ze of the house and its time-and labor-saving arrangements and equipment In addition, there are those differences due to the number and age of the family members It is this last variableinherent in the na ture of the family i itself which poses the central problem with respect to the effective -utilization of the energies and skills of women. Paul C. Glick of the Bureau of the Census has traced the cycle ttrough which typical American familiess go, according to data available from the 1940 census •. If history should exactly repeat itself, the median age of women at the da te of their first marriage would be 21.6 years, Wi th the husband slightly less than 3 years.older. About one couple out of five would live with relatives or as lodgers for a while after marriage About 15 percent would have no children. The first child. of the 85 percent who have children would be born about a year after marriage, and in the next 4½ years, two others, Thus the typical mother would have borne her final child at the age of 27.2 years. She would then have three children. For about 11 years she .would have at least one :under 6. For. 13 years if all survive, she 'would have 3 under 18, -7­ and for about 23 years one or more under 18. When the last is 18, the mother will be 45. If they do not leave homeuntil they marry and marryat the same age as their parents, she will be 50 or 53 when the family has declined to its original size of two members. On the basis of present it life-expectations will continue at this size for 11 more years, and the wife will probably survive the husband. This mother from the time she is about .40 will have a declining burden of child care and for several years before she is 65 a · relati •rely light burden of. housework. Half of the mo the rs will marry a year or so earlier than the one whose history has been depicted and half will marry later; half will have fewer than 3 children, and half will have more, and the children will be differently spaced. Some women will be widowed or divorced; ifif the former,. it is usually' late in the family cycle after one or . all the children are gone' if the latter, while they are young. It is in terms of this backgrouna. that we come back to our two problems" which married women who are not earning could do so without undue sacrifice of health or leisure and without lowering standards for child care and family living? Which of the married women currently wi th .jobs are imperilling their heal th, sacrificing their leisure, or lowering their family's well­being? The social interest is to decrease both of these groups • .. There is clearly a neriod, increasing in iength, in the lilives of more · and more married women when there is no responsi bility for children and. when the· burden of housework is low. There are also tho.se who marry and have no children. Why a.re so many of these women absent from the labor force? We· need ·not consider the gross. fallacy that we are better off if we do not utilize fully our potential labor supply. It is eq_ual fallacy to say, "It makes no cUfference how much lei sure women have, providing they use it. well." Our social aim is the elimination of a leisure class and the attain­nent instead of an ecual distribution of leisure that we hope all will use well. The marriedwomen with limited familyresponsibili ties who are not earning probably fall into three cla sses, or the decisions o.f all in varying degrees are affected by three considerations. One is their own, their husband's, their associates' unfavorable attitude toward gainful employment by married women. More potent a reason for not .earning is that they do n.ot want to. They prefer their leisure to what their earnings would. buy for ther:-tsel•res and their families. Here are the lazy whose claims upon the in­cone of others enable them to be lazy. Here also are those who find their level of living satisfactory, and judge, perhaps rightlyI that more.things and less leisure would not add to the sum total of family happiness A third consideration is closely related, the kind of a job they could get and how much they could earn. This last question is especially pertinent for the woman of 45 or 50 who is contemplating a return to the labor market after 20 to 25 years away from it. We are assuming tha t she looks for a job in the community where her husband is working, that isis,in a geograph­ically limited market. It is not surprising that many conclude that what they would. gain by earning would not be worth whatt it cost, Who then are the married women with jobs? Not those living en farms! only 3.5 percent of the wives in farm families had paid jobs in 1940. Not in the main women 45 to 65. They were earning only about half as frequently as wives under 45, even in urban communities, in 1940. Not in the main married. women with children. In urban communities earning was twice as frequent atnong those with no children under 18 as among those with one or more. Only about a tenth of those with children under 18 ·were in the labor force. Not in the main the wives of men at the higher income levels. Taking wives of that age, 25 to 29, in those communities, metronolitan districts of 100,000 or more, where earning is at the maximum, half of those wi th no children under 10 whose husbands were earning under .$1,500 had jobs in 1940 , and only a fifth of those whose husbands were earning ~3,000 or more. A tenth of those with children under 10 in the lower income-group were earning , and only 2.5 per­cent of such mothers at the higher income-level. My interpretation of these facts is tha t married women are pulled or pushed into the labor mc:1 rket. The "pull" is the opportuni ty for employment at attractive wages under good working conditions. Such opportunities are· at a maximum in boom periods, in metropolitan districts, for the younger women with greater versatility and skills. They are at a minimum in depressed period.s, in rural communities, and for the older women who have been long absent from the labor market. The "push" is economic necessity, earnings from other sources insufficient to meet the family's needs. The "pull" need not be so great if there are no chilclren, the hou sework burden is light, and the husband's earnings moderate, The "push" must be great if there .are young children or other heavy family responsibilities Even great need for money does not bring rural women into paid work, since there are no jobs to be had, and a need that will bring the younger women in, or keep them there, Will not draw the older back. We must then come to the conclu,sion tha t the re a r e married women without jobs whose earning would yield a not profit t o themselves t heir families and the community Some ·will not take good jobs that are ava ilable, and others can find none that are suitable by any reasonable standard There are also married women with jobs whose situation i s not one with which we can be satisfied. They are the ones who in spite of family responsibilities ties are impelled by economic necessity to take any j ob they can get. Over a fifth of the earning wives had children under 10 in 1940, and alnost two-fifths, children under 18. Their families may be be tter off by virtue of their earn­ing, but we could draw up an indictment. of t he state of affa irs on many ccunts: the disadvantaged position of the woman herself in the labor narket, the loss to the family of needed services, the efforts that most must put forth to carry the job and their family responsibilities as well. The most telling figures I know wit}1 respect to the load that these women must carry come from a Russian study made available by Kingsbury and Fairchild. It is a study of the time budget of employed men and women. Boththe men and women were family heads and on the job for the same period of time. On the average the. women spent alost four more hours per day in what was called -9­ "indispensable labor" than did the men, 26 more hours per week. It may be different here and now. Perhaps the Women I s Bureau will let us know. I find no easy answers to the problems I have suggested. Most difficult are those posecl by the married women who are under-employed Equally difficult is it to see how it will be made :possible for maarried women, especially those whose employment has not been continuous, to enter the labor market with skills and opportuni ties for employmentt equal to those of men and single women of the same age. Legal limitations we can re1cove; adverse social attitudes can be altered. But disabilities due to the discontinuity of their employment and the responsibili ties they assumed along with their marital and parental status are a different matter Genuine economic necessity that forces mothers i nto the labor market to take wha tever they can get is in a sense our least clif ficul t problem. The assumption of greater social responsibility for children, a willingness to invest in human resources an amount tha t is somewhere near eq_ui valent t to our investment in other types of resources, would greatly reduce the proportions of this problem. When we decide that an undesired si tuation is remediable, debate on the best ways and means is next order of the day. \ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\ 3 9352 08056252 3