The Natural Superiority of Women (52 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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reduces tenderness to a physical act, a theatrical performance, or worse, a technical exercise. The modern myth of romantic love, for all its sweetness and light, has received mixed reviews in recent years. While it continues to dominate the popular imagination and to saturate the establishment media, it has repelled and exasperated a growing host of critics ranging in style from cool academics to overheated advocates. In the prevailing critical view, love of the romantic variety is not merely a fragile foundation for marriage but a dangerous potion when taken seriously. If these criticisms seem harsh, the statistical shambles of modern marriages which start out long on passion but short on understanding or even acquaintancemore than 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce speak for themselves. Both marriage and the family are clearly at a crossroads.
The attacks on the family from left and rightfeminists, liberationists, communalists, and others-have certainly done nothing to strengthen the family. The mainstay of the criticism has been that the family is an antiquated institution for the exploitation of women in the unremitting service of their husbands and children. The criticism is justified; the family as an institution will have to be reconsidered. Clearly the future will see the acceptance of a variety of family types, and these will each present their own problems; in all these matters and many more, women have a fundamental role to play.
At this point it would be interesting to inquire what the effects are upon the family when the mother becomes a working woman. Of course, no generalized answer to cover all cases can be given. Such studies as we have that throw any light on the subject point uniformly in the same direction. The married woman worker has generally learned to systematize her housework so well that she experiences no difficulty. In one study, made in Philadelphia, over 62 percent of the working mothers maintained either that there had been no effect on the quality of their household management or that their housekeeping had actually improved. Many of these working mothers had learned the value of order and routine so well that their homes, in these respects, would compare very favorably with the best-run homes of non-gainfully employed housewives. Similar results are reported in a British study.

 

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But what of the effects upon the children? As the figures given above show, many mothers don't leave home to work until their children are six or more years old. Even so, the children will generally not be at home without their mother for more than two or three hours. They get out of school at three or threethirty, and mother returns after five. Mother would not see significantly more of her children, except at the very end of this period, even if she stayed at home. It is perhaps not difficult to understand why the working mother is often happier with her children than the mother who, having become progressively fatigued and exhausted with the routine chores of the day, awaits the return of the children from school with some trepidation. Feminists have claimed that the loneliness of the average housewife, when husband and children are away, would compare unfavorably with the kind of stimulation that the working mother receives from her workaday experience with the outside world. But this opinion is not supported by the finding of the polls on the views of working women. In 1981 the Harris poll found that 44 percent of working women felt that their working outside the home had negative effects, while 37 percent felt that their working outside had had positive effects, 14 percent felt that it had had no effects, and 5 percent were unsure.
A working mother may, however, work too hard, and she may be in no state to resume the cares of a household upon returning from work. Of course, this is highly undesirable, and no mother should engage in exhausting work. It is unnecessary to deal here with the exploitation of women as cheap labor, unequal pay for the same job, and discrimination against women workers. These practices are slowly losing ground, but unfortunately have not been completely eradicated. They are regrettable, and an unfortunate reflection upon the character of many employers.
Thus far, all I have attempted to do in this chapter is to show that more and more women, and particularly married women, are working, and will continue to do so, outside the home. It is a trend that no one can halt: The married working woman is here to stay. For the most part she works for the same reason that the married man does: to support the family.
During World War II the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor conducted a study among 13,000 working women employed in all sorts of industries. More than half the married

 

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women planned to continue working in peacetime. Among the reasons they gave were: to support themselves and others, 57 percent; to save money in order to help buy a home or educate children, 21 percent; because they liked to, and because of the independence that working gave them, 22 percent.
Now, compare the statements of the unmarried women: 86 percent of the single women planned to continue working in peacetime, and of these 96 percent gave as their reason support of themselves or others; 2 percent were saving for a special purpose; and only 2 percent said they worked because they liked doing so.
In other words, after a taste of domesticity, one-fourth of the women who looked forward to marriage find a job outside the home a refreshing experience. There can be little doubt that increasing numbers of married women will continue to do so and for much the same reasons that men do: It gives them a change, much needed stimulation, the acquaintance and friendship of persons one would otherwise never have known, the sense of doing something that is contributing to making the world move on its axis.
Men have seldom, if ever, considered the domestic activities, the homemaking of women as ''work." In spite of the fact that they may have heard of the old saying "Women's work is never done," or similar observations, which can readily be dismissed as "old wives tales," they go steadily on in the belief that it is the "breadwinner" who works while his wife has a comparatively easier time. However, should the homemaker for some reason become incommoded and the stronger male is forced to take over his wife's duties, he is ready after three or four days for an ambulance or early retirement.
Men escape the chores of domesticity, seeing neither their wives nor their children for the greater part of the day. There are still some men who consider it an affront to their ego when their wives suggest that, for a change, they would like to savor the experience of the outside workaday world. A man is traditionally the support of the familyso the story goes. But women have been working for ageson the land, in agricultural and industrial cooperatives, taking in piecework in the home, and the like and in this way they have helped support the family. Until the advent of machinery many women of poorer families, even in large urban centers, helped to support the family. It has largely been

 

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that women shouldn't work. It is an issue upon which, after the children are sufficiently grown up, fewer men would quarrel with their wives than would have done so not so many years ago.
It is an interesting fact that while men will take every opportunity of emphasizing that it is a mother's task to look after the children, they will neglect to observe that a father is a parent, too, and that his responsibility to his children is no less than his wife's. Father usually relieves himself of the responsibility for the care of his children on the ground that practically all his time is consumed in the process of making a living; and having satisfied himself (if no one else) on this point, he complacently feels that everyone understands. But nobody understandsleast of all himself. Making a living should not be a way of life, but a way of earning a living. The fact is that, in general, men don't enjoy domestic responsibilities and would do almost anything to avoid them. The traditional dispensation that enables them to get out of the house for the greater part of the day, and thus escape the incubus of domestic chores, is worth any sacrifice. Not that the average man doesn't love his home and familybut he loves dishwashing, laundering, changing diapers and baby clothes, cleaning the house, and making the beds less.
Certainly, the American husband is a great help around the house, and he's a fine fellow. But even so, they may be accused of running awayfrom their responsibilities as husbands and fathers; of vacating the privilege of participating fully in the growth and development of their families; of running out on the most rewarding experience of life, the molding and making of the character of another human being, in the process of which the husband and wife provide the life they brought into being with the skills and techniques for a loving human being.
When men abandon the socialization of their children to their wives, a loss is suffered by everyone, but perhaps most of all by themselves. For what they lose is the possibility of personal growth that the stimulation of bringing up one's children affords. Pearl Buck has put what I want to say so beautifully that I should like to quote her.
It is perfectly true that women do not see enough of men here, and that the children suffer from the lack of influence of men

 

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upon them in home and school. But men lose more. They lose very much when they relegate home and children to women. They lose fun and the excitement of growing, developing lifelife which they have had a part in creating. But they lose something deeper than that. They lose touch with source of the life itself, which is deep in the very process of living with a woman and the children a man has created with her. When he lives not there but in his office, in his work, among other men, he is strangling the roots of his own being. If he can comprehend fully the one woman and can help her to comprehend him, they are both fulfilled. When they enlarge the mutual comprehension to include children, then the universe is within their grasp and they cannot be disturbed. They have life in their time.

3

"They have life in their time." In our time, however, most men miss this quintessential experience of life, or partake of it fitfully. Next to the loss of mother love, it is the greatest loss a man can suffer; and in a very deep and significant sense it may be said that no man who has failed to take an active part in the "rearing" of children ever develops as a complete human being. Somehow women do not seem to suffer in quite the same way as men do from the effects of such privation, but suffer to some extent they do.
What, then, is the working man to do? After his arrival home is he to spend the remainder of the children's waking time with them? Should he spend a good part of his weekend with them? And what of the working mother? Should she do likewise?
It will be generally agreed that such cut-and-dried apportionments of time do not represent the best possible thing for the children; yet for some time to come many children, after they have passed the age of early childhood, will receive little more of their parents' time. I suggest that, granting the importance of parents for the development of good mental health, some better arrangement could be conceived whereby parents and children might enjoy a greater amount of time together. Our society would do well to consider the effects of the changing roles of parents, and to plan for the future in the light of these trends. I have a suggestion to make that, though at first it would involve certain practical difficulties and readjustments, would, I believe, solve many of the problems that bedevil both women and men and

 

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