psychology of the woman who works, The

There is nothing subtle in the mental attitude of women forced to work from economic necessity. Whether they meet the hard circumstances forced upon them by dire need cheerfully or with bitterness, their psychology is too obvious to invite the analysis of a scientist. We must turn to the woman who, although she enjoys easier circumstances, chooses to work if we would discover the psychological reaction that comes to the woman who works. This requires that we study especially the mental attitude of women in professions and in business.

We can safely assume that these women who work, although they are. not driven to employment by poverty, find their income an advantage financially. The reason their reaction yields psychological results is not that they lack economic motives but that they enter their occupation with a conscious choice which permits them to balance the satisfactions of working with those that come from not being employed outside the home. Even though we must seek the psychology of the woman who works in the experience of these professional and business women, analysis cannot be confined to them. The effect their employment has upon them is in part the consequence of their home associations and the feelings they detect in the other members of the family in regard to them, even when they are single women. Their psychological reaction cannot be understood if they are treated as persons who react to their work without being influenced by the social situations and associations that they experience away from their employment. Naturally the psychological reaction of the woman who works appears strongest in the case of wives and even more of mothers, since in making their choice of employment outside the family they realize their deviation from conventional procedure.

When a wife or mother, without absolute economic necessity, chooses to labor away from the home, the attitude of husband and children toward her working needs to be understood if our psychological picture is to be complete.

The fact that there are so many business and professional women who seek employment along lines that once were confined exclusively to men and that their number, both married and single, is constantly increasing brings out vividly the changing character of the inner life of the family. The great number of these women who commit themselves to a professional or business career in preference to marriage, or who seek such employment in spite of their having assumed household responsibilities by marrying or becoming mothers, strikingly reveals how different the family has already become from the final form which our parents assumed society had at last achieved.

Whenever men or women choose a line of conduct which they feel is somewhat out of accord with the standardized behavior of their group they are especially tempted to rationalize their motives. As a consequence we find a great deal of rationalization on the part of women who work if we seek from them an explanation of their decision to seek employment outside the home. This complicates psychological analysis for we have to assume that the reasons given by women for their working outside the family are largely colored by the effort to protect themselves from criticism in their own thinking or in the judgments they believe others form with reference to their working. Fortunately the social situation is such that many women, whatever their family status, take their employment outside the home as a matter of course and therefore are as free as men in describing their reactions to their more complicated social situation. Their psychological attitudes are free from deceptive elements; even those who rationalize frequently show their genuine reactions all the more clearly once the mask they put on is discovered and allowed for in analysis. Even though these individuals make the psychological problem more difficult, they bring often into bolder relief the innermost attitudes involved.

The significance of the social environment in influencing the psychological reactions of the woman who works varies with reference to section, class, and age. In the cities, especially the larger cities and most particularly the northern cities, working outside the home by women who have family responsibilities is more common than in the country. In the rural sections women are permitted to do some of the lighter kinds of work on the farm (such as taking care of poultry) without comment, but about the only employment outside the family that does not violate the conventions is general housework and nursing. This is splendidly illustrated by Edna Ferber in her novel So Big, when the widow, who has recently lost her husband, dares to take her produce to market instead of delegating the task to her moron helper. By a common impulse the neighborhood reacts with unfriendliness to her scandalous breaking of the social code. The village community permits more latitude, but the woman with family responsibilities who engages in steady employment outside the home is generally regarded with disapproval. It is such cities as New York and Chicago that give the married woman and the mother the greatest freedom if she seeks out-of-the-home employment. Unless the home to which she belongs meets with some spectacular failure that attracts attention, little comment will be made regarding her choice of occupation.

There are class distinctions that one recognizes also as influencing the reactions of the woman who works. In the professional class, particularly among college teachers and newspaper officials, we find the greatest freedom. The wife of the minister, doctor, and business man is more likely to meet with opposition from the husband if she goes out of the family to work and is more likely to encounter a critical social attitude on the part of neighbors and friends. The skilled mechanic is even more unwilling to have his wife work outside the family. Among clerks and poorly paid business employees, the working outside the home of women, whether wives or mothers, if the housekeeping tasks can be arranged so that they are free to accept employment, is taken as a matter of course since from the beginning of marriage it was assumed, on account of financial pressure, that the women would work if they possibly could.

Generally speaking, ignoring the significance of section and class, the younger women are free to many and enter out-of-the-family employment, without meeting with opposition from husband or associates. The rapid trend during the last decade toward greater social equality of girls with boys is showing itself at this point of the social code unmistakably and among the younger set a greater number of women are marrying who are accustomed to out-of-the-house employment and who insist after their marriage on going on with that kind of work which affords them more satisfaction than housekeeping. Frequently they give up their former work at the time of marriage expecting to find the new undertaking thoroughly satisfying but after a short period seek again their accustomed employment, the husband sometimes yielding reluctantly to their desire when once he realizes they cannot be happy housekeepers. Here, however, we must beware of rationalization since it is frequently the desire for a larger income and more of the luxuries that were enjoyed during single life that furnishes the real motive for the return of the wife to her former work.

With reference to section, class, and age the number of women who, having assumed household obligations, seek outside employment, measures not merely the tolerance or hostility of the social code regarding the out-of-the-home working of wives and mothers, but also the strength of the desire of the women to follow a different type of employment from that permitted the housekeeper. The same influences that tend to weaken social opposition to woman's work stimulate in women the wish to continue or to embark upon a professional or business career. The most disturbing situation arises in those homes where the wife who, from her environmental experience, has come to crave out-of-the-home activities mates with a husband whose upbringing has led him to think that the only proper place for a woman is in the home and that her employment elsewhere will surely bring him criticism.

Perhaps the best way to bring out clearly the psychology of the woman who works from choice in so complicated a social setting as modem family life is to consider each member of the family separately.

From the point of view of the man, woman's employment outside the home represents a distinct loss of power and is so interpreted by the average husband. In the past the supremacy of the male in the family rested upon his command of the family income and the prestige that has been his from being looked upon as the producer of the family funds. When the woman herself earns and her maintenance is not entirely at the mercy of her husband's will, diminishing masculine authority necessarily follows. The reactions of men range from relief that they do not alone carry the burden of the family upkeep or satisfaction in knowing that their wives have attained a measure of practical equality to the feeling of persistent irritation that their wife is not content with being a housekeeper and inner protest such as Anderson's hero in Dark Laughter feels regarding his journalistic wife, which eventually reaches such intensity that one night when his feelings have been especially violent, he walks out of the apartment, never to return.

There are men who are not at all averse personally to the idea of their wives working for money outside the home, who nevertheless set themselves against such employment because they fear social criticism or are sensitive to the remarks that they assume others are passing with reference to the financial situation that requires the working of the wife. It is this probably that makes the business man so reluctant to have his wife engage in gainful occupation outside the family, even when he is quite willing that she should spend hours at a time in study, recreation, or charity. Such a man frequently cannot understand how difficult it is for his wife to content herself with intermittent and unsystematic activities when, like himself, she has a human craving for competitive, gainful, and responsible employment. Fortunately for the happiness of many women this sensitiveness of the husband is rapidly melting away, especially in the professional class.

It is not strange to find actual jealousy on the part of husbands regarding the out-of-the-home successes of their wives. Here, at least, appears an inferiority feeling such as some insist is characteristic of all men in their thinking of themselves in comparison with women. The intense jealousy that sometimes arises in husbands whose wives are working outside the home is so great as to make it necessary either for the wife to drop her occupation and return to the confines of the house or, by insisting upon her rights as she conceives them, to destroy the harmony of the household, perhaps even to the point of bringing about a divorce.

The husband who is modem in his sympathies and well prepared to meet the testing of present-day matrimonial conditions sympathizes with his wife's desire to work (as does he) in more fascinating activities than she can discover in her housekeeping tasks. Not only does he feel the justice of her demand for satisfying normal self-expression in her labor, but he also rejoices that her business experiences may afford a better basis for comradeship. Even though housekeeping be one of the most necessary of occupations and motherhood the most important, an increasing number of women can find neither home-making nor motherhood completely satisfying as a means of self-expression, and there are husbands who appreciate this fact and squarely face it, eager because of their affection to co-operate with their wives in finding an adequate outlet for cravings that household responsibilities do not satisfy. Such a man recognizes that, though this modem type of woman may be a more difficult life-partner, she brings him a richer personality, better fitted to answer his own human yearnings. He sees that it is as contrary to true affection to coerce the wife by forcing upon her hindrances to her growth in the name of her household responsibilities as it would be to reduce her to a status of inferiority by putting upon her legal or political handicaps.

In matrimony as elsewhere we find differing tastes and just as there are men who prefer wives that reproduce a wife's status of the past that most males no longer desire so there are others who can find matrimonial satisfaction only in a life fellowship with women whose demands are in accord with a stage of development which is prophesied but not yet attained by most women. This modern type of husband realizes that if woman's status is to have a strictly biological determination she can be kept in her place only by denying her education and all the privileges of modem life that sap her content as a creature sentenced to social inferiority because of her physical equipment for life.

The woman who works voluntarily will find in her experience a new sense of freedom. In her own reactions it seems as if she were at last relieved from the repressions that have hampered her self-expression. She soon recognizes from experience that she is still destined to accept limitations but they are no longer put upon her as something she must accept automatically by arbitrary decree. Instead she finds the real limitations inherent in her personality by exploring life and attempting to work out her ambitions.

The woman who has been fretting over the gap between her homekeeping aims and her lack of housekeeping ability sometimes finds in outside work a legitimate means of regaining her self-respect, so that she no longer presents to her intimates within the home circle the inferiority-driven personality that has provoked so much ill will between the members of the family. Seeing that she can do a full-sized job of the sort she likes and receive for it recognition far above anything her most persevering efforts have won when applied to housework, she once more steps forth with the assurance of her earlier days and sheds, as she goes, the harness of bickering and worry that was impeding her movements.

The scold occasionally loses her unpleasant characteristic when she tastes the joy of using her gift of words in some constructive way; then she realizes that the emotional orgy of tongue-lashings in which she has recurrently indulged represented at least in part a craving for the ecstasy of verbal manipulation. When aroused she said more than she meant because of the thrill she got from making words become living things, felt as well as heard.

Any out-of-the-home work is apt to teach a woman anew to let the little things of life fall into their proper places as she did in the days before she was overwhelmed by the multiplicity of little things that have crowded upon her in her attempt to be "a good housekeeper." Not the finger-marks on the window-pane nor the lapses in her husband's consideration or her children's manners any longer have power to stir her emotionally; they are objective facts, to be remedied if possible but without an accompaniment of hurt feelings. Because of the decrease in her tension the home atmosphere is calmer and each of its members can find in it more of the relaxation he needs.

She who works away from home gains an appreciation of the point of view of the man of the house. With greater understanding comes naturally increased tolerance. The woman who knows what it is to be exhausted after a day of trivial contacts with people is not likely to be annoyed by her husband's preference for a quiet evening at home; when her own daily contacts were mainly limited to the butcher, the grocer, and the pedlar she may have felt herself ill used if her husband did not always respond to her suggestions for an evening with friends. The greater importance of an equable disposition and an unobtrusive household regime over the certainty that every housekeeping task is done thoroughly on schedule time is usually recognized by the woman who, like her husband, has work to be done outside the home.

On the other hand, the nervous strain of swinging the double responsibility of home cares and outside work makes some working mothers irritable beyond what they would be if they stayed at home. This is especially hue if the woman feels that she is not able to do full justice to either responsibility.

Strangely enough, in the process of self-attainment some women hurt their affection for their husbands. Either because of her innermost character or as a consequence of early training, as soon as such a woman is able to rival her husband in the concerns of life she loses admiration and even love. It is only fair to say that in these cases the woman is merely learning from outside experiences the true value of her husband and his obvious inferiority in comparison with herself.

The woman who works outside her home need not lessen her affection for husband or children or in any degree lose her respect for her husband because of her own success. Rather she also comes to see how much more she has in common with her husband than before she had the experience of being in competition and how much more wisely she may meet the responsibilities that devolve upon her as a mother. No one would deny that her task is difficult as compared with man's but if the more difficult program brings her greater satisfaction and a richer personality along the way of work outside the home she must find her matrimonial success as well as the satisfactions that belong to her as a human being whose ambitions have been awakened.

So far as the child is concerned, the woman who works outside the home may easily bring about one of two opposite reactions. The child may feel lonely, may crave a mother such as other children have--meaning a mother who has little interest outside her child--or he may have pride in his mother's successes as he does in those of his father. If he is not emotionally neglected and the mother invites him constantly to share intensely her emotional experiences he never comes to feel that her career outside the family is an obstacle to his happiness.

The fact that his mother has something besides himself to center her emotions upon may relieve the child of the dangerous role of being the recipient of boundless love and anxiety. He is better able to carve out his own life if the mother is not too fixedly considering his welfare.

If, however, he is emotionally neglected, left essentially to servants, and made to feel that his mother is too hard pressed by her work to have either time or strength to help in his crises, then he is paying a high price for the freedom his mother enjoys.

Instead of taking for granted the ministrations of the mother who works away from home, the child is forced to recognize definite limitations to the demands he may put upon her, and he therefore comes to see her as a person with wants and rights, like himself, rather than as a background that seems to exist f or the sake of catering to him.

Since the mother who works outside the home is often the one whose mothering traits are undeveloped, there is grave risk of loneliness for the child of the working woman; had he the opportunity for constant daily association with his mother he might awaken in her the parental fondness that is drying up through disuse. Such a woman needs to be exposed to the appeal of her children's dependence on her, that she may be educated in the ways of motherhood. More contact with her children rather than less would tend to strengthen her affection for them.

Other women who care deeply for their young benefit both themselves and the children by periods of separation that relieve emotional super-sensitiveness. Some there are who are very fond of children but cannot endure long-continued association with them on account of the nervous fatigue resultant on too close attention to their doings; the children of these women are as much refreshed as the mothers by being away from them for a part of every day, as their companionship is emotionally trying to both. Indeed, it is difficult to find a child that is not better off for at least an occasional hour of being thrown upon his own resources.

So far as the community is concerned, the psychological reactions that follow from the working outside the home of married women and mothers lead toward greater matrimonial tolerance and a finer recognition of the human rights of women. Traditions that concern family life melt slowly but a contributing force that is making it possible for community life to attain higher standards of married happiness is the influence of women who refuse merely to be engaged within the home. Though their attitude may meet with hostile responses, the fact that they are able to take so advanced a step loosens at a lower level the social positions and conventions that hamper the more complete social expressions of human beings who happen to have been born females.

The social evolution that is changing home life has gone too far ever to be checked because it is requiring readjustment within the family life. The woman of character who by free choice publicly admits that, though she is happy in her home and willing to undertake its management, the family task is not a complete means of satisfying her desires, any more than it would be in the case of men required to assume the management of the household, helps to bring social thinking regarding the home to the level where women may have in fuller measure the expression of their finer selves without the race being left for its perpetuation to women of an inferior type who are content to become servants and breeders.

1 Given at a meeting of the American Sociological Society, St. Louis, December 29, 1926.

Copyright Family Service America Mar 1994
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