Duties of Good Women

stare at the ceiling and think of England

One thing that has not changed through history is that women (in general) do whatever needs to be done for their families.

The difference between then and now is. then your roles were already defined. Now you have to define them yourselves. So many couples don't realize this and have different expectations for the role each will play.

I will answer this first since it relects a stereotypical gender role that I don't think is based in fact.

I would say that throughout history parents do whatever needs to be done for their families. Women do not have a monopoly on commitment to their offspring. This is just as true in cultures with well defined gender roles.

My grandfather worked very hard to provide for his family. He worked two jobs and still took time to look after his children. I am not taking away from the work done by my grandmother who had the traditional role taking care of the house and the children. But, the work done by my grandfather was just as demanding and his commitment to his family was just as great.



I don't believe that gender roles are necessarily a bad thing. They are part of a culture, and in some cultures, are completely appropriate and even beneficial.

Much of the views of our own past alluded to in this thread are mythology. At no time in our history were women expected to be "barefoot and pregnant". The roles of women have certainly changed in a way that for our culture are completely appropriate. But I doubt if the women of our history would agree with the assessment of their lives that many modern women have.

Finally, it seems to me that gender roles are natural in any society. There are without doubt real differences between men and women, and any culture adjusts to reflect that. Initially, due to the needs of courtship and procreation men and woman had no choice to to accept different roles, but these roles became ingrained in our culture and even our biology.

I live in Cambridge Massachuesetts, the very heart of liberal America. Even here, in spite of the fact that most of us would vehemently deny it, couples tend to resort to traditional gender roles-- women being more interested in the upkeep and decoration of the house, and men taking a more functional approach.

Our culture now has blended the roles a bit in an attempt to erase them, I am am glad for that for the most part, although I think it does make social relationships a bit more difficult. But it is an error to judge other cultures and other times based on our new ideas. Our new ideas are not any sort of truth, they are just different prejudices than we had in the past.

Even though the song asks "why can't a woman be more like a man". The fact is the difference is probably a good thing. It is certainly part of our nature.

[edit: took a phrase containing the word "irks" from the first sentence since on re-reading implied a sentiment stronger than I intended.]

I agree with some of what you say, ebrown, in that there are certain roles a goodly proportion of women are comfortable with, and some roles a goodly proportion of men are comfortable with, but in terms of the span of human potential, it is very limiting to have that as a frame for everybody. Many of us posting here have experienced being hemmed in.

I hesitate to mention once again the med school admission numbers of 1961, when I was looking to get in, in 1962. [For those who haven't read me post on this before, most med schools in the US and immediate environs mentioned, such as a school in Canada, took 0 - 2 women that year, the dominant number being zero, and the most open, except for one all female school in Pennsylvania, took, in my memory, a max of 6. Women, you know, would just be trained and then, you know, leave. Which might even have been partly true, given the onus they dealt with at the time.]

Women often grow into being good physicians, as men often do.

As to barefoot and pregnant, apparently you weren't an irish catholic girl in the fifties. Sure, it is a callous phrase, that didn't emcompass the realm of possibility, even then. But social onus was heavy. I was taught that it was a sin for a woman to be sexually aroused in the marital act, at least by one nun.

Signed,
graduate of Notre Dame Girls Academy High School, 1959

As to putting my view onto another homogeneous society, I am chary about that, let's say I am unresolved on it. But given internet access, I see various scramblings going on worldwide re roles.

osso--

I hear you. Had I finished high school, I'd have been Class of '58. In 1955, our sophomore year, we elected a girl (of course not a woman) as class president.

The principal tried to overturn the election, arguing that girls would not need activity recommendations to get into college.

Barefoot and pregnant? A pregnant girl/woman was forced to drop out of high school, but the stud--particularly if he played sports--was welcome.

Now if the couple married, they were both unwelcome in the Halls of Learning.

(By the by, I wasn't an unmarried mother. I entered college on the first version Early Admissions plan.)

I'm really enjoying this thread, Noddy. Thanks.

My high school wouldn't send transcipts to UCLA, because it was commie run, or more polite words to that effect. Several of the girls entered UCLA in their sophomore years.
I did too, but not for that exact reason.

One wanted to be an engineer. She got a D in chemistry, widely understood to be a construct to keep her from getting in to any school as an engineering student.

I don't know, of course, I never saw her tests.

On girls, I am a throwback on that, I don't dislike the word.

Once I hit ucla I was, zappo, a woman, not a girl. And I still don't think of seventeen year olds as women, even if they live women's lives, as they do all over the world. Though some twenty two year olds are undeveloped in emotional maturation, and some fourteen year olds sometimes have great insight.
My niece did, when she was fourteen, very psychologically savvy, even sometimes about herself.
Entirely more savvy than I was then.

We women who matured on the cusp have come a long way--with the scars to prove it.

Graduate school. Northwestern University. 1963. Candidate for the MA in English Lit. Large class. Papers handed in with my full name--feminine--were graded "c". On a hunch I started using just my initials--grade "A".

Same year: Was told in class after having reduced a male student to sputtering rage that women were "too emotional" for college teaching and college teaching was the only reason for an advanced degree. The topic was Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and I pointed out that this documentation of one of the oldest courting lines on record.

The male student didn't feel that literature and life should be mixed.

Many a mile to go tonight before we reach the town-o....

Belafonte!

I see this can be viewed as a gripe fest, as it is, they were reasonable gripes.

I see males having to move over be, at the least, an adjustment, falling to some extent on young fellows who didn't make the world the way it is, and having to deal with expectations for themselves.

You are being a bit one sided.

Men have traditionally been shut out of the role of parent. Even with our new elightened equality, men have much fewer options in child rearing.

From the time of conception, men have very little power in making decisions about their offspring. Women are assumed to have the childrens best interest at heart. When parents separate, the woman needs a very poor attorney indeed for the man to gain custody. In most cases the father is asked only to continue in his traditional role as provider.

As a loving, nuturing father it sure would be nice if our society could advance in this area.

I understand that has often been true and hope that it is changing. I grant your point. I have seen it in action myself.

I wasn't talking about exactly the same thing.

Hmm - can't speak for the US - but every bit of research I have seen fron Oz re work done says that in homes where men and women work equal hours in paid work, that the women are then coming home and doing another day's work at home - hours more than the men- far more of the house and child labour still falls to women.


I have lived this - even when the men were unemployed, and I was in full time employment, the house stuff was either done by me - or not done - at least until the place was unhygienic, if I went on strike. This is a huge unfairness.

My own pals in the - say, eighties - divided up work more reasonably. I am now sort of used to its equal allocation in my small sphere, wherever the burdens may land re each couple. I am divorced, but we never fought about, and hardly even discussed, allocation of tasks... and they landed fairly, neither of us complained. We both did what we felt like and divided up the stuff we didn't enjoy rather naturally.

Odd though, the other day one of our artists, a male, was typing his list of titles since they are long and poetic, the way he wanted them (not having come in to the gallery with the expected typed list), and I offered him some of my lunch, a pasta dish I put together, as I remember. I had to ask twice, if he was going to get pizza or wanted some of the the pasta.. He said the pasta. After eating which he left the bowl by the photocopier. No thank you at all.

Blink.

And, let me hasten to add, he is a very thoughtful guy, in general, and I like him.

But... mom feeds you and picks up your bowl?

Erm?

But that is overreactive on my part, as I know he was well involved in what he was doing at the time.
Still, a little ruffle of my neck hairs, re expectations.

I guess I failed to establish boundaries by handing it to him, piping hot.
But, I don't like to dance around a boundary as a way of life.

Ebrown_p, you have many valid points--I think it is far too easy to let a thread become a narrow-minded excuse for "man bashing."

What would your mother say about the bad old days? My mother, who would be 92 if she were still alive, told me once, when I was venting on how badly my father treated her, that she would never think of complaining for fear that the treatment would get worse. She had very little recourse without the education to get a job that would have
supported 2 sons with mental retardation and a much younger daughter.

It isn't very long ago that women were considered property. It is hard for me to imagine how that would have affected a woman's emotional health; I'm sure it must be even more difficult for a man to have any comprehension of that kind of imprisonment.

In my case, With two adult sons, I have often been in late night conversations with one or the other, after a date, as they asked me what girls expected and why some of them acted offended if a door was held
open for them. They were, and are, simply very nice men and not at all anti-feminist or patronizing toward women. This new society with new rules has been very hard on men, understandably making them
wonder why women tend to concentrate on the past when the present is so very different. My answer to that is: a good fight is never over, whether it is for lelgislation implementing help for people with developmental disabilities or for additional help for women trying to get an education while trying to raise a family on welfare.

There is always some segment of society that will try to cut the cost of a program which they feel isn't as important as something like tax breaks for large corporations. Why should a welfare mother get day care for her children while she goes looking for a job? It doesn't matter that she has to make several stops at different interview sites while getting on and off the bus with three little kids.

Why should people with developmental disabilities have additional social security when they can stay at home with their families? Why do they deserve a life of independence?

Yes, things have improved, but there are always those who resent any forward movement of people they consider unworthy of help.

I realize that I'm getting off topic here, but the point is that most of us have had experience in one step forward, two steps back. It has been an
unbelievably hard fight! Our mothers lived the bad old days and didn't ever reflect nostalgically on how wonderful those days were.

At 61, I've experienced my share of male chauvinism and sexual coercion; also, that awful, patronizing, "What's a cute little girl like you
doing without a husband?" It turns my stomach to remember some of those incidents, in which I had NO recourse.

The inequality has lessened, but the memories will take generations to fade; sometimes to the detriment of good, decent men who are just trying to understand their place in this rapidly changing society.

Oh, and by the way, wearing a see-through negligee can be incredibly good fun; I just don't see the connection between looking sexy and getting a new refrigerator. I have done it because it is fun and
leads to a wonderful time with the man I love. I do not have an ulterior motive for something that is a natural, playful part of a loving
relationship.

A negligee?

One only needs pearls.

A friend had to learn(sic!) to professions (you are doing such for three years here Germany, accompanied by school visits = socalled 'dual-education'):

needlewoman and housekeeper, onlky to be prepared in an excellent way for marriage and family.


(Today, after grammar school, you can study such and it is called 'oecotrophology'. :wink: )

We had, at least in my high school in the 1950's, a routing of students into college preparation, and not. Those who were were not aimed at college at the young age of thirteen got to take secretarial courses and home economics.

We threw them, philosophically, in my years, when our top student insisted on learning secretarial skills. A virtual straight A student in everything, she wanted to take bookkeeping. I think she went to work for MGM not too long after, and did well.