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Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 11:04:45 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
Welcome to the History Matters forum on family history. Whether you
are an old hand at this field or a complete neophyte, I hope you'll join
the discussion.
Courses on family history are still uncommon, although more and
more historians and social scientists bring family issues and family
change into their courses. I hope that our on-line exchanges can help
make this happen more, as well as enable those of us already doing
it to learn from each other.
I will put out a few questions, both pedagogical and substantive, to
kick off a discussion but I'd be delighted if somone else's question
starts the conversations moving.
1) Family is personal, and how do we teach about issues that may
have intense emotional reverberations for students of different ages?
For example,
--how can we talk about family patterns without making some
students feel that their own families are "deviant"?
--how do we introduce material on unhappy family life, such as
violence, depression, infidelity?
2) What are the aspects of family history that would be most
interesting and enlightening for students of various age groups.
Examples:
--changing patterns of adolescence
--dating and courtship
--extended family relationships
--power and authority within families
3) Do some instructors have problems introducing controversial
material, e.g. regarding sexuality, birth control? If so, how do you
resolve the problem?
4) What aspects, if any, of family can reasonably be considered
biological?
5) What is the state-of-the-art best account of the impact of slavery on
families?
6) What are the histories of racial/cultural/class differences in families,
if they exist?
I think I'll leave it at that. But any comments and questions on family
history are welcome.
Looking forward to meeting some of you by internet,
Linda Gordon
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 20:41:12 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Cathy Stephenson
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
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Greetings,
I would like to respond to this forum based on my own life experiences, and
from many of the readings I have ventured into.
It is a very unfortunate situation that Euro- America has adopted a private
family setting to constitute the well beings of its occupants. What occurs
when there is not an extended family involved as well as community based
involvement of human beings?
I can only share how isolated this type of lifestyle can be from my own
experiences and observations. What I grew up in was a very hush hush
homestead, when I walked in the door I knew that I needed to just be there in
silence. This was because it was understood that we were not to upset my
father when he got home.
This was the message we got from our mother, our mother who was trying to do
it all, that is the problem with this concept of family, it dumps everything
on the laps of our mothers. Although I may have mixed feelings about my
mother and her ability to be strong, the truth of the matter is that she had
to endure it all on her own. What a sickness to place on any person's lap,
this is not meant to be one person's offerings but many people's involvement.
The concept of family in this country is about a private enterprise that is
based on male supremacy. When are women going to wake up and realize that
they do not have to be owned? This is not a male bashing comment it is a
reality question? What would it be like to have a partner who provides more
than economic surplus, or would you like to continue to play apart of the old
myths that it is your duty to provide everything for your male spouse and
children and omit your own well being?
I would like to recommend that we take a deep look into other cultures where
family means grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc., and so on. With this concept
in mind a child gets a greater and much more enlarged picture of what family
could be and that it encompasses many different elements than the one they
are restricted to.
Where does this type of private family concept come from? It comes from the
Capitalist society we live in, plain and simple. Men are owned by the
companies they work for, and the women and children who are their possessions
are owned by the male in the home. It is a vicious cycle and one that seems
to be acceptable by most Americans. I believe that we all should work to
provide for our community or the family that we reside with, however, I do
not think this means that it should encompass ownership. Of course, a
business wants to make profit off of the worker's employed, but this should
not be the only thing in life that is valued.
I guess ideally I would love family to encompass a unified collection of
persons that go beyond company, and that have a sense of extended relatives,
with community involvement. This is not foreign to the Native Americans and
many other indigenous communities around the world. I believe that we would
all benefit from experiencing what family means to groups other than
Euro-Americans.
With Respect,
Cathy Stephenson
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Greetings,
I would like to respond to this forum based on my own life experiences, and from many of the readings I have ventured into.
It is a very unfortunate situation that Euro- America has adopted a private family setting to constitute the well beings of its occupants. What occurs when there is not an extended family involved as well as community based involvement of human beings?
I can only share how isolated this type of lifestyle can be from my own experiences and observations. What I grew up in was a very hush hush homestead, when I walked in the door I knew that I needed to just be there in silence. This was because it was understood that we were not to upset my father when he got home.
This was the message we got from our mother, our mother who was trying to do it all, that is the problem with this concept of family, it dumps everything on the laps of our mothers. Although I may have mixed feelings about my mother and her ability to be strong, the truth of the matter is that she had to endure it all on her own. What a sickness to place on any person's lap, this is not meant to be one person's offerings but many people's involvement. The concept of family in this country is about a private enterprise that is based on male supremacy. When are women going to wake up and realize that they do not have to be owned? This is not a male bashing comment it is a reality question? What would it be like to have a partner who provides more than economic surplus, or would you like to continue to play apart of the old myths that it is your duty to provide everything for your male spouse and children and omit your own well being?
I would like to recommend that we take a deep look into other cultures where family means grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc., and so on. With this concept in mind a child gets a greater and much more enlarged picture of what family could be and that it encompasses many different elements than the one they are restricted to.
Where does this type of private family concept come from? It comes from the Capitalist society we live in, plain and simple. Men are owned by the companies they work for, and the women and children who are their possessions are owned by the male in the home. It is a vicious cycle and one that seems to be acceptable by most Americans. I believe that we all should work to provide for our community or the family that we reside with, however, I do not think this means that it should encompass ownership. Of course, a business wants to make profit off of the worker's employed, but this should not be the only thing in life that is valued.
I guess ideally I would love family to encompass a unified collection of persons that go beyond company, and that have a sense of extended relatives, with community involvement. This is not foreign to the Native Americans and many other indigenous communities around the world. I believe that we would all benefit from experiencing what family means to groups other than Euro-Americans.
With Respect,
Cathy Stephenson
--part1_194.3153cf5.29b187b8_boundary--
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 12:50:33 -0600
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Thomas J. Mertz"
Subject: Re: pening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To: <200203020458.AFF44672@av2.doit.wisc.edu>
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I'd like to add couple of related and I hope complementary questions to
Professor Gordon's list.
1. What scholarship or teaching methods have been successful (or
unsuccessful) in relating the history of families to structures and
relations outside the family, and why have these worked (or not worked)?
2. How, as researchers and teachers do we move from the compelling
histories of individual families to useful generalizations about families
in particular historical contexts.? What sorts of evidence allows or helps
us in this process?
I think that questions along these lines are crucial to the effort to have
the history of families viewed as an indefensible part of historical
knowledge, to be integrated into teaching at all levels.
Thomas J. Mertz
ABD
Department of History
University of Wisonsin-Madison
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 13:11:08 -0600
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Carl Schulkin
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Linda and other colleagues,
As an "old hand" who teaches at the high school level, I would
like to weigh in briefly about my experience trying to integrate family
history into the U.S. History survey course. I experimented with such
integration in the 1980s, first by assigning Carl Degler's AT ODDS as
required reading, and then replacing it with Steven Mintz and Susan
Kellogg's DOMESTIC REVOLUTIONS. I enjoyed teaching each of these books,
but I eventually abandoned this experiment in integrating family history
into my survey course for two reasons: 1) my students did not show a
significantly greater interest in the subject matter than before; and 2)
the pressure (often from the students themselves) to prepare for the
Advanced Placement Exam made it impossible to devote a significant portion
of my class to topics that are not emphasized on that exam.
For those of you who teach at the high school level, I would be
curious to know whether any of you have tried and/or still do integrate
family history into your survey courses. If you do, I would have and/or
still do, I would also be curious to know what you assign as required
reading. In that regard, I would also be interested in knowing if those of
you who teach at the college level have tried and/or still integrate family
history into your survey courses, and, if so, what you assign as required
reading.
In closing, the only thing I think I can contribute in the way of
a direct response to Linda's questions is in regard to teaching about
sexuality and birth control. The first time I tried teaching about
sexuality and birth control (I believe it was in 1982), I invited my
principal to observe my class, just to make sure he knew what I was doing
in case a student or parent raised an objection. There was no objection
and there has not been a single one in the intervening years. I can often
read expressions of shock and surprise on the faces of my students when I
present information on the history of sexuality and/or birth
control. However, once they get over the initial shock and understand that
these are valid topics for historical analysis, we continue on just as we
would if we were discussing the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 or
Washington's Farewell Address.
Carl Schulkin
Pembroke Hill School
Kansas City, Missouri
At 11:04 AM 03/01/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Welcome to the History Matters forum on family history. Whether you
>are an old hand at this field or a complete neophyte, I hope you'll join
>the discussion.
>
>Courses on family history are still uncommon, although more and
>more historians and social scientists bring family issues and family
>change into their courses. I hope that our on-line exchanges can help
>make this happen more, as well as enable those of us already doing
>it to learn from each other.
>
>I will put out a few questions, both pedagogical and substantive, to
>kick off a discussion but I'd be delighted if somone else's question
>starts the conversations moving.
>
>1) Family is personal, and how do we teach about issues that may
>have intense emotional reverberations for students of different ages?
>For example,
>--how can we talk about family patterns without making some
>students feel that their own families are "deviant"?
>--how do we introduce material on unhappy family life, such as
>violence, depression, infidelity?
>
>2) What are the aspects of family history that would be most
>interesting and enlightening for students of various age groups.
>Examples:
>--changing patterns of adolescence
>--dating and courtship
>--extended family relationships
>--power and authority within families
>
>3) Do some instructors have problems introducing controversial
>material, e.g. regarding sexuality, birth control? If so, how do you
>resolve the problem?
>
>4) What aspects, if any, of family can reasonably be considered
>biological?
>
>5) What is the state-of-the-art best account of the impact of slavery on
>families?
>
>6) What are the histories of racial/cultural/class differences in families,
>if they exist?
>
>I think I'll leave it at that. But any comments and questions on family
>history are welcome.
>
>Looking forward to meeting some of you by internet,
>
>Linda Gordon
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 15:11:34 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: h kuritz
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To: <194.3153cf5.29b187b8@aol.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
To amplify Cathy's reply to Linda re extended families, I recommend
strongly the writings in Subaltern Studies by a group of Indian
historians and anthropologists. See, for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe (Princeton University Press, 2000), especially
his chapters on the family and women's rights. How these issues are
dealt with in a very different culture are revealing and important.
s
S
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 12:17:04 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To:
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Linda Gordon observes that family is personal, and that raises some
privacy issues. True. But in one sense, that's the very point. I have
long taught a survey history of the US since the mid 19th century; the
course is a statutory requirement which means that most students are there
because they must satisfy the requirement. (I have never taught a family
history course per se, though I've taught the history of American
childhoods for decades.) Even if students volunteered for the cousre,
they had a hard time relating to the course, at least in part because
their ancestors were not part of history. I assigned 3-generational
family histories (grandparents, parents, selves) in my survey course to
make general history personal (in writing a family history, a student had
to supply context from the general history of the US, a la the text); I
assumed that in the process of writing students would realize they were a
part of US history. (For a long time I was able to use a text by John G.
Clark, et al., THREE GENERATIONS IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA; FAMILY,
COMMUNITY, NATION, but it's now out of print.)
Without prompting, students told me how much they enjoyed the project.
But in fact we didn't share the histories with one another -- I promised
confidentiality at the outset. So the privacy issue was never addressed.
Joe Illick, San Francisco State University
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 18:26:20 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Pete Haro
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
Mime-version: 1.0
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Dear Professor Illick: Would you share the details of your family history
project that you assign to students? I have contemplated such an assignment
but I have had difficulty working out the particulars and showing what I
hope students will accomplish. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Pete Haro, MA
Overworked/Underpaid History Adjunct
----------
>From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
>Date: Sat, Mar 2, 2002, 12:17 PM
>
> Linda Gordon observes that family is personal, and that raises some
> privacy issues. True. But in one sense, that's the very point. I have
> long taught a survey history of the US since the mid 19th century; the
> course is a statutory requirement which means that most students are there
> because they must satisfy the requirement. (I have never taught a family
> history course per se, though I've taught the history of American
> childhoods for decades.) Even if students volunteered for the cousre,
> they had a hard time relating to the course, at least in part because
> their ancestors were not part of history. I assigned 3-generational
> family histories (grandparents, parents, selves) in my survey course to
> make general history personal (in writing a family history, a student had
> to supply context from the general history of the US, a la the text); I
> assumed that in the process of writing students would realize they were a
> part of US history. (For a long time I was able to use a text by John G.
> Clark, et al., THREE GENERATIONS IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA; FAMILY,
> COMMUNITY, NATION, but it's now out of print.)
> Without prompting, students told me how much they enjoyed the project.
> But in fact we didn't share the histories with one another -- I promised
> confidentiality at the outset. So the privacy issue was never addressed.
> Joe Illick, San Francisco State University
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:48:35 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families in transnational perspective
Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
I will have to disagree about some matters.
First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
family households actually have extensive and intensive active
networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
live very close to other family members and see other family members
daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
influence on how families are structured.
But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
California. And since I was recently doing research about
transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
(and is) the experience of having family in two different countries, with
attendant conflicts in family values.
Other thoughts about these issues?
best,
Linda Gordon
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:44:43 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.1.20020302125257.01e3a530@pop3.norton.antivirus>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thanks to Carl Schulkin for this extremely sharp response. I've taught
family history most recently to college freshmen, who, obviously, are much
like high school students, and I've taught them in seminars of 16, so I get
to hear a lot of what they're thinking. I've been surprised by a few things:
--Like Carl Schulkin's students, they are quite open to discussing sex and
reproduction and are often a lot more frank than I am--I'm the one with the
red face!
--I notice that the students always relate to family as the child, and it's
hard to get them to take the parental perspective.
Snce I don't teach a survey course, I have no experience in integrating
family history into it, but I do integrate family issues into discussions
of slavery, immigration, wars, social movements, economic upturns and
downturns.
best, Linda Gordon
At 01:11 PM 03/02/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>Linda and other colleagues,
>
> As an "old hand" who teaches at the high school level, I would
>like to weigh in briefly about my experience trying to integrate family
>history into the U.S. History survey course. I experimented with such
>integration in the 1980s, first by assigning Carl Degler's AT ODDS as
>required reading, and then replacing it with Steven Mintz and Susan
>Kellogg's DOMESTIC REVOLUTIONS. I enjoyed teaching each of these books,
>but I eventually abandoned this experiment in integrating family history
>into my survey course for two reasons: 1) my students did not show a
>significantly greater interest in the subject matter than before; and 2)
>the pressure (often from the students themselves) to prepare for the
>Advanced Placement Exam made it impossible to devote a significant portion
>of my class to topics that are not emphasized on that exam.
>
> For those of you who teach at the high school level, I would be
>curious to know whether any of you have tried and/or still do integrate
>family history into your survey courses. If you do, I would have and/or
>still do, I would also be curious to know what you assign as required
>reading. In that regard, I would also be interested in knowing if those of
>you who teach at the college level have tried and/or still integrate family
>history into your survey courses, and, if so, what you assign as required
>reading.
>
> In closing, the only thing I think I can contribute in the way of
>a direct response to Linda's questions is in regard to teaching about
>sexuality and birth control. The first time I tried teaching about
>sexuality and birth control (I believe it was in 1982), I invited my
>principal to observe my class, just to make sure he knew what I was doing
>in case a student or parent raised an objection. There was no objection
>and there has not been a single one in the intervening years. I can often
>read expressions of shock and surprise on the faces of my students when I
>present information on the history of sexuality and/or birth
>control. However, once they get over the initial shock and understand that
>these are valid topics for historical analysis, we continue on just as we
>would if we were discussing the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 or
>Washington's Farewell Address.
>
>
>Carl Schulkin
>Pembroke Hill School
>Kansas City, Missouri
>
>
>
>
>At 11:04 AM 03/01/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>Welcome to the History Matters forum on family history. Whether you
>>are an old hand at this field or a complete neophyte, I hope you'll join
>>the discussion.
>>
>>Courses on family history are still uncommon, although more and
>>more historians and social scientists bring family issues and family
>>change into their courses. I hope that our on-line exchanges can help
>>make this happen more, as well as enable those of us already doing
>>it to learn from each other.
>>
>>I will put out a few questions, both pedagogical and substantive, to
>>kick off a discussion but I'd be delighted if somone else's question
>>starts the conversations moving.
>>
>>1) Family is personal, and how do we teach about issues that may
>>have intense emotional reverberations for students of different ages?
>>For example,
>>--how can we talk about family patterns without making some
>>students feel that their own families are "deviant"?
>>--how do we introduce material on unhappy family life, such as
>>violence, depression, infidelity?
>>
>>2) What are the aspects of family history that would be most
>>interesting and enlightening for students of various age groups.
>>Examples:
>>--changing patterns of adolescence
>>--dating and courtship
>>--extended family relationships
>>--power and authority within families
>>
>>3) Do some instructors have problems introducing controversial
>>material, e.g. regarding sexuality, birth control? If so, how do you
>>resolve the problem?
>>
>>4) What aspects, if any, of family can reasonably be considered
>>biological?
>>
>>5) What is the state-of-the-art best account of the impact of slavery on
>>families?
>>
>>6) What are the histories of racial/cultural/class differences in families,
>>if they exist?
>>
>>I think I'll leave it at that. But any comments and questions on family
>>history are welcome.
>>
>>Looking forward to meeting some of you by internet,
>>
>>Linda Gordon
>>
>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:26:50 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Joe Illick reports experiences very similar to mine: In teaching family
history, what we're trying to do is to connect the personal to the
historical, and that goes directly against the grain of most students' idea
of what history is. When I first started teach this in the 1970s, I asked
students to write on specific topics which required them to make that
connection--for example, interview your grandparent about the impact of the
Great Depression or World War II on your family. Unfortunately, now that
grandparents of that age have mostly passed away, I haven't been able to
identify historical experiences that were as universal as the depression
and war. Now that I teach in New York, there is also the fact that my
students are (delightfully) more diverse, many are recent immigrants, and
many do not have grandparents around to interview. (This was less a
problem when I taught at Univ. of Wisconsin.)
The hard part of these assignments is to keep students from just presenting
chronicles of family developments. Part of what I'm aiming at is
developing the sociological imagination, as C. Wright Mills called it; that
is, understanding oneself and one's kin as part of historical processes.
Now it is possible to do that by asking about changing gender ideas between
older and younger family members.
These are just the issues that T J Mertz's questions get at (hi TJ). I too
would very much like to hear suggestions from others about what materials
and methods they have used.
I have had good luck with teaching about immigration because, as I try to
show my students, immigrants often experience radical family change in an
intensified, rapid and abrupt manner. I've used Elizabeth Ewen's book
"Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars" (which most undergraduates love).
I like also to create specific units on the history of childhood and the
history of the treatment of the elderly, because changes in these
structures tell a great deal about social change in general.
But in one way my experience differed from Joe Illick's: I found that most
of my students were eager to share their family stories.
Hoping to hear from more of you,
Linda Gordon
At 12:17 PM 03/02/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Linda Gordon observes that family is personal, and that raises some
>privacy issues. True. But in one sense, that's the very point. I have
>long taught a survey history of the US since the mid 19th century; the
>course is a statutory requirement which means that most students are there
>because they must satisfy the requirement. (I have never taught a family
>history course per se, though I've taught the history of American
>childhoods for decades.) Even if students volunteered for the cousre,
>they had a hard time relating to the course, at least in part because
>their ancestors were not part of history. I assigned 3-generational
>family histories (grandparents, parents, selves) in my survey course to
>make general history personal (in writing a family history, a student had
>to supply context from the general history of the US, a la the text); I
>assumed that in the process of writing students would realize they were a
>part of US history. (For a long time I was able to use a text by John G.
>Clark, et al., THREE GENERATIONS IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA; FAMILY,
>COMMUNITY, NATION, but it's now out of print.)
>Without prompting, students told me how much they enjoyed the project.
>But in fact we didn't share the histories with one another -- I promised
>confidentiality at the outset. So the privacy issue was never addressed.
>Joe Illick, San Francisco State University
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:35:48 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Pete Haro
Subject: Re: families in transnational perspective
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Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have historically
had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
Pete Haro.
----------
>From: Linda Gordon
>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>Subject: families in transnational perspective
>Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
>
> Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
> I will have to disagree about some matters.
>
> First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
> what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
> widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
> Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
> family households actually have extensive and intensive active
> networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
> live very close to other family members and see other family members
> daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>
> Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
> disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
> radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
> But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
> influence on how families are structured.
>
> But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
> global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
> historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
> societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
> Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
> book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
> Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
> small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
> California. And since I was recently doing research about
> transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
> (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries, with
> attendant conflicts in family values.
>
> Other thoughts about these issues?
>
> best,
>
> Linda Gordon
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 07:56:23 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: DAVE BARBER
Subject: Fam: Listserv idea
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
I imagine that I am similar to many of you in that I get a lot of email. =
To help us keep this organized, can we all agree to the pattern I used in =
the subject line of this message? Start each subject with "fam:" and then =
title the entry. That way we will know immediately which ones are a part =
of this discussion and those who know how can even set up their system to =
automatically file each message.
No need to respond to the this idea. If you like it use it.=20
David Barber
Vancouver School District
Vancouver, WAhn
>>> hkuritz@CSC.ALBANY.EDU 03/02/02 12:11PM >>>
To amplify Cathy's reply to Linda re extended families, I recommend
strongly the writings in Subaltern Studies by a group of Indian
historians and anthropologists. See, for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe (Princeton University Press, 2000), especially
his chapters on the family and women's rights. How these issues are
dealt with in a very different culture are revealing and important.
s
S
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at =
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. =
History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 10:31:50 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Katherine Arnup
Subject: teaching family...
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Hi. I thought I'd offer some comments from north of the border -
I am an historian (20th C. Canadian, social history) who has
taught both Intro. to Canadian History and Women's History.
I now teach in an interdisciplinary Canadian Studies department.
In all my teaching, I have managed to include at least two sessions
on family. My own work is on the history of motherhood and child rearing
in Canada, so I usually do something on changing images of the family
over the past two centuries. In the Intro. course, I have done a session
on childhood (including education) and then parenting, with a focus on
changing advice for parents over the course of the 20th century.
I find the students much more taken with the parenting portion and less
with attitudes towards children and schooling (though that may be because
motherhood is my passion! who knows...) I also include information on
lesbian and gay families, and though the data are scant on this, I use
material from Kennedy and Davis (Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold) and
my own historical work, to talk about lesbian families in the
pre-stonewall period.
One of my major goals in all of this is to challenge that widely held view
that the Beaver Cleaver 50s family has always existed, was the best family
ever, should exist now.... I find students, of all ages, quite surprised
to discover that the family actually HAS a history.
My second goal is to show that the family has always been changing, and
that current outcry about the "crisis" in the family (whether it concerns
lesbian and gay marriage, the divorce rate, or welfare "mom's) has a very
long history - they reluctantly come to see that the family has constantly
shifted and changed, and that at any given point some group was warning
about its demise.
I am enjoying this discussion - I rarely get a chance to talk about
family history!
Katherine Arnup
Katherine Arnup
Associate Professor
School of Canadian Studies
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
karnup@ccs.carleton.ca
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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 10:57:59 -0600
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Maureen Conklin
Subject: Re: FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 2 Mar 2002 to 4 Mar 2002 (#2002-3)
In-Reply-To: <200203050458.WAA16706@gomer.wiscnet.net>
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I have long been troubled by the use of the term "nuclear family" to
describe families in the domestic arrangements with which I am most
familiar: early American and early modern European. So many households that
are assumed to be nuclear are, in fact, not exclusively created by parents
and their children. Other persons peopled many households in these
societies: from indentured servants to slaves to single relatives to
neighbors. Some of these other people were relatively permanent fixtures in
the households they occupied while others were transient. As examples, I'd
like to point out the domestic arrangements of Martha Ballard and Mary
Silliman (which many early American historians will recognize),the
apprenticeship arrangements in early modern Europe, boarding houses in many
different historical contexts, etc., etc.
If we focus on the biological and marital relationships within these
households, they appear to house "nuclear families." But what does it mean
within these historical contexts? What impact did the presence of other
adults and/or children have in family history? Where is the line between the
history of the family and the history of the household--if there is one (and
should there be one)? Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Within the Plantation
Household stands out in my mind as the kind of "family history" that takes
account of these relationships and recognizes their impact on the dynamics
between "family" members.
It seems to me that the use of the term "nuclear family" gives prominence to
marital and biological relationships while in many historical contexts,
these relationships are neither exclusive nor perhaps even the most
significant in the lives of "family" members, even when they are within the
"family" setting: the household. Perhaps the question I am asking is, do we
really have a nuclear family anytime the parent(s)/offspring dyad co-habits
with others? (Do we even have it then, considering what Linda Gordon has
recently mentioned in regard to "extended" family support?) To what extent
is the "nuclear family" either a cultural or actual norm throughout history?
Although my concern about the concept of nuclear family has been long
standing, it has become more acute as I move closer to becoming an adoptive
mother. I'm looking forward to seeing what this group has to say about
families, nuclear or otherwise.
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:48:35 -0500
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families in transnational perspective
"First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
family households actually have extensive and intensive active
networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
live very close to other family members and see other family members
daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care."
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 14:21:41 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Cathy Stephenson
Subject: Re: teaching family...
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Thank-you Kathryn for expanding the concept of family and its many versions.
I would like to add a book that I feel gives a good bit about middle to upper
white American women's lives during the Revolution. This book offers actual
letters from women who share their experience in child raising and
domesticity.
The book is called LIBERTY'S DAUGHTERS, The Revolutionary Experience of
American Women, 1750-1800, by Mary Beth Norton. It certainly opened my eyes
to how fortunate I am today to seek out my own family.
Grateful,
Cathy Stephenson
Union Carpenter
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Thank-you Kathryn for expanding the concept of family and its many versions. I would like to add a book that I feel gives a good bit about middle to upper white American women's lives during the Revolution. This book offers actual letters from women who share their experience in child raising and domesticity.
The book is called LIBERTY'S DAUGHTERS, The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, by Mary Beth Norton. It certainly opened my eyes to how fortunate I am today to seek out my own family.
Grateful,
Cathy Stephenson
Union Carpenter
--part1_176.48ab5e6.29b674c5_boundary--
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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 19:51:00 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Marie Schwartz
Subject: Re: families in transnational perspective
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Dear Colleagues:
This semester I began my class on upper-level college course on family life
with A World of Babies, edited by Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb (Cambridge
University Press). This is a set of imagined childcare guides from seven
developing nations (including seventeenth-century New England Puritans).
The book worked well in introducing the idea that the very different
childcare practices were grounded in a coherent set of beliefs that made
particular childrearing customs appear right and natural in a specific
setting.
Later on the in the semester, each student will read a different book on the
experiences of immigrants in the period 1880-1930 from a list I have
compiled. We will discuss the books in class through a series of questions
developed to elicit what the immigration experiences of families were like.
We will explore what the different ethnic or national groups had in common
and what was different about their immigration experiences. Many of the
books address how family life in the old country compared and contrasted
with family life in the new.
I developed these projects because I believe students need to understand
family life in comparative perspective, a perspective that can be maintained
for different social groups within the United States as well as for social
groups outside its borders. For example, I assign the text by Steven Mintz
and Susan Kellogg called Domestic Revolutions (Harvard University Press).
Students compare and contrast middle and working-class family life in the
nineteenth century (treated in separate chapters). I assign my own Born in
Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South for yet another
perspective on nineteenth-century family life.
The literature on the history of family life is rich. Undergraduates find
it fascinating and rewarding to consider cultural difference. They quickly
learn to identity their own cultural biases as well as those held by members
of other groups. In this way, we talk about patterns and difference without
making students feel that difference is deviance--to return to a question
posed by Professor Gordon in her opening statement.
I keep the question of biology vs. cultural construction before the students
all semester, particularly with regard to childbearing and childrearing.
I'm not sure anyone ever believes the class discussions resolve questions
about the issue, but this is OK. I'm interested in hearing from other
teachers who consider the issue in the classroom. How do you broach the
subject?
Sincerely,
Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Ph.D.
History Department
University of Rhode Island
80 Upper College Road
Kingston, RI 02881
401.874.4090
schwartz@uri.edu
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SCHBOR.html
----- Original Message -----
From: Linda Gordon
To:
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 8:48 PM
Subject: families in transnational perspective
> Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
> I will have to disagree about some matters.
>
> First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
> what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
> widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
> Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
> family households actually have extensive and intensive active
> networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
> live very close to other family members and see other family members
> daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>
> Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
> disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
> radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
> But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
> influence on how families are structured.
>
> But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
> global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
> historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
> societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
> Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
> book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
> Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
> small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
> California. And since I was recently doing research about
> transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
> (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries, with
> attendant conflicts in family values.
>
> Other thoughts about these issues?
>
> best,
>
> Linda Gordon
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 09:25:49 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
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The way I see this is influenced by the fact that I came to family history
through studying women and gender. That field was for a while dominated by
a perspective that only saw women's victimization and oppression, with
resultant biases: seeing men's and women's interests as always opposed;
assuming that men always won in power struggles with women; neglecting
areas in which women exerted power despite their legal, economic, physical
disadvantages. Although I have no quarrel with those who want to point out
male domination in most if not all societies, domination does not mean, and
has never meant, absolute power. Even in the most patriarchal societies,
women have been able to affect their conditions.
Concretely: In the US in the 19th century, for example, women made several
achievements that offset male power in the family. The most important was
ending the traditional legal assumption that children belonged to their
father in case of marital separation, divorce, or death. Women's custody
of children was extremely important not only for children but for
women. Since women would almost never agree to give up their children,
many women therefore would not leave even an extremely abusive man for fear
of losing their children. Women also created a sea-change in attitudes
about domestic violence. By the end of the 19th century in the US,
appellate courts usually rejected the claim that marriage gave husbands a
right to "chastise" their wives. Of course, violence continued, but the
first condition for the campaign against it--getting rid of the assumption
that it was legal and honorable--had been created.
Women were the leading advocates in numerous other reforms that changed
families: compulsory education; health and safety regulation in housing;
foster care; mothers' pensions and later what we called "welfare;" etc.
I'd like to hear from others about this because these issues lead to a
central teaching issue: how to examine families both as having collective
interests and as battlegrounds for competing interests.
best, Linda Gordon
At 08:35 PM 03/04/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have historically
>had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
>Pete Haro.
>
>----------
> >From: Linda Gordon
> >To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> >Subject: families in transnational perspective
> >Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
> >
>
> > Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
> > I will have to disagree about some matters.
> >
> > First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
> > what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
> > widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
> > Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
> > family households actually have extensive and intensive active
> > networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
> > live very close to other family members and see other family members
> > daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
> >
> > Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
> > disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
> > radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
> > But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
> > influence on how families are structured.
> >
> > But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
> > global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
> > historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
> > societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
> > Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
> > book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
> > Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
> > small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
> > California. And since I was recently doing research about
> > transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
> > (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries, with
> > attendant conflicts in family values.
> >
> > Other thoughts about these issues?
> >
> > best,
> >
> > Linda Gordon
> >
> > This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> > http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
Linda Gordon
Professor of History
New York University
53 Washington Square South
NYC, NY 10012
tel 212-998-8627
fax 212-995-4017
email Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 19:00:49 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Hilary Young
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
I would like to respond to Linda Gordon's comment about students relating to the family as the child, and having difficulty getting them to take the parent's perspective.
I am a student, currently enrolled in a History of the Family course as part of a broader Family Studies Certificate program at my (Canadian) University. In most of my history courses, as well as courses in other disciplines, relating to the family I find that generally other students relate to families as containing children, so it is difficult to get them to think about families without children in them, or to think about children outside of 'families', such as the experiences of foster children, runaways or orphans. However, even in interpretting families as containing children, it is the parent's perspectives that are most often considered, with little attention paid to children's role in families.
Perhaps this is because instructors are trying to promt the students to consider parental perspectives or because my institution has an older student population with many parents as students. I would suggest it also has to do with most primary sources being written by adults and all academic historians being adults, so that there is more literature on adults experiences of families.
I would also like to address another, related issue. I am frustrated by the degree to which instructors (and students) equate family with women, particularly when examining power relationships. This is not to say such dynamics are not important but I find that the power relationships of children in relation to parents, extended family, the state, etc. are not adequately adress as they are lumped in with women.
I think this relates to a wider current societal assumption that women are the protectors of the interests of children, rather than protectors of their own interest, and a parallel denial that women's interests can conflict with those of children. This assumption certainly lends power to women, but at the cost of the perspectives of children being independently considered.
Hilary Young
On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:44:43 -0500, Linda Gordon wrote:
>Thanks to Carl Schulkin for this extremely sharp response. I've taught
>family history most recently to college freshmen, who, obviously, are much
>like high school students, and I've taught them in seminars of 16, so I get
>to hear a lot of what they're thinking. I've been surprised by a few things:
>--Like Carl Schulkin's students, they are quite open to discussing sex and
>reproduction and are often a lot more frank than I am--I'm the one with the
>red face!
>--I notice that the students always relate to family as the child, and it's
>hard to get them to take the parental perspective.
>
>Snce I don't teach a survey course, I have no experience in integrating
>family history into it, but I do integrate family issues into discussions
>of slavery, immigration, wars, social movements, economic upturns and
>downturns.
>
>best, Linda Gordon
>
>At 01:11 PM 03/02/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>>Linda and other colleagues,
>>
>> As an "old hand" who teaches at the high school level, I would
>>like to weigh in briefly about my experience trying to integrate family
>>history into the U.S. History survey course. I experimented with such
>>integration in the 1980s, first by assigning Carl Degler's AT ODDS as
>>required reading, and then replacing it with Steven Mintz and Susan
>>Kellogg's DOMESTIC REVOLUTIONS. I enjoyed teaching each of these books,
>>but I eventually abandoned this experiment in integrating family history
>>into my survey course for two reasons: 1) my students did not show a
>>significantly greater interest in the subject matter than before; and 2)
>>the pressure (often from the students themselves) to prepare for the
>>Advanced Placement Exam made it impossible to devote a significant portion
>>of my class to topics that are not emphasized on that exam.
>>
>> For those of you who teach at the high school level, I would be
>>curious to know whether any of you have tried and/or still do integrate
>>family history into your survey courses. If you do, I would have and/or
>>still do, I would also be curious to know what you assign as required
>>reading. In that regard, I would also be interested in knowing if those of
>>you who teach at the college level have tried and/or still integrate family
>>history into your survey courses, and, if so, what you assign as required
>>reading.
>>
>> In closing, the only thing I think I can contribute in the way of
>>a direct response to Linda's questions is in regard to teaching about
>>sexuality and birth control. The first time I tried teaching about
>>sexuality and birth control (I believe it was in 1982), I invited my
>>principal to observe my class, just to make sure he knew what I was doing
>>in case a student or parent raised an objection. There was no objection
>>and there has not been a single one in the intervening years. I can often
>>read expressions of shock and surprise on the faces of my students when I
>>present information on the history of sexuality and/or birth
>>control. However, once they get over the initial shock and understand that
>>these are valid topics for historical analysis, we continue on just as we
>>would if we were discussing the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 or
>>Washington's Farewell Address.
>>
>>
>>Carl Schulkin
>>Pembroke Hill School
>>Kansas City, Missouri
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>At 11:04 AM 03/01/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>>Welcome to the History Matters forum on family history. Whether you
>>>are an old hand at this field or a complete neophyte, I hope you'll join
>>>the discussion.
>>>
>>>Courses on family history are still uncommon, although more and
>>>more historians and social scientists bring family issues and family
>>>change into their courses. I hope that our on-line exchanges can help
>>>make this happen more, as well as enable those of us already doing
>>>it to learn from each other.
>>>
>>>I will put out a few questions, both pedagogical and substantive, to
>>>kick off a discussion but I'd be delighted if somone else's question
>>>starts the conversations moving.
>>>
>>>1) Family is personal, and how do we teach about issues that may
>>>have intense emotional reverberations for students of different ages?
>>>For example,
>>>--how can we talk about family patterns without making some
>>>students feel that their own families are "deviant"?
>>>--how do we introduce material on unhappy family life, such as
>>>violence, depression, infidelity?
>>>
>>>2) What are the aspects of family history that would be most
>>>interesting and enlightening for students of various age groups.
>>>Examples:
>>>--changing patterns of adolescence
>>>--dating and courtship
>>>--extended family relationships
>>>--power and authority within families
>>>
>>>3) Do some instructors have problems introducing controversial
>>>material, e.g. regarding sexuality, birth control? If so, how do you
>>>resolve the problem?
>>>
>>>4) What aspects, if any, of family can reasonably be considered
>>>biological?
>>>
>>>5) What is the state-of-the-art best account of the impact of slavery on
>>>families?
>>>
>>>6) What are the histories of racial/cultural/class differences in families,
>>>if they exist?
>>>
>>>I think I'll leave it at that. But any comments and questions on family
>>>history are welcome.
>>>
>>>Looking forward to meeting some of you by internet,
>>>
>>>Linda Gordon
>>>
>>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
>Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
>NYU
>53 Washington Square South
>New York, NY 10012
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 17:26:37 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Pete Haro
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
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Dear Linda: Thanks for that eloquent and insightful response. One of the
ways that I address gender/family issues in my American survey course is by
looking at female progressives such as Jane Addams. While I agree with your
point that women made numerous important contributions in terms of reform
during the Progressive Era, I always point out that their participation was
permitted as long as it was seen as an extension of the domestic sphere.
Cleaning up cities, running settlement houses were all seen as activities
that were "suited" to women. The bottom line is that women were allowed or
co-opted into careers that many men saw as undesirable and non-masculine.
The Cults of True Womanhood and Domesticity are perfect examples (as far as
I'm concerned) of how Progressive women were controlled by a male dominated
society. That is why I find it difficult to put much credence in the notion
that women were somehow being respected by being allowed to participate in
certain kinds of Progressive Reforms.
Now I realize that I could perhaps be accused of reductionism. However,
consider this. One of the activities that I use is to ask students to
consider: Have gender roles changed since the Gilded Age/Progressive Era? At
first, most overwhelmingly say yes. They point out that women today have a
number of different career options that most people would not have
considered during this period. There are women pilots, judges, astronauts,
doctors, etc. I then show them two recent magazine covers. One is from U.S.
News & World Report from August, 2001. On the cover is Colonel Rhonda Corum
of the U.S. Army. The magazine article went on to recount her tremendous
accomplishments. Decorated combat veteran in Desert Storm, Battalion
Commander in Kosovo, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornel. Most students see
this and say "see, women have come a long way and are no longer thought of
or pressured to be domestics". Two months later, October 2001, the cover of
US Magazine featured First Lady Laura Bush and the title "Laura Bush:
Comforter-In-Chief". Now I admit that US Magazine is hardly a reputable
academic source. However, the fact remains that women are still pigeonholed
into professions (elementary school teachers, secretaries, receptionists,
dental assistants, day care providers) which are seen as an extension of the
domestic sphere. Finally, I use the example of Hillary Clinton vs. Laura
Bush. Why are the adjectives "bitch", "icy", "pushy", "know-it-all" used to
describe Hillary but "sweet", "kind", "caring" used to describe Laura Bush?
I would maintain that there is still a deep seeded ambivalence/discomfort in
this county about what roles or professions women should be able to have.
Forgive me for the long response but I would be interested to hear what you
think of how I present this issue or conversely, any new ideas on how to
discuss this. Sincerely, Pete Haro.
----------
>From: Linda Gordon
>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>Subject: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2002, 6:25 AM
>
> The way I see this is influenced by the fact that I came to family history
> through studying women and gender. That field was for a while dominated by
> a perspective that only saw women's victimization and oppression, with
> resultant biases: seeing men's and women's interests as always opposed;
> assuming that men always won in power struggles with women; neglecting
> areas in which women exerted power despite their legal, economic, physical
> disadvantages. Although I have no quarrel with those who want to point out
> male domination in most if not all societies, domination does not mean, and
> has never meant, absolute power. Even in the most patriarchal societies,
> women have been able to affect their conditions.
>
> Concretely: In the US in the 19th century, for example, women made several
> achievements that offset male power in the family. The most important was
> ending the traditional legal assumption that children belonged to their
> father in case of marital separation, divorce, or death. Women's custody
> of children was extremely important not only for children but for
> women. Since women would almost never agree to give up their children,
> many women therefore would not leave even an extremely abusive man for fear
> of losing their children. Women also created a sea-change in attitudes
> about domestic violence. By the end of the 19th century in the US,
> appellate courts usually rejected the claim that marriage gave husbands a
> right to "chastise" their wives. Of course, violence continued, but the
> first condition for the campaign against it--getting rid of the assumption
> that it was legal and honorable--had been created.
>
> Women were the leading advocates in numerous other reforms that changed
> families: compulsory education; health and safety regulation in housing;
> foster care; mothers' pensions and later what we called "welfare;" etc.
>
> I'd like to hear from others about this because these issues lead to a
> central teaching issue: how to examine families both as having collective
> interests and as battlegrounds for competing interests.
>
> best, Linda Gordon
>
> At 08:35 PM 03/04/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have historically
>>had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
>>Pete Haro.
>>
>>----------
>> >From: Linda Gordon
>> >To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>> >Subject: families in transnational perspective
>> >Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
>> >
>>
>> > Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
>> > I will have to disagree about some matters.
>> >
>> > First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
>> > what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
>> > widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
>> > Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
>> > family households actually have extensive and intensive active
>> > networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
>> > live very close to other family members and see other family members
>> > daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>> >
>> > Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
>> > disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
>> > radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
>> > But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
>> > influence on how families are structured.
>> >
>> > But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
>> > global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
>> > historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
>> > societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
>> > Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
>> > book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
>> > Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
>> > small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
>> > California. And since I was recently doing research about
>> > transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
>> > (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries, with
>> > attendant conflicts in family values.
>> >
>> > Other thoughts about these issues?
>> >
>> > best,
>> >
>> > Linda Gordon
>> >
>> > This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>> > http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
> Linda Gordon
> Professor of History
> New York University
> 53 Washington Square South
> NYC, NY 10012
> tel 212-998-8627
> fax 212-995-4017
> email Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 21:20:40 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Cathy Stephenson
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
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Greetings Linda,
You bring up some wonderful points about how women have influenced the family
unit that you call nuclear, and I happen to call private in the USA I guess
my point was that these influences have always required some very strong,
dedicated, determined and persistent women to have this power. Unfortunately
I feel the struggle is a continuous one, this is only based on my
observations and from the voices of the women who share it.
One of the reasons that the traditional family of this country is changing is
because women are making progress concerning what constitutes a healthy
environment for their children and for their own well being. This is a
wonderful shift in my opinion, and my hope is that it will strengthen girls
image of themselves, and the boy's will view women as valuable contributor's,
rather than only caretakers.
I hope that the teacher's in all the levels of academia are also offering
some family dynamics focused on the Native Peoples of this land. I have read
some bits and pieces about Crow and Navajo as well as of course Cherokee
tribes that have what one would call a complementary equal family unit
concerning the power of individuals within the community and personal
homestead's. One such book that offered this perspective is WOMEN AND POWER
IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA, edited by Laura E. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman.
This book describes various tribes in America and covers the family dynamics
within that culture. This in my opinion would be a wonderful starting point
for students to be exposed to and to explore as part of the before we other
people's came to this land.
Due to the influence and forced beliefs of us newcomers to this land, those
family dynamics in most cases are depleted within many tribal communities.
When one understands that the United States has the highest rate of homicide
of any industrialized country for the past 150 years, it certainly makes this
subject matter of Family of utmost importance. That information was gathered
from a book called THE IMPROVISED WOMAN, by Marcelle Clements.
I am so glad that all of you professors, instructors, and teachers however
you label yourselves are providing education in this most important area of
living on this earth. My hope is that your students are getting an open forum
with as many of the family concepts that one can provide in the short time
you have to offer them.
With Respect,
Union Carpenter
Cathy Stephenson
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Greetings Linda,
You bring up some wonderful points about how women have influenced the family unit that you call nuclear, and I happen to call private in the USA I guess my point was that these influences have always required some very strong, dedicated, determined and persistent women to have this power. Unfortunately I feel the struggle is a continuous one, this is only based on my observations and from the voices of the women who share it.
One of the reasons that the traditional family of this country is changing is because women are making progress concerning what constitutes a healthy environment for their children and for their own well being. This is a wonderful shift in my opinion, and my hope is that it will strengthen girls image of themselves, and the boy's will view women as valuable contributor's, rather than only caretakers.
I hope that the teacher's in all the levels of academia are also offering some family dynamics focused on the Native Peoples of this land. I have read some bits and pieces about Crow and Navajo as well as of course Cherokee tribes that have what one would call a complementary equal family unit concerning the power of individuals within the community and personal homestead's. One such book that offered this perspective is WOMEN AND POWER IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA, edited by Laura E. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman. This book describes various tribes in America and covers the family dynamics within that culture. This in my opinion would be a wonderful starting point for students to be exposed to and to explore as part of the before we other people's came to this land.
Due to the influence and forced beliefs of us newcomers to this land, those family dynamics in most cases are depleted within many tribal communities.
When one understands that the United States has the highest rate of homicide of any industrialized country for the past 150 years, it certainly makes this subject matter of Family of utmost importance. That information was gathered from a book called THE IMPROVISED WOMAN, by Marcelle Clements.
I am so glad that all of you professors, instructors, and teachers however you label yourselves are providing education in this most important area of living on this earth. My hope is that your students are getting an open forum with as many of the family concepts that one can provide in the short time you have to offer them.
With Respect,
Union Carpenter
Cathy Stephenson
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 09:02:18 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: the "nuclear" family I
In-Reply-To: <176.48ab5e6.29b674c5@aol.com>
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I'm very attracted by Maureen Conklin's suggestion to problematize the very
notion of nuclear family. Some historians and demographers have done this
by distinguishing between family and household, but I think Maureen
Conklin's point goes deeper than this, because the crucial ties of sex,
economic interdependence, emotional interdependence and reproduction may
extend far beyond the parent-child grouping as well as beyond the
household. I would be very interested in concrete examples, to be used in
teaching, of historical societies in which "nuclear family" does not define
the most important ties.
One book I used to teach in this vein is Faye Dudden's history of domestic
service, because she traces the transition from (1) occasional "help" who
not only lived in the household but became part of the family and suffered
no lack of status to (2) a permanent servant class.
Request: As I'm slowly (and belatedly) beginning to teach history more
globally, I am aware of many different patterns in the use of household
help, some of which show how different "the family" becomes in a colonial
setting--different, that is, both for the colonial settlers and the people
who have been colonized. I would very much appreciate suggestions for good
materials on this topic to assign to undergraduates.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 09:09:15 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: nuclear family II
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Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 09:17:25 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: change over time
In-Reply-To: <176.48ab5e6.29b674c5@aol.com>
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I share teaching goals with Katherine Arnup. Last time I taught family
history, I titled the course (with tongue in cheek, of course) "Family
Values." Although I believe that there are in fact some near-universals in
family organization--for example, women's responsibility for young
children--my emphasis is on diversity and change. And, to be frank, I aim
at what we might call citizenship education as well as historical
education, given that "family values" have been used to enforce all kinds
of political and religious orthodoxies.
And because I look at the family as a system of regulation, I can teach
units on a variety of issues that do not focus exclusively on
family/household structure, issues such as birth control, care for the
infirm and elderly, courtship and dating.
I have found that students particularly enjoy Beth Bailey's history of
courtship, "From Front Porch to Back Seat."
And thanks to Marie Schwartz for the reference to "A World of Babies,"
which I hadn't known about.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 08:33:02 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "A. Constantine Hawkes"
Subject: Re: Opening Statement from Linda Gordon
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In reply to Hilary Young and her comments about how society and
those who teach the history of the family
"equate family with women" and "a wider current societal assumption
that women are the protectors of the interests of children, rather
than protectors of their own interest, and a parallel denial that women's
interests can conflict with those of children."
You have hit the essential problem on the head:
Woman has never been considered an individual;
woman DOES = mother in western political thought.
What IS a woman WITHOUT a family? I certainly do not
accept these ideas, but that is what we as feminists are
up against from the very start. This is the point of
reference that I have used to write
my dissertation that examines the life of a reformer and
business woman in the nineteenth century. Linda Kerber of
course does a wonderful job discussing this idea in her
essay "Can a Woman Be an Individual?: The Discourse of
Self-Reliance" in Towards an Intellectual History of Women.
Andrea C. Hawkes
University of Maine
61 Paul Revere Road
Arlington. MA
achawkes@aol.com
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:10:16 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: David McMullen
Subject: fam: definition
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As we explore the term "family," I wonder if it is not very similar to the
word "community." We often begin with a very inflexible definition of
community, such as a town or village, yet the more we explore examples of
community, the more flexible we become. I am reminded of the book Talley's
Corner (I apologize, I have forgotten the name of the author), about a group
of African-American men who hung out together on a District of Columbia
street corner in the 1960s. With family, we seem to do the reserve. We
start out with a narrow definition and begin to expand. Ultimately, the men
in Talley's Corner might also be defined as a family.
David McMullen
Ph.D. Candidate in History
University of Aberdeen/UNC-Charlotte
E-mail: DLMcMullen@aol.com
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As we explore the term "family," I wonder if it is not very similar to the word "community." We often begin with a very inflexible definition of community, such as a town or village, yet the more we explore examples of community, the more flexible we become. I am reminded of the book Talley's Corner (I apologize, I have forgotten the name of the author), about a group of African-American men who hung out together on a District of Columbia street corner in the 1960s. With family, we seem to do the reserve. We start out with a narrow definition and begin to expand. Ultimately, the men in Talley's Corner might also be defined as a family.
David McMullen
Ph.D. Candidate in History
University of Aberdeen/UNC-Charlotte
E-mail: DLMcMullen@aol.com
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:18:01 -0600
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Mark Marianek
Subject: FAM: Teaching family in a survey...
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I apologize for being a bit behind in the discussion. I would like to =
share some thoughts regarding teaching family in the US survey. I am =
relatively new to the classroom, being ABD, so my experience is limited. =
However, I have noticed some interesting things in my teaching of =
family that are related to issues discussed here so far.
Teaching the US survey "to 1865", I have attempted to seat the family =
within a social and cultural context. I draw heavily upon Jeanne =
Boydston's _Home and Work_ to trace the changes in the family in the =
early republic due to the "market revolution". Combined with that one =
of the main themes of my course is the concepts of independence and =
dependence--of the nation, the social group, and the individual--and how =
they are defined at various points in time, I believe I have had some =
success in conveying an understanding about family in the US past. With =
a focus upon work, I also begin my discussion of gender roles by =
explaining the historical "place" of men and women within the family, =
and then attempting to show how gender conventions outside the family =
are extensions of those ideal roles in the family. It seems to work =
well.
One thing that I have noticed is that female students (nearly all =
college freshmen and sophomores) tend to be much more interested in this =
history than their male counterparts. Since I admittedly do not include =
much on the experiences of children, except as workers, I assume that is =
due to an identification with the experiences of adult women I discuss. =
After all, these young women are living in a society, as several =
contributors to this discussion have mentioned, where women as members =
of a family are often privileged over women as individuals. Why the =
male students are less interested, often to the point of apathy, I am =
not sure since I also discuss the history of men and manhood.
Mark Marianek, ABD
University of Missouri-Columbia
=20
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charset="iso-8859-1"
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I apologize for being a bit behind in =
the=20
discussion. I would like to share some thoughts regarding teaching =
family=20
in the US survey. I am relatively new to the classroom, being ABD, =
so my=20
experience is limited. However, I have noticed some interesting =
things in=20
my teaching of family that are related to issues discussed here so=20
far.
Teaching the US survey "to 1865", I =
have attempted=20
to seat the family within a social and cultural context. I draw =
heavily=20
upon Jeanne Boydston's _Home and Work_ to trace the changes in the =
family in the=20
early republic due to the "market revolution". Combined with=20
that one of the main themes of my course is the concepts of =
independence=20
and dependence--of the nation, the social group, and the =
individual--and=20
how they are defined at various points in time, I believe I have had =
some=20
success in conveying an understanding about family in the US past. =
With a=20
focus upon work, I also begin my discussion of gender roles by =
explaining the=20
historical "place" of men and women within the family, and then =
attempting to=20
show how gender conventions outside the family are extensions =
of those=20
ideal roles in the family. It seems to work well.
One thing that I have noticed is that =
female=20
students (nearly all college freshmen and sophomores) tend to =
be much=20
more interested in this history than their male counterparts. =
Since I=20
admittedly do not include much on the experiences of children, =
except as=20
workers, I assume that is due to an identification with the experiences=20
of adult women I discuss. After all, these young =
women are=20
living in a society, as several contributors to this discussion =
have=20
mentioned, where women as members of a family are often =
privileged=20
over women as individuals. Why the male students are less =
interested,=20
often to the point of apathy, I am not sure since I also discuss the =
history of=20
men and manhood.
Mark Marianek, ABD
University of =
Missouri-Columbia
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Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 12:56:19 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Norma Smith
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20020308090915.007d4e80@pop.nyu.edu>
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This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
"kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used
this definition as a base for my thinking about families) it defined
the role of the family (in/for society) as one of enculturation of
next generations into society. This is consistent with the notion of
"regulator," and takes it a step broader, I think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see
how the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only
children, though they are the target in this conception) to act in
support of the status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of
community good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have
pointed toward, families are not nuclear, but thinking about families
as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept as dogma or firm
reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't mean
the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay close
attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a
tight-knit ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California
just after WWII made me see how our move was on the front edge of
white flight.(My work centers on race/race relations/white
supremacy.) It was a move away from what my parents (children of
European immigrants) saw as restrictive family. I think this vision
of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we used to call WASP
and) booming capitalist culture. The view was supported by the
possibilities opening to first generation whites (my family's race
had been Jew in the old country), the products available to them-
houses and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
"independence"/isolation as good things. And their abandoning the
city contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on those
neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates
family ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family
-where it does change structurally- is a manifestation of changing
culture, in various directions. That would be a base for talking
both about "family values" as a rhetoric of repression and about the
welcome value of some of the changes in progressive directions/
changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our
teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history
change the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a
process of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and
putting it back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings
of the phenomena or trends being investigated. This method allows for
engaging the personal, including insights gathered through subjective
experience, and pushes toward applying what we learn there to
theorizing larger community, regional, national, and global history.
It means contemplating the relationships between ideology and
practice, and between, for example, the personal/family dimension and
larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring
those boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
>Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that I
>have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
>comments:
>
>Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I would
>like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
> It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
>knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system usually
>specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
>--reproduction and child-raising,
>--sexual activity,
>--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
>
>Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially in
>preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social organization.
>
>Other thoughts?
>
>best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
--============_-1196415065==_ma============
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Re: fam: as regulator
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
"kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now
that I've used this definition as a base for my thinking about
families) it defined the role of the family (in/for society) as one
of enculturation of next generations into society. This
is consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a
step broader, I think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can
see how the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only
children, though they are the target in this conception) to act in
support of the status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of
community good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have
pointed toward, families are not nuclear, but thinking about
families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept as dogma
or firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That
doesn't mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we
have to pay close attention when we think about it. It's a good
deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a
tight-knit ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California
just after WWII made me see how our move was on the front edge of
white flight.(My work centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.)
It was a move away from what my parents (children of European
immigrants) saw as restrictive family. I think this vision of theirs
was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we used to call WASP and)
booming capitalist culture. The view was supported by the
possibilities opening to first generation whites (my family's race had
been Jew in the old country), the products available to them- houses
and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
"independence"/isolation as good things. And their
abandoning the city contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics
on those neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses
what's more complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a
bad influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance
eliminates family ties, but rather I want to look at how the
changing family -where it does change structurally- is a manifestation
of changing culture, in various directions. That would be a base
for talking both about "family values" as a rhetoric of
repression and about the welcome value of some of the changes in
progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended) of
family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of
our teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history
change the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a
pedagogy, as well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory
analysis, a process of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by
phrase, and putting it back together in ways that elucidate the social
meanings of the phenomena or trends being investigated. This method
allows for engaging the personal, including insights gathered through
subjective experience, and pushes toward applying what we learn there
to theorizing larger community, regional, national, and global
history. It means contemplating the relationships between ideology and
practice, and between, for example, the personal/family dimension and
larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring
those boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked
me to throw out something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much
appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
would
like to suggest that family is better
understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all
human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular
regulations vary, the system usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect
to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but,
especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
--============_-1196415065==_ma============--
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 17:07:54 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Cathy Stephenson
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="part1_4d.1a70ebf9.29bbe1ba_boundary"
--part1_4d.1a70ebf9.29bbe1ba_boundary
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Greetings,
I just wanted to see if all of the scholars out there who offer teaching
about family are touching base at all on the understanding of patriarchal
since this is very prevalent to the families I grew up around. While reading
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett she writes that the first formulation of the
patriarchal family was made by Sir Henry Maine in the nineteenth century. He
offers that the patriarchal basis of kinship is to dominate not in
bloodlines. It seems to me that a wonderful place to start teaching about
family would to begin with who, what, where, when, and how did patriarchy
come to be our order and how this has established the family.
I also wanted to share that I discovered American Memory is now offering on
line a history of a family from 1862-1912 that offers letters that were
written by husband and wife through their struggles to homestead in Nebraska
called Prairie Settlement. This may be of value of presenting a history of
what a family was like and the differences today as well as the alikeness to
their experiences. The URL is http://memory.loc.gov/ammen/ammenhome.html, if
believe.
Is anyone teaching about patriarchy?
With Respect,
Cathy
Union Carpenter
--part1_4d.1a70ebf9.29bbe1ba_boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Greetings,
I just wanted to see if all of the scholars out there who offer teaching about family are touching base at all on the understanding of patriarchal since this is very prevalent to the families I grew up around. While reading Sexual Politics by Kate Millett she writes that the first formulation of the patriarchal family was made by Sir Henry Maine in the nineteenth century. He offers that the patriarchal basis of kinship is to dominate not in bloodlines. It seems to me that a wonderful place to start teaching about family would to begin with who, what, where, when, and how did patriarchy come to be our order and how this has established the family.
I also wanted to share that I discovered American Memory is now offering on line a history of a family from 1862-1912 that offers letters that were written by husband and wife through their struggles to homestead in Nebraska called Prairie Settlement. This may be of value of presenting a history of what a family was like and the differences today as well as the alikeness to their experiences. The URL is http://memory.loc.gov/ammen/ammenhome.html, if believe.
Is anyone teaching about patriarchy?
With Respect,
Cathy
Union Carpenter
--part1_4d.1a70ebf9.29bbe1ba_boundary--
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:54:18 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii"
If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I
would think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it.
And for any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be
socialized to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all
families act in support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised
children who challenge the status quo in many ways, no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own
family's move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many
Americans, "success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing
individualism over responsibility to family. An old classic about
family, Carol Stack's "All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive
kinship among poor African Americans, is eloquent in showing how that
forced choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were
riddled with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those
conflicts, we'd have no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
"kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this
definition as a base for my thinking about families) it defined the role
of the family (in/for society) as one of
enculturation of next generations into society. This is
consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how
the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children,
though they are the target in this conception) to act in support of
the status quo .
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of community
good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward,
families are not nuclear, but thinking about
families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept as dogma or
firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't
mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction
site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive
family. I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S.
(what we used to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was
supported by the possibilities opening to first generation whites (my
family's race had been Jew in the old country), the products available to
them- houses and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
"independence"/isolation as good things. And their abandoning the city
contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on those
neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance
eliminates family ties, but rather I want to look at how the
changing family -where it does change structurally- is a manifestation of
changing culture, in various directions. That would be a base for
talking both about "family values" as a rhetoric of repression and about
the welcome value of some of the changes in progressive directions/
changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status
quo of our teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can
teaching history change the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process
of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it
back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena
or trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the
personal, including insights gathered through subjective experience, and
pushes toward applying what we learn there to theorizing larger
community, regional, national, and global history. It means contemplating
the relationships between ideology and practice, and between, for
example, the personal/family dimension and larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out
something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much
appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of
regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system
usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially
in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:45:22 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Pete and others,
I'm finding myself fascinated by this discussion in which I am defending
women's power while others prefer to emphasize victimization. But if women
have no power, then there is no way to explain how male dominance has ever
been altered ...
I don't think you're right that, as you say below, women's "participation
was permitted ... as an extension of the domestic sphere" or that women
were "allowed to participate in certain kinds of Progressive reforms."
Women fought their way into reform, defined for themselves a sphere of
activism, and provoked thereby lots of opposition.
I hope you see that I'm not at all minimizing the degree of women's
oppression (although that degree varied hugely along class and race lines).
Rather I'm just calling attention to the fact that changes came about not
because conservatives reached enlightenment but because women resisted.
To bring this up into the present as you did, I think Hillary Clinton is an
excellent example. It's hard to grasp how much she is vilified in the more
conservative parts of this country--the slander heaped on her is literally
stunning. And I was, as you probably were, dismayed to see how she had to
try to re-package herself as a chocolate-chip-cookie baker to try to help
her husband get elected. But also look at what she got away with and
achieved: a first lady who is a lawyer, who survived leading a disastrous
campaign to bring us medical insurance, who is now a Senator.
best, Linda
At 05:26 PM 03/07/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear Linda: Thanks for that eloquent and insightful response. One of the
>ways that I address gender/family issues in my American survey course is by
>looking at female progressives such as Jane Addams. While I agree with your
>point that women made numerous important contributions in terms of reform
>during the Progressive Era, I always point out that their participation was
>permitted as long as it was seen as an extension of the domestic sphere.
>Cleaning up cities, running settlement houses were all seen as activities
>that were "suited" to women. The bottom line is that women were allowed or
>co-opted into careers that many men saw as undesirable and non-masculine.
>The Cults of True Womanhood and Domesticity are perfect examples (as far as
>I'm concerned) of how Progressive women were controlled by a male dominated
>society. That is why I find it difficult to put much credence in the notion
>that women were somehow being respected by being allowed to participate in
>certain kinds of Progressive Reforms.
>
>Now I realize that I could perhaps be accused of reductionism. However,
>consider this. One of the activities that I use is to ask students to
>consider: Have gender roles changed since the Gilded Age/Progressive Era? At
>first, most overwhelmingly say yes. They point out that women today have a
>number of different career options that most people would not have
>considered during this period. There are women pilots, judges, astronauts,
>doctors, etc. I then show them two recent magazine covers. One is from U.S.
>News & World Report from August, 2001. On the cover is Colonel Rhonda Corum
>of the U.S. Army. The magazine article went on to recount her tremendous
>accomplishments. Decorated combat veteran in Desert Storm, Battalion
>Commander in Kosovo, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornel. Most students see
>this and say "see, women have come a long way and are no longer thought of
>or pressured to be domestics". Two months later, October 2001, the cover of
>US Magazine featured First Lady Laura Bush and the title "Laura Bush:
>Comforter-In-Chief". Now I admit that US Magazine is hardly a reputable
>academic source. However, the fact remains that women are still pigeonholed
>into professions (elementary school teachers, secretaries, receptionists,
>dental assistants, day care providers) which are seen as an extension of the
>domestic sphere. Finally, I use the example of Hillary Clinton vs. Laura
>Bush. Why are the adjectives "bitch", "icy", "pushy", "know-it-all" used to
>describe Hillary but "sweet", "kind", "caring" used to describe Laura Bush?
>I would maintain that there is still a deep seeded ambivalence/discomfort in
>this county about what roles or professions women should be able to have.
>
>Forgive me for the long response but I would be interested to hear what you
>think of how I present this issue or conversely, any new ideas on how to
>discuss this. Sincerely, Pete Haro.
>----------
>>From: Linda Gordon
>>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>Subject: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>>Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2002, 6:25 AM
>>
>
>> The way I see this is influenced by the fact that I came to family history
>> through studying women and gender. That field was for a while dominated by
>> a perspective that only saw women's victimization and oppression, with
>> resultant biases: seeing men's and women's interests as always opposed;
>> assuming that men always won in power struggles with women; neglecting
>> areas in which women exerted power despite their legal, economic, physical
>> disadvantages. Although I have no quarrel with those who want to point out
>> male domination in most if not all societies, domination does not mean, and
>> has never meant, absolute power. Even in the most patriarchal societies,
>> women have been able to affect their conditions.
>>
>> Concretely: In the US in the 19th century, for example, women made several
>> achievements that offset male power in the family. The most important was
>> ending the traditional legal assumption that children belonged to their
>> father in case of marital separation, divorce, or death. Women's custody
>> of children was extremely important not only for children but for
>> women. Since women would almost never agree to give up their children,
>> many women therefore would not leave even an extremely abusive man for fear
>> of losing their children. Women also created a sea-change in attitudes
>> about domestic violence. By the end of the 19th century in the US,
>> appellate courts usually rejected the claim that marriage gave husbands a
>> right to "chastise" their wives. Of course, violence continued, but the
>> first condition for the campaign against it--getting rid of the assumption
>> that it was legal and honorable--had been created.
>>
>> Women were the leading advocates in numerous other reforms that changed
>> families: compulsory education; health and safety regulation in housing;
>> foster care; mothers' pensions and later what we called "welfare;" etc.
>>
>> I'd like to hear from others about this because these issues lead to a
>> central teaching issue: how to examine families both as having collective
>> interests and as battlegrounds for competing interests.
>>
>> best, Linda Gordon
>>
>> At 08:35 PM 03/04/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have
historically
>>>had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
>>>Pete Haro.
>>>
>>>----------
>>> >From: Linda Gordon
>>> >To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>> >Subject: families in transnational perspective
>>> >Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
>>> >
>>>
>>> > Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
>>> > I will have to disagree about some matters.
>>> >
>>> > First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
>>> > what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
>>> > widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
>>> > Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
>>> > family households actually have extensive and intensive active
>>> > networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
>>> > live very close to other family members and see other family members
>>> > daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>>> >
>>> > Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
>>> > disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
>>> > radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
>>> > But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
>>> > influence on how families are structured.
>>> >
>>> > But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
>>> > global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
>>> > historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
>>> > societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
>>> > Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
>>> > book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
>>> > Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
>>> > small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
>>> > California. And since I was recently doing research about
>>> > transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
>>> > (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries,
with
>>> > attendant conflicts in family values.
>>> >
>>> > Other thoughts about these issues?
>>> >
>>> > best,
>>> >
>>> > Linda Gordon
>>> >
>>> > This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>> > http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
History.
>>>
>>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>> Linda Gordon
>> Professor of History
>> New York University
>> 53 Washington Square South
>> NYC, NY 10012
>> tel 212-998-8627
>> fax 212-995-4017
>> email Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
>>
>> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:42:26 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20020311215418.007e4220@pop.nyu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Linda: I've read that paragraph about Carol Stack's ALL OUR KIN several
times, yet I can't quite figure out your meaning. The phrase "forced
choice" trips me up. Could you elucidate? Joe Illick
On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Linda Gordon wrote:
> If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I
> would think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it.
> And for any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be
> socialized to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all
> families act in support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised
> children who challenge the status quo in many ways, no?
>
>
> I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own
> family's move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many
> Americans, "success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing
> individualism over responsibility to family. An old classic about
> family, Carol Stack's "All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive
> kinship among poor African Americans, is eloquent in showing how that
> forced choice works.
>
>
> But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
> that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
> cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were
> riddled with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those
> conflicts, we'd have no Shakespeare!)
>
>
> I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
> manifestation of changing culture.
>
>
> best, Linda
>
>
>
>
> At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >>>>
>
> This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
> anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
> "kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this
> definition as a base for my thinking about families) it defined the role
> of the family (in/for society) as one of
> enculturation of next generations into society. This is
> consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
> think.
>
>
> Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how
> the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children,
> though they are the target in this conception) to act in support of
> the status quo .
>
>
> It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
> parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
> hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of community
> good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward,
> families are not nuclear, but thinking about
> families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept as dogma or
> firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't
> mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
> close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction
> site.
>
>
> [Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
> ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
> made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
> centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
> what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive
> family. I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S.
> (what we used to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was
> supported by the possibilities opening to first generation whites (my
> family's race had been Jew in the old country), the products available to
> them- houses and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
> "independence"/isolation as good things. And their abandoning the city
> contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on those
> neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
> complicated.]
>
>
> I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
> influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance
> eliminates family ties, but rather I want to look at how the
> changing family -where it does change structurally- is a manifestation of
> changing culture, in various directions. That would be a base for
> talking both about "family values" as a rhetoric of repression and about
> the welcome value of some of the changes in progressive directions/
> changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
>
>
> What are the effects for maintenance of the status
> quo of our teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can
> teaching history change the future?
>
>
> ---------
>
> also-
>
> I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
> well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process
> of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it
> back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena
> or trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the
> personal, including insights gathered through subjective experience, and
> pushes toward applying what we learn there to theorizing larger
> community, regional, national, and global history. It means contemplating
> the relationships between ideology and practice, and between, for
> example, the personal/family dimension and larger history.
>
>
> and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
> boundaries.
>
>
> Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Norma
>
>
> Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out
> something that I
>
> have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much
> appreciate
>
> comments:
>
>
> Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
> would
>
> like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of
> regulation.
>
> It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
>
> knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system
> usually
>
> specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
>
> --reproduction and child-raising,
>
> --sexual activity,
>
> --interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
>
>
> Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially
> in
>
> preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
> organization.
>
>
> Other thoughts?
>
> best, Linda
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Norma Smith
>
> 5337 College Ave #424
>
> Oakland, CA 94618
>
> 510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
>
>
> <<<<<<<<
>
>
>
>
> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
>
> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
>
> NYU
>
> 53 Washington Square South
>
> New York, NY 10012
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 22:52:36 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Pete Haro
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
Dear Linda: Could you suggest any sources which give the interpretation of
women as empowered during the Progressive Era? Sincerely, Pete Haro.
----------
>From: Linda Gordon
>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>Date: Mon, Mar 11, 2002, 6:45 PM
>
> Dear Pete and others,
>
> I'm finding myself fascinated by this discussion in which I am defending
> women's power while others prefer to emphasize victimization. But if women
> have no power, then there is no way to explain how male dominance has ever
> been altered ...
>
> I don't think you're right that, as you say below, women's "participation
> was permitted ... as an extension of the domestic sphere" or that women
> were "allowed to participate in certain kinds of Progressive reforms."
> Women fought their way into reform, defined for themselves a sphere of
> activism, and provoked thereby lots of opposition.
>
> I hope you see that I'm not at all minimizing the degree of women's
> oppression (although that degree varied hugely along class and race lines).
> Rather I'm just calling attention to the fact that changes came about not
> because conservatives reached enlightenment but because women resisted.
>
> To bring this up into the present as you did, I think Hillary Clinton is an
> excellent example. It's hard to grasp how much she is vilified in the more
> conservative parts of this country--the slander heaped on her is literally
> stunning. And I was, as you probably were, dismayed to see how she had to
> try to re-package herself as a chocolate-chip-cookie baker to try to help
> her husband get elected. But also look at what she got away with and
> achieved: a first lady who is a lawyer, who survived leading a disastrous
> campaign to bring us medical insurance, who is now a Senator.
>
> best, Linda
>
>
>
> At 05:26 PM 03/07/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>Dear Linda: Thanks for that eloquent and insightful response. One of the
>>ways that I address gender/family issues in my American survey course is by
>>looking at female progressives such as Jane Addams. While I agree with your
>>point that women made numerous important contributions in terms of reform
>>during the Progressive Era, I always point out that their participation was
>>permitted as long as it was seen as an extension of the domestic sphere.
>>Cleaning up cities, running settlement houses were all seen as activities
>>that were "suited" to women. The bottom line is that women were allowed or
>>co-opted into careers that many men saw as undesirable and non-masculine.
>>The Cults of True Womanhood and Domesticity are perfect examples (as far as
>>I'm concerned) of how Progressive women were controlled by a male dominated
>>society. That is why I find it difficult to put much credence in the notion
>>that women were somehow being respected by being allowed to participate in
>>certain kinds of Progressive Reforms.
>>
>>Now I realize that I could perhaps be accused of reductionism. However,
>>consider this. One of the activities that I use is to ask students to
>>consider: Have gender roles changed since the Gilded Age/Progressive Era? At
>>first, most overwhelmingly say yes. They point out that women today have a
>>number of different career options that most people would not have
>>considered during this period. There are women pilots, judges, astronauts,
>>doctors, etc. I then show them two recent magazine covers. One is from U.S.
>>News & World Report from August, 2001. On the cover is Colonel Rhonda Corum
>>of the U.S. Army. The magazine article went on to recount her tremendous
>>accomplishments. Decorated combat veteran in Desert Storm, Battalion
>>Commander in Kosovo, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornel. Most students see
>>this and say "see, women have come a long way and are no longer thought of
>>or pressured to be domestics". Two months later, October 2001, the cover of
>>US Magazine featured First Lady Laura Bush and the title "Laura Bush:
>>Comforter-In-Chief". Now I admit that US Magazine is hardly a reputable
>>academic source. However, the fact remains that women are still pigeonholed
>>into professions (elementary school teachers, secretaries, receptionists,
>>dental assistants, day care providers) which are seen as an extension of the
>>domestic sphere. Finally, I use the example of Hillary Clinton vs. Laura
>>Bush. Why are the adjectives "bitch", "icy", "pushy", "know-it-all" used to
>>describe Hillary but "sweet", "kind", "caring" used to describe Laura Bush?
>>I would maintain that there is still a deep seeded ambivalence/discomfort in
>>this county about what roles or professions women should be able to have.
>>
>>Forgive me for the long response but I would be interested to hear what you
>>think of how I present this issue or conversely, any new ideas on how to
>>discuss this. Sincerely, Pete Haro.
>>----------
>>>From: Linda Gordon
>>>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>>Subject: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>>>Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2002, 6:25 AM
>>>
>>
>>> The way I see this is influenced by the fact that I came to family history
>>> through studying women and gender. That field was for a while dominated by
>>> a perspective that only saw women's victimization and oppression, with
>>> resultant biases: seeing men's and women's interests as always opposed;
>>> assuming that men always won in power struggles with women; neglecting
>>> areas in which women exerted power despite their legal, economic, physical
>>> disadvantages. Although I have no quarrel with those who want to point out
>>> male domination in most if not all societies, domination does not mean, and
>>> has never meant, absolute power. Even in the most patriarchal societies,
>>> women have been able to affect their conditions.
>>>
>>> Concretely: In the US in the 19th century, for example, women made several
>>> achievements that offset male power in the family. The most important was
>>> ending the traditional legal assumption that children belonged to their
>>> father in case of marital separation, divorce, or death. Women's custody
>>> of children was extremely important not only for children but for
>>> women. Since women would almost never agree to give up their children,
>>> many women therefore would not leave even an extremely abusive man for fear
>>> of losing their children. Women also created a sea-change in attitudes
>>> about domestic violence. By the end of the 19th century in the US,
>>> appellate courts usually rejected the claim that marriage gave husbands a
>>> right to "chastise" their wives. Of course, violence continued, but the
>>> first condition for the campaign against it--getting rid of the assumption
>>> that it was legal and honorable--had been created.
>>>
>>> Women were the leading advocates in numerous other reforms that changed
>>> families: compulsory education; health and safety regulation in housing;
>>> foster care; mothers' pensions and later what we called "welfare;" etc.
>>>
>>> I'd like to hear from others about this because these issues lead to a
>>> central teaching issue: how to examine families both as having collective
>>> interests and as battlegrounds for competing interests.
>>>
>>> best, Linda Gordon
>>>
>>> At 08:35 PM 03/04/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have
> historically
>>>>had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
>>>>Pete Haro.
>>>>
>>>>----------
>>>> >From: Linda Gordon
>>>> >To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>>> >Subject: families in transnational perspective
>>>> >Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> > Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
>>>> > I will have to disagree about some matters.
>>>> >
>>>> > First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you mean
>>>> > what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
>>>> > widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
>>>> > Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
>>>> > family households actually have extensive and intensive active
>>>> > networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today still
>>>> > live very close to other family members and see other family members
>>>> > daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>>>> >
>>>> > Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
>>>> > disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
>>>> > radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men haven't.
>>>> > But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
>>>> > influence on how families are structured.
>>>> >
>>>> > But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
>>>> > global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
>>>> > historian, I usually start my family course with some material about the
>>>> > societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
>>>> > Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
>>>> > book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
>>>> > Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
>>>> > small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in emigrating to
>>>> > California. And since I was recently doing research about
>>>> > transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
>>>> > (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries,
> with
>>>> > attendant conflicts in family values.
>>>> >
>>>> > Other thoughts about these issues?
>>>> >
>>>> > best,
>>>> >
>>>> > Linda Gordon
>>>> >
>>>> > This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>> > http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
> History.
>>>>
>>>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>>
>>> Linda Gordon
>>> Professor of History
>>> New York University
>>> 53 Washington Square South
>>> NYC, NY 10012
>>> tel 212-998-8627
>>> fax 212-995-4017
>>> email Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
>>>
>>> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
> NYU
> 53 Washington Square South
> New York, NY 10012
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 10:48:15 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: fam: children
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Several comments have spurred me to some musings about children in family
history. There is some key social-psychology scholarship (eg David
Riesman) suggesting how important child-raising is in forming cultural and
social patterns. Yet it is extremely difficult to get historical
information about how children were actually raised (in contrast to what
the prescriptive sources--how-to book, sermons, etc.--tell us about how
they should be raised) because children don't leave good historical records.
I tried to compensate for this lack a bit in my book on the history of
family violence, because the case records I used actually had occasional
evidence about children's own agency. This was particularly the case
because child abuse often arose from parents' anger that children were not
doing their assigned family labor, and the children's refusal to work was
sometimes documentable. Today abuse is less likely to arise from disputes
about work.
But it is hard to find good teaching material here. Does anyone have
suggestions? When I have assigned descriptions of child-raising in more
patriarchal societies, the material often seems harsh to my students who
can't place it in an historical perspective.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 10:36:28 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Kriste Lindenmeyer
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20020311214522.007e3550@pop.nyu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Thank you for a very interesting discussion.
One of my favorite books is Linda Gordon's _Heroes of Their Own Lives_.
Being a policy wonk helps--but I also like it because it was one of the
first serious studies showing women and children using the system (both
within and outside their families) to better their lives. I'm sure Dr.
Gordon can say it better. Even the women and children who were targets
of social welfare had some agency. Overlooking this power, however
limited, victimizes these important historical players.
Kris
Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer
Dept. of History
UMBC
410-455-6521
410-455-1045 (fax)
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 11:07:28 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: fam: women's influence,
response to Haro's requests for bibliography
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sure.
Robyn Muncy, "Building a Female Dominion"
Linda Gordon, "Pitied but Not Entitled: single Mothers and the History of
Welfare"
in my anthology, "Women, the State and Welfare," the introduction and
article by Baker
Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere:
African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,"
Public Culture #7, 1994.
Nan Enstad--can't think of the title but she has only written one book
relevant sections of Nancy Cott, "The Grounding of Modern Feminism"
Barbara Welke, "When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks were Men:
Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855-1914," Law and History
Review fall 1995.
Annelise Orleck, "Common Sense and a Little Fire;" Susan Ware, "Partner and
I;" Lela Costin, "Two Sisters for Social Justice;" Elizabeth Perry, "Belle
Moskowitz." [a few of numerous excellent biographies]
At 10:52 PM 03/11/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear Linda: Could you suggest any sources which give the interpretation of
>women as empowered during the Progressive Era? Sincerely, Pete Haro.
>
>----------
>>From: Linda Gordon
>>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>Subject: Re: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>>Date: Mon, Mar 11, 2002, 6:45 PM
>>
>
>> Dear Pete and others,
>>
>> I'm finding myself fascinated by this discussion in which I am defending
>> women's power while others prefer to emphasize victimization. But if women
>> have no power, then there is no way to explain how male dominance has ever
>> been altered ...
>>
>> I don't think you're right that, as you say below, women's "participation
>> was permitted ... as an extension of the domestic sphere" or that women
>> were "allowed to participate in certain kinds of Progressive reforms."
>> Women fought their way into reform, defined for themselves a sphere of
>> activism, and provoked thereby lots of opposition.
>>
>> I hope you see that I'm not at all minimizing the degree of women's
>> oppression (although that degree varied hugely along class and race lines).
>> Rather I'm just calling attention to the fact that changes came about not
>> because conservatives reached enlightenment but because women resisted.
>>
>> To bring this up into the present as you did, I think Hillary Clinton is an
>> excellent example. It's hard to grasp how much she is vilified in the more
>> conservative parts of this country--the slander heaped on her is literally
>> stunning. And I was, as you probably were, dismayed to see how she had to
>> try to re-package herself as a chocolate-chip-cookie baker to try to help
>> her husband get elected. But also look at what she got away with and
>> achieved: a first lady who is a lawyer, who survived leading a disastrous
>> campaign to bring us medical insurance, who is now a Senator.
>>
>> best, Linda
>>
>>
>>
>> At 05:26 PM 03/07/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>Dear Linda: Thanks for that eloquent and insightful response. One of the
>>>ways that I address gender/family issues in my American survey course is by
>>>looking at female progressives such as Jane Addams. While I agree with your
>>>point that women made numerous important contributions in terms of reform
>>>during the Progressive Era, I always point out that their participation was
>>>permitted as long as it was seen as an extension of the domestic sphere.
>>>Cleaning up cities, running settlement houses were all seen as activities
>>>that were "suited" to women. The bottom line is that women were allowed or
>>>co-opted into careers that many men saw as undesirable and non-masculine.
>>>The Cults of True Womanhood and Domesticity are perfect examples (as far as
>>>I'm concerned) of how Progressive women were controlled by a male dominated
>>>society. That is why I find it difficult to put much credence in the notion
>>>that women were somehow being respected by being allowed to participate in
>>>certain kinds of Progressive Reforms.
>>>
>>>Now I realize that I could perhaps be accused of reductionism. However,
>>>consider this. One of the activities that I use is to ask students to
>>>consider: Have gender roles changed since the Gilded Age/Progressive
Era? At
>>>first, most overwhelmingly say yes. They point out that women today have a
>>>number of different career options that most people would not have
>>>considered during this period. There are women pilots, judges, astronauts,
>>>doctors, etc. I then show them two recent magazine covers. One is from U.S.
>>>News & World Report from August, 2001. On the cover is Colonel Rhonda Corum
>>>of the U.S. Army. The magazine article went on to recount her tremendous
>>>accomplishments. Decorated combat veteran in Desert Storm, Battalion
>>>Commander in Kosovo, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornel. Most students see
>>>this and say "see, women have come a long way and are no longer thought of
>>>or pressured to be domestics". Two months later, October 2001, the cover of
>>>US Magazine featured First Lady Laura Bush and the title "Laura Bush:
>>>Comforter-In-Chief". Now I admit that US Magazine is hardly a reputable
>>>academic source. However, the fact remains that women are still pigeonholed
>>>into professions (elementary school teachers, secretaries, receptionists,
>>>dental assistants, day care providers) which are seen as an extension of
the
>>>domestic sphere. Finally, I use the example of Hillary Clinton vs. Laura
>>>Bush. Why are the adjectives "bitch", "icy", "pushy", "know-it-all" used to
>>>describe Hillary but "sweet", "kind", "caring" used to describe Laura Bush?
>>>I would maintain that there is still a deep seeded
ambivalence/discomfort in
>>>this county about what roles or professions women should be able to have.
>>>
>>>Forgive me for the long response but I would be interested to hear what you
>>>think of how I present this issue or conversely, any new ideas on how to
>>>discuss this. Sincerely, Pete Haro.
>>>----------
>>>>From: Linda Gordon
>>>>To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>>>Subject: fam: women's influence, response to Haro
>>>>Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2002, 6:25 AM
>>>>
>>>
>>>> The way I see this is influenced by the fact that I came to family
history
>>>> through studying women and gender. That field was for a while
dominated by
>>>> a perspective that only saw women's victimization and oppression, with
>>>> resultant biases: seeing men's and women's interests as always opposed;
>>>> assuming that men always won in power struggles with women; neglecting
>>>> areas in which women exerted power despite their legal, economic,
physical
>>>> disadvantages. Although I have no quarrel with those who want to
point out
>>>> male domination in most if not all societies, domination does not
mean, and
>>>> has never meant, absolute power. Even in the most patriarchal societies,
>>>> women have been able to affect their conditions.
>>>>
>>>> Concretely: In the US in the 19th century, for example, women made
several
>>>> achievements that offset male power in the family. The most important
was
>>>> ending the traditional legal assumption that children belonged to their
>>>> father in case of marital separation, divorce, or death. Women's custody
>>>> of children was extremely important not only for children but for
>>>> women. Since women would almost never agree to give up their children,
>>>> many women therefore would not leave even an extremely abusive man for
fear
>>>> of losing their children. Women also created a sea-change in attitudes
>>>> about domestic violence. By the end of the 19th century in the US,
>>>> appellate courts usually rejected the claim that marriage gave husbands a
>>>> right to "chastise" their wives. Of course, violence continued, but the
>>>> first condition for the campaign against it--getting rid of the
assumption
>>>> that it was legal and honorable--had been created.
>>>>
>>>> Women were the leading advocates in numerous other reforms that changed
>>>> families: compulsory education; health and safety regulation in housing;
>>>> foster care; mothers' pensions and later what we called "welfare;" etc.
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to hear from others about this because these issues lead to a
>>>> central teaching issue: how to examine families both as having collective
>>>> interests and as battlegrounds for competing interests.
>>>>
>>>> best, Linda Gordon
>>>>
>>>> At 08:35 PM 03/04/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>>Dear Linda: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "women have
>> historically
>>>>>had a great deal of influence on how families are structured"? Sincerely,
>>>>>Pete Haro.
>>>>>
>>>>>----------
>>>>> >From: Linda Gordon
>>>>> >To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>>>> >Subject: families in transnational perspective
>>>>> >Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002, 5:48 PM
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> > Thanks to Cathy Stephenson for a passionate contribution. But I think
>>>>> > I will have to disagree about some matters.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > First, the pattern you call "private family" --by which I think you
mean
>>>>> > what family scholars call the nuclear family--is actually quite
>>>>> > widespread throughout the world and is by no means an exclusively
>>>>> > Euro-American invention. In addition, many people who live in nuclear
>>>>> > family households actually have extensive and intensive active
>>>>> > networks of extended family. Many nuclear families in the US today
still
>>>>> > live very close to other family members and see other family members
>>>>> > daily. Huge proportions of parents rely on relatives for child care.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Second, it's certainly true, as you say, that women do a wildly
>>>>> > disproportionate share of domestic labor. Some men have changed
>>>>> > radically in this regard but unfortunately the majority of men
haven't.
>>>>> > But it's also true that women have historically had a great deal of
>>>>> > influence on how families are structured.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > But you are absolutely right that we should be trying to introduce a
>>>>> > global perspective into what we teach. Since I'm a 20th century
>>>>> > historian, I usually start my family course with some material
about the
>>>>> > societies from which most Americans came, e.g., the middle east,
>>>>> > Mexico, Africa, as well as northern, southern and eastern Europe. One
>>>>> > book I've used with success is Ernesto Galarza's memoir, "Barrio
>>>>> > Boy," because it is a highly readable account of his childhood in a
>>>>> > small, traditional Mexican village and his experiences in
emigrating to
>>>>> > California. And since I was recently doing research about
>>>>> > transnational migrant workers, I emphasize how common was
>>>>> > (and is) the experience of having family in two different countries,
>> with
>>>>> > attendant conflicts in family values.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Other thoughts about these issues?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > best,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Linda Gordon
>>>>> >
>>>>> > This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web
site at
>>>>> > http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
>> History.
>>>>>
>>>>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>>>http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
History.
>>>>
>>>> Linda Gordon
>>>> Professor of History
>>>> New York University
>>>> 53 Washington Square South
>>>> NYC, NY 10012
>>>> tel 212-998-8627
>>>> fax 212-995-4017
>>>> email Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
>>>>
>>>> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>>>> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
History.
>>>
>>>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>>
>> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
>> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
>> NYU
>> 53 Washington Square South
>> New York, NY 10012
>>
>> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
>> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 10:57:12 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thanks to Joe Illick for noticing my incoherence!
By forced choice I was referring to the tension between looking out for
oneself and responsibilities to family or community. Sometime the choice
was forced by the state. For example, welfare policy prohibited recipients
from using money to help extended family--so paying the medical bills of
your aged mother was not allowed--and the penalty for doing so was being
cut off of welfare. Welfare policy also prohibited living in extended
family households--so, for example, it was forbidden to bring your sister
and her kids into your home when her husband beat her up.
But the choice is also structured by our economy and culture without direct
state regulation. How, for example, does a poor teenage save for college
if s/he also feels guilty about not using her/his earnings to help needy
family members?
is that clearer? thanks, Linda
At 09:42 PM 03/11/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Linda: I've read that paragraph about Carol Stack's ALL OUR KIN several
>times, yet I can't quite figure out your meaning. The phrase "forced
>choice" trips me up. Could you elucidate? Joe Illick
>
>On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Linda Gordon wrote:
>
>> If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I
>> would think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it.
>> And for any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be
>> socialized to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all
>> families act in support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised
>> children who challenge the status quo in many ways, no?
>>
>>
>> I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own
>> family's move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many
>> Americans, "success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing
>> individualism over responsibility to family. An old classic about
>> family, Carol Stack's "All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive
>> kinship among poor African Americans, is eloquent in showing how that
>> forced choice works.
>>
>>
>> But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
>> that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
>> cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were
>> riddled with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those
>> conflicts, we'd have no Shakespeare!)
>>
>>
>> I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
>> manifestation of changing culture.
>>
>>
>> best, Linda
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>
>> >>>>
>>
>> This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
>> anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
>> "kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this
>> definition as a base for my thinking about families) it defined the role
>> of the family (in/for society) as one of
>> enculturation of next generations into society. This is
>> consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
>> think.
>>
>>
>> Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how
>> the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children,
>> though they are the target in this conception) to act in support of
>> the status quo .
>>
>>
>> It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
>> parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
>> hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of community
>> good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward,
>> families are not nuclear, but thinking about
>> families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept as dogma or
>> firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't
>> mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
>> close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction
>> site.
>>
>>
>> [Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
>> ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
>> made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
>> centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
>> what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive
>> family. I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S.
>> (what we used to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was
>> supported by the possibilities opening to first generation whites (my
>> family's race had been Jew in the old country), the products available to
>> them- houses and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
>> "independence"/isolation as good things. And their abandoning the city
>> contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on those
>> neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
>> complicated.]
>>
>>
>> I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
>> influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance
>> eliminates family ties, but rather I want to look at how the
>> changing family -where it does change structurally- is a manifestation of
>> changing culture, in various directions. That would be a base for
>> talking both about "family values" as a rhetoric of repression and about
>> the welcome value of some of the changes in progressive directions/
>> changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
>>
>>
>> What are the effects for maintenance of the status
>> quo of our teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can
>> teaching history change the future?
>>
>>
>> ---------
>>
>> also-
>>
>> I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
>> well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process
>> of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it
>> back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena
>> or trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the
>> personal, including insights gathered through subjective experience, and
>> pushes toward applying what we learn there to theorizing larger
>> community, regional, national, and global history. It means contemplating
>> the relationships between ideology and practice, and between, for
>> example, the personal/family dimension and larger history.
>>
>>
>> and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
>> boundaries.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>>
>> Norma
>>
>>
>> Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out
>> something that I
>>
>> have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much
>> appreciate
>>
>> comments:
>>
>>
>> Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
>> would
>>
>> like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of
>> regulation.
>>
>> It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
>>
>> knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system
>> usually
>>
>> specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
>>
>> --reproduction and child-raising,
>>
>> --sexual activity,
>>
>> --interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
>>
>>
>> Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially
>> in
>>
>> preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
>> organization.
>>
>>
>> Other thoughts?
>>
>> best, Linda
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Norma Smith
>>
>> 5337 College Ave #424
>>
>> Oakland, CA 94618
>>
>> 510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
>>
>>
>> <<<<<<<<
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
>>
>> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
>>
>> NYU
>>
>> 53 Washington Square South
>>
>> New York, NY 10012
>>
>> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>>
>
>This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:01:47 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Mona Gleason
Subject: Families: Children
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Hello All,
Thanks Linda for focussing in on a really difficult methodological and
teaching problem for those of us who focus on the history of childhood. I
have used the work of Neil Sutherland in our Canadian context in an effort
to try to pinpoint the problem of sources regarding children's experiences
in the past. Sutherland uses oral histories to try to "get at" the culture
of childhood, particularly early in the 20th century. This is far from
perfect (what sources are perfect?) as Sutherland himself eloquently
discusses, but it has at least three positive effects for teaching:
1. gets students thinking about and actively criticizing notions of "good"
historical sources
2. gets students thinking about their own memories of childhood - do they
coincide with Sutherland's informants? are they different, etc...?
3. sparks really interesting discussions about the very nature of history -
is it a story? is it more about the present than the past? is the past
something we "create" rather than "report"?
In addition to struggling with the need for useful and imaginative sources
for the history of childhood and children, I am increasingly troubled by
the need to seek out evidences of children's "agency" in the past,
particularly in situations in which they are treated badly, in danger,
abused, etc... What does it mean to look for evidence of agency or
"resistance?" This may be a bit heretical, but what does the search for
children's resistance in the face of their victimization do for us? Does it
help make a difficult and painful past more easy to take? What if we don't
find resistance or agency.....? Should historians of children and childhood
and the family more actively problematize this search for "resistance and
agency?" My own struggles stem from my current research on the history of
children's medical treatment in Canada from 1850 to 1950. I desperately
want the children I study to "be alright"....if they are not - as often was
the case - upon whom is the onus put to challenge incredibly powerful
forces acting upon their little bodies? These are not easy questions to
answer - I think those of us who study and family and children in the past
come up uncomfortably against this protocol to find agency often......
thank you for an excellent forum,
Mona Gleason
_______________________________________
Mona Gleason, Ph.D
Assistant Professor, History of Education
Department of Educational Studies
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z4
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 17:54:29 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
Subject: Re: fam: children
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20020312104815.007e47e0@pop.nyu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Dear Linda et al.: In June the University of Pennsylvania Press will
publish my book, AMERICAN CHILDHOODS, a cross-cultural history since the
17th century. It begins with a consideration of native American Indian,
Eoropean American, and African American childhoods, then moves on to urban
middle class and working class childhoods in the 19th century, and
concludes with suburban and inner city/rural childhoods in the 20th
century. I'm happy to see your mention of David Riesman, since his
thinking in THE LONELY CROWD influenced me. I attempt to approach the
subject sociologically as well as psychologically (I'm particularly
interested in attachment theory). The general theme is autonomy.
Joe Illick
On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Linda Gordon wrote:
> Several comments have spurred me to some musings about children in family
> history. There is some key social-psychology scholarship (eg David
> Riesman) suggesting how important child-raising is in forming cultural and
> social patterns. Yet it is extremely difficult to get historical
> information about how children were actually raised (in contrast to what
> the prescriptive sources--how-to book, sermons, etc.--tell us about how
> they should be raised) because children don't leave good historical records.
>
> I tried to compensate for this lack a bit in my book on the history of
> family violence, because the case records I used actually had occasional
> evidence about children's own agency. This was particularly the case
> because child abuse often arose from parents' anger that children were not
> doing their assigned family labor, and the children's refusal to work was
> sometimes documentable. Today abuse is less likely to arise from disputes
> about work.
>
> But it is hard to find good teaching material here. Does anyone have
> suggestions? When I have assigned descriptions of child-raising in more
> patriarchal societies, the material often seems harsh to my students who
> can't place it in an historical perspective.
>
> best, Linda
>
>
> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
> NYU
> 53 Washington Square South
> New York, NY 10012
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 12:59:40 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Hemphill, Dallett"
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
MIME-Version: 1.0
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boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C1CAB8.D8EAE330"
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this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
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Hi all. I am enjoying these exchanges, since I have felt a little lonely
recently in my pursuit of Family History!
I just wanted to add, in response to the comment that "family change is a
manifestation of changing culture," that I am having fun in my History of
the (modern western) Family course this semester by exploring the recent
tension in early modern era studies between Stephen Ozment's family as a
near-continuous "bedrock of history" ANCESTORS, 2001) and the older
Aries-Stone paradigm that family change parallels social (especially
economic and political) change. It has been a useful tension as we have
moved on to discuss family change (and continuity) in the 19th and 20th
centuries.
I am interested in other family history course designs and themes, if any
want to share....and of course teachable books.
Dallett
Dallett Hemphill
Professor and Chair, Department of History
Ursinus College
P.O. Box 1000
Collegeville, PA 19426-1000
(610) 409-3000 ext. 2295
dhemphill@ursinus.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Gordon [mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 9:54 PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I would
think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it. And for
any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be socialized
to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all families act in
support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised children who
challenge the status quo in many ways, no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own family's
move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many Americans,
"success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing individualism
over responsibility to family. An old classic about family, Carol Stack's
"All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive kinship among poor African
Americans, is eloquent in showing how that forced choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family that
assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled
with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those conflicts,
we'd have no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural anthropology
course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called "kinship systems." As
I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this definition as a base for
my thinking about families) it defined the role of the family (in/for
society) as one of enculturation of next generations into society. This is
consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how the
family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children, though
they are the target in this conception) to act in support of the status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families parallels
(supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward hyper-individualism/
isolation and away from a larger view of community good, mutual support, and
so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward, families are not nuclear, but
thinking about families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept
as dogma or firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That
doesn't mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive family.
I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we used
to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was supported by the
possibilities opening to first generation whites (my family's race had been
Jew in the old country), the products available to them- houses and careers
in the west- and an ideology of separation, "independence"/isolation as good
things. And their abandoning the city contributed to loosening the hold of
white ethnics on those neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This
glosses what's more complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates family
ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family -where it does
change structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in various
directions. That would be a base for talking both about "family values" as a
rhetoric of repression and about the welcome value of some of the changes in
progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our teaching
free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history change the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as well,
that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process of
taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it back
together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena or
trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the personal,
including insights gathered through subjective experience, and pushes toward
applying what we learn there to theorizing larger community, regional,
national, and global history. It means contemplating the relationships
between ideology and practice, and between, for example, the personal/family
dimension and larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
------_=_NextPart_001_01C1CAB8.D8EAE330
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="ISO-8859-1"
Dallett Hemphill
Professor and Chair, Department of History
Ursinus College
P.O. Box 1000
Collegeville, PA 19426-1000
(610) 409-3000 ext. 2295
dhemphill@ursinus.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Gordon
[mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 9:54
PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re:
fam: as regulator
If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I would
think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it. And for
any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be socialized to
accept the most basic rules of society. But not all families act in support of
the status quo. Lots of families have raised children who challenge the status
quo in many ways, no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own family's
move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many Americans,
"success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing individualism over
responsibility to family. An old classic about family, Carol Stack's "All Our
Kin" which is about kinship and fictive kinship among poor African Americans,
is eloquent in showing how that forced choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled with
conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those conflicts, we'd have
no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural anthropology
course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called "kinship systems." As I
remember it, (and I see now that I've used this definition as a base for my
thinking about families) it defined the role of the family (in/for society) as
one of enculturation of next generations into society. This is
consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how the
family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children, though
they are the target in this conception) to act in support of the status
quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families parallels
(supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward hyper-individualism/
isolation and away from a larger view of community good, mutual support, and
so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward, families are not nuclear, but
thinking about families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept
as dogma or firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That
doesn't mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII made
me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work centers on
race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from what my parents
(children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive family. I think this
vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we used to call WASP
and) booming capitalist culture. The view was supported by the possibilities
opening to first generation whites (my family's race had been Jew in the old
country), the products available to them- houses and careers in the west- and
an ideology of separation, "independence"/isolation as good things. And their
abandoning the city contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on
those neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates
family ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family -where it
does change structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in various
directions. That would be a base for talking both about "family values" as a
rhetoric of repression and about the welcome value of some of the changes in
progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our
teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history change the
future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as well,
that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process of taking
apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it back together
in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena or trends being
investigated. This method allows for engaging the personal, including insights
gathered through subjective experience, and pushes toward applying what we
learn there to theorizing larger community, regional, national, and global
history. It means contemplating the relationships between ideology and
practice, and between, for example, the personal/family dimension and larger
history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S.
History.
------_=_NextPart_001_01C1CAB8.D8EAE330--
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 13:24:10 -0700
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Mary C. Canzoneri"
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Hi all-Dallett, Enjoying the discussion. Would appreciate a full
citation for Aries-Stone below. My research is focused on the family
structure as a reflection of the political economic structure (system)
and varies in relation to it. Other sources would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Mary C. Canzoneri, Ph.D.
Mesa Community College, (Mesa, Az.)
U.S. History; Women's History
"Hemphill, Dallett" wrote:
> Hi all. I am enjoying these exchanges, since I have felt a little
> lonely recently in my pursuit of Family History!I just wanted to add,
> in response to the comment that "family change is a manifestation of
> changing culture," that I am having fun in my History of the (modern
> western) Family course this semester by exploring the recent tension
> in early modern era studies between Stephen Ozment's family as a
> near-continuous "bedrock of history" ANCESTORS, 2001) and the older
> Aries-Stone paradigm that family change parallels social (especially
> economic and political) change. It has been a useful tension as we
> have moved on to discuss family change (and continuity) in the 19th
> and 20th centuries. I am interested in other family history course
> designs and themes, if any want to share....and of course teachable
> books.Dallett
>
> Dallett Hemphill
> Professor and Chair, Department of History
> Ursinus College
> P.O. Box 1000
> Collegeville, PA 19426-1000
> (610) 409-3000 ext. 2295
> dhemphill@ursinus.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Linda Gordon [mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU]
> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 9:54 PM
> To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
>
> If we include as family any human group that raises
> children, then I would think we have to identify family as
> key "regulator," as you put it. And for any human society to
> survive, I should think, babies have to be socialized to
> accept the most basic rules of society. But not all families
> act in support of the status quo. Lots of families have
> raised children who challenge the status quo in many ways,
> no?
>
> I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing
> your own family's move west in its social meaning. I think
> that for many many Americans, "success" (especially economic
> success) has meant choosing individualism over
> responsibility to family. An old classic about family, Carol
> Stack's "All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive
> kinship among poor African Americans, is eloquent in showing
> how that forced choice works.
>
> But I think we also need to beware of a kind of
> romanticizing of family that assumes that traditional
> families--i.e., those in less individualist cultures--were
> harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled
> with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without
> those conflicts, we'd have no Shakespeare!)
>
> I could not agree more with your conclusion that family
> change is a manifestation of changing culture.
>
> best, Linda
>
>
>
> At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >>>>
>
> This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
> anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was
> called "kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now
> that I've used this definition as a base for my thinking
> about families) it defined the role of the family (in/for
> society) as one of enculturation of next generations into
> society. This is consistent with the notion of "regulator,"
> and takes it a step broader, I think.
>
> Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we
> can see how the family acts to set parameters for family
> members (not only children, though they are the target in
> this conception) to act in support of the status quo.
>
> It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing
> families parallels (supports and reflects) trends in
> capitalism toward hyper-individualism/ isolation and away
> from a larger view of community good, mutual support, and so
> on. -or, as you all have pointed toward, families are not
> nuclear, but thinking about families as nuclear means that,
> like so much that we accept as dogma or firm reality, the
> nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't mean the
> nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
> close attention when we think about it. It's a good
> deconstruction site.
>
> [Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from
> a tight-knit ethnic community in a large midwestern city to
> California just after WWII made me see how our move was on
> the front edge of white flight.(My work centers on race/race
> relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from what my
> parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive
> family. I think this vision of theirs was part of
> assimilating to U.S. (what we used to call WASP and) booming
> capitalist culture. The view was supported by the
> possibilities opening to first generation whites (my
> family's race had been Jew in the old country), the products
> available to them- houses and careers in the west- and an
> ideology of separation, "independence"/isolation as good
> things. And their abandoning the city contributed to
> loosening the hold of white ethnics on those neighborhoods.
> Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more
> complicated.]
>
> I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is
> necessarily a bad influence on citizenship, nor that 2500
> miles distance eliminates family ties, but rather I want to
> look at how the changing family -where it does change
> structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in
> various directions. That would be a base for talking both
> about "family values" as a rhetoric of repression and about
> the welcome value of some of the changes in progressive
> directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
>
> What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of
> our teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can
> teaching history change the future?
>
> ---------
>
> also-
>
> I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a
> pedagogy, as well, that combines oral history with Grounded
> Theory analysis, a process of taking apart the data, word by
> word, phrase by phrase, and putting it back together in ways
> that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena or
> trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging
> the personal, including insights gathered through subjective
> experience, and pushes toward applying what we learn there
> to theorizing larger community, regional, national, and
> global history. It means contemplating the relationships
> between ideology and practice, and between, for example, the
> personal/family dimension and larger history.
>
> and thanks David for mixing up family and community,
> re-blurring those boundaries.
>
> Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
>
> Best,
>
> Norma
>
> Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out
> something that I
>
> have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would
> much appreciate
>
> comments:
>
> Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of
> people, I would
>
> like to suggest that family is better understood as a system
> of regulation.
>
> It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the
> best of our
>
> knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the
> system usually
>
> specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with
> respect to
>
> --reproduction and child-raising,
>
> --sexual activity,
>
> --interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
>
> Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations
> but, especially in
>
> preindustrial societies, family has been central to all
> social organization.
>
> Other thoughts?
>
> best, Linda
>
>
> --
>
> Norma Smith
>
> 5337 College Ave #424
>
> Oakland, CA 94618
>
> 510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
>
> <<<<
>
>
>
> Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
>
> Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
>
> NYU
>
> 53 Washington Square South
>
> New York, NY 10012
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our
> Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources
> for teaching U.S. History.
>
--------------7F0337B12D0EDE67EE0B67EC
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Hi all-Dallett, Enjoying the discussion.
Would appreciate a full citation for Aries-Stone below. My research
is focused on the family structure as a reflection of the political economic
structure (system) and varies in relation to it. Other sources
would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Mary C. Canzoneri, Ph.D.
Mesa Community College, (Mesa, Az.)
U.S. History; Women's History
"Hemphill, Dallett" wrote:
Hi
all. I am enjoying these exchanges, since I have felt a little lonely recently
in my pursuit of Family History!I
just wanted to add, in response to the comment that "family change is a
manifestation of changing culture," that I am having fun in my History
of the (modern western) Family course this semester by exploring the recent
tension in early modern era studies between Stephen Ozment's family as
a near-continuous "bedrock of history" ANCESTORS, 2001) and the older Aries-Stone
paradigm that family change parallels social (especially economic and political)
change. It has been a useful tension as we have moved on to discuss
family change (and continuity) in the 19th and 20th centuries. I
am interested in other family history course designs and themes, if any
want to share....and of course teachable books.Dallett
Dallett Hemphill
Professor and Chair, Department of
History
Ursinus College
P.O. Box 1000
Collegeville, PA 19426-1000
(610) 409-3000 ext. 2295
dhemphill@ursinus.edu
-----Original
Message-----
From: Linda Gordon [mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002
9:54 PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I would
think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it. And
for any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be socialized
to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all families act in
support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised children who challenge
the status quo in many ways, no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own family's
move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many Americans,
"success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing individualism
over responsibility to family. An old classic about family, Carol Stack's
"All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive kinship among poor African
Americans, is eloquent in showing how that forced choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled
with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those conflicts,
we'd have no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural anthropology
course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called "kinship systems."
As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this definition as a base
for my thinking about families) it defined the role of the family (in/for
society) as one of enculturation of next generations into society.
This is consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step
broader, I think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see
how the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children,
though they are the target in this conception) to act in support of the
status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families parallels
(supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward hyper-individualism/
isolation and away from a larger view of community good, mutual support,
and so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward, families are not nuclear,
but thinking about families as nuclear means that, like so much
that we accept as dogma or firm reality, the nuclear family is a social
construct. That doesn't mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means
that we have to pay close attention when we think about it. It's a good
deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive family.
I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we
used to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was supported
by the possibilities opening to first generation whites (my family's race
had been Jew in the old country), the products available to them- houses
and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation, "independence"/isolation
as good things. And their abandoning the city contributed to loosening
the hold of white ethnics on those neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of
course. This glosses what's more complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates
family ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family -where
it does change structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in
various directions. That would be a base for talking both about "family
values" as a rhetoric of repression and about the welcome value of some
of the changes in progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended)
of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our
teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history change
the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process
of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it
back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena
or trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the personal,
including insights gathered through subjective experience, and pushes toward
applying what we learn there to theorizing larger community, regional,
national, and global history. It means contemplating the relationships
between ideology and practice, and between, for example, the personal/family
dimension and larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that
I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system
usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect
to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially
in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site
at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
--------------7F0337B12D0EDE67EE0B67EC--
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 17:59:23 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Hemphill, Dallett"
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
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Here are some sources for the family change/family continuity debate among
early modern European historians.
Arguing for change are some of the granddaddies of family history:
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (1960)
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977)
similarly, David Hunt, Parents and Children in History (1970)
besides Ozment, in the "continuity" camp are
Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500-1900
(1983)
Alan MacFarlane's Diary of Ralph Josselin, also Marriage and Love in England
(1986)
and a lot of early modern German stuff that Ozment cites, but that I'm not
familiar with.
Although these studies mostly concern early modern Europe, they are relevant
to colonial Euro-American culture and there are references to early America
in Stone and Pollock. I have enjoyed discussing these in class, because
they allow us to get at and question our fundamental assumptions in studying
family history.
Dallett
-----Original Message-----
From: Mary C. Canzoneri [mailto:mcanz@EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 3:24 PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
Hi all-Dallett, Enjoying the discussion. Would appreciate a full
citation for Aries-Stone below. My research is focused on the family
structure as a reflection of the political economic structure (system) and
varies in relation to it. Other sources would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Mary C. Canzoneri, Ph.D.
Mesa Community College, (Mesa, Az.)
U.S. History; Women's History
"Hemphill, Dallett" wrote:
Hi all. I am enjoying these exchanges, since I have felt a little lonely
recently in my pursuit of Family History!I just wanted to add, in response
to the comment that "family change is a manifestation of changing culture,"
that I am having fun in my History of the (modern western) Family course
this semester by exploring the recent tension in early modern era studies
between Stephen Ozment's family as a near-continuous "bedrock of history"
ANCESTORS, 2001) and the older Aries-Stone paradigm that family change
parallels social (especially economic and political) change. It has been a
useful tension as we have moved on to discuss family change (and continuity)
in the 19th and 20th centuries. I am interested in other family history
course designs and themes, if any want to share....and of course teachable
books.Dallett
Dallett Hemphill
Professor and Chair, Department of History
Ursinus College
P.O. Box 1000
Collegeville, PA 19426-1000
(610) 409-3000 ext. 2295
dhemphill@ursinus.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Gordon [ mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU ]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 9:54 PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: fam: as regulator
If we include as family any human group that raises children, then I would
think we have to identify family as key "regulator," as you put it. And for
any human society to survive, I should think, babies have to be socialized
to accept the most basic rules of society. But not all families act in
support of the status quo. Lots of families have raised children who
challenge the status quo in many ways, no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own family's
move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many Americans,
"success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing individualism
over responsibility to family. An old classic about family, Carol Stack's
"All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive kinship among poor African
Americans, is eloquent in showing how that forced choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family that
assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled
with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those conflicts,
we'd have no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural anthropology
course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called "kinship systems." As
I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this definition as a base for
my thinking about families) it defined the role of the family (in/for
society) as one of enculturation of next generations into society. This is
consistent with the notion of "regulator," and takes it a step broader, I
think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how the
family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children, though
they are the target in this conception) to act in support of the status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families parallels
(supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward hyper-individualism/
isolation and away from a larger view of community good, mutual support, and
so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward, families are not nuclear, but
thinking about families as nuclear means that, like so much that we accept
as dogma or firm reality, the nuclear family is a social construct. That
doesn't mean the nuclear family has no effect; it means that we have to pay
close attention when we think about it. It's a good deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a tight-knit
ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just after WWII
made me see how our move was on the front edge of white flight.(My work
centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a move away from
what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as restrictive family.
I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating to U.S. (what we used
to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The view was supported by the
possibilities opening to first generation whites (my family's race had been
Jew in the old country), the products available to them- houses and careers
in the west- and an ideology of separation, "independence"/isolation as good
things. And their abandoning the city contributed to loosening the hold of
white ethnics on those neighborhoods. Lots more to say, of course. This
glosses what's more complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates family
ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family -where it does
change structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in various
directions. That would be a base for talking both about "family values" as a
rhetoric of repression and about the welcome value of some of the changes in
progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our teaching
free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history change the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as well,
that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process of
taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it back
together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena or
trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the personal,
including insights gathered through subjective experience, and pushes toward
applying what we learn there to theorizing larger community, regional,
national, and global history. It means contemplating the relationships
between ideology and practice, and between, for example, the personal/family
dimension and larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but, especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more
resources for teaching U.S. History.
------_=_NextPart_001_01C1CAE2.B760F950
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="ISO-8859-1"
Here
are some sources for the family change/family continuity debate among early
modern European historians.
Arguing for change are some of the granddaddies of family
history:
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (1960)
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800
(1977)
similarly, David Hunt, Parents and Children in History
(1970)
besides Ozment, in the "continuity" camp
are
Linda
Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from
1500-1900 (1983)
Alan
MacFarlane's Diary of Ralph Josselin, also Marriage and Love in England
(1986)
and a
lot of early modern German stuff that Ozment cites, but that I'm not familiar
with.
Although these studies mostly concern early modern Europe, they are
relevant to colonial Euro-American culture and there are references to early
America in Stone and Pollock. I have enjoyed discussing these in class,
because they allow us to get at and question our fundamental assumptions in
studying family history.
Dallett
-----Original Message-----
From: Mary C. Canzoneri
[mailto:mcanz@EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 3:24
PM
To: FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re:
fam: as regulator
Hi all-Dallett,
Enjoying the discussion. Would appreciate a full citation for
Aries-Stone below. My research is focused on the family structure as a
reflection of the political economic structure (system) and varies in relation
to it. Other sources would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Mary C. Canzoneri, Ph.D.
Mesa Community College, (Mesa,
Az.)
U.S. History; Women's History
"Hemphill, Dallett" wrote:
Hi all. I am enjoying these
exchanges, since I have felt a little lonely recently in my pursuit of
Family History!I just wanted to add, in
response to the comment that "family change is a manifestation of changing
culture," that I am having fun in my History of the (modern western) Family
course this semester by exploring the recent tension in early modern era
studies between Stephen Ozment's family as a near-continuous "bedrock of
history" ANCESTORS, 2001) and the older Aries-Stone paradigm that family
change parallels social (especially economic and political) change. It
has been a useful tension as we have moved on to discuss family change (and
continuity) in the 19th and 20th
centuries. I am interested in other family
history course designs and themes, if any want to share....and of course
teachable books.Dallett
Dallett Hemphill
Professor and Chair, Department of
History
Ursinus
College
P.O. Box
1000
Collegeville, PA
19426-1000
(610) 409-3000
ext. 2295
dhemphill@ursinus.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Gordon [mailto:lg48@NYU.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002
9:54 PM
To:
FAMILIESFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: fam: as
regulator
If we include as family any human
group that raises children, then I would think we have to identify family
as key "regulator," as you put it. And for any human society to survive, I
should think, babies have to be socialized to accept the most basic rules
of society. But not all families act in support of the status quo. Lots of
families have raised children who challenge the status quo in many ways,
no?
I was gripped by your concise but complex way of viewing your own
family's move west in its social meaning. I think that for many many
Americans, "success" (especially economic success) has meant choosing
individualism over responsibility to family. An old classic about family,
Carol Stack's "All Our Kin" which is about kinship and fictive kinship
among poor African Americans, is eloquent in showing how that forced
choice works.
But I think we also need to beware of a kind of romanticizing of family
that assumes that traditional families--i.e., those in less individualist
cultures--were harmonious. Families in patriarchal societies were riddled
with conflict, violence, anger, jealousy, etc. (Without those conflicts,
we'd have no Shakespeare!)
I could not agree more with your conclusion that family change is a
manifestation of changing culture.
best, Linda
At 12:56 PM 03/09/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
This discussion reminds me of some definition in a cultural
anthropology course I took in the mid-1960's. The course was called
"kinship systems." As I remember it, (and I see now that I've used this
definition as a base for my thinking about families) it defined the role
of the family (in/for society) as one of enculturation of next
generations into society. This is consistent with the notion of
"regulator," and takes it a step broader, I think.
Thinking about the family as regulator and enculturator, we can see how
the family acts to set parameters for family members (not only children,
though they are the target in this conception) to act in support of the
status quo.
It also can illuminate how the trend toward nuclearizing families
parallels (supports and reflects) trends in capitalism toward
hyper-individualism/ isolation and away from a larger view of community
good, mutual support, and so on. -or, as you all have pointed toward,
families are not nuclear, but thinking about families as nuclear
means that, like so much that we accept as dogma or firm reality, the
nuclear family is a social construct. That doesn't mean the nuclear family
has no effect; it means that we have to pay close attention when we think
about it. It's a good deconstruction site.
[Thinking recently about my own (nuclear) family's move from a
tight-knit ethnic community in a large midwestern city to California just
after WWII made me see how our move was on the front edge of white
flight.(My work centers on race/race relations/white supremacy.) It was a
move away from what my parents (children of European immigrants) saw as
restrictive family. I think this vision of theirs was part of assimilating
to U.S. (what we used to call WASP and) booming capitalist culture. The
view was supported by the possibilities opening to first generation whites
(my family's race had been Jew in the old country), the products available
to them- houses and careers in the west- and an ideology of separation,
"independence"/isolation as good things. And their abandoning the city
contributed to loosening the hold of white ethnics on those neighborhoods.
Lots more to say, of course. This glosses what's more complicated.]
I'm not saying that the family as enculturator is necessarily a bad
influence on citizenship, nor that 2500 miles distance eliminates
family ties, but rather I want to look at how the changing family -where
it does change structurally- is a manifestation of changing culture, in
various directions. That would be a base for talking both about "family
values" as a rhetoric of repression and about the welcome value of some of
the changes in progressive directions/ changing conceptions ( pun
intended) of family.
What are the effects for maintenance of the status quo of our
teaching free(r)-form families? That is, how can teaching history change
the future?
---------
also-
I'm trying to use a research methodology, which can be a pedagogy, as
well, that combines oral history with Grounded Theory analysis, a process
of taking apart the data, word by word, phrase by phrase, and putting it
back together in ways that elucidate the social meanings of the phenomena
or trends being investigated. This method allows for engaging the
personal, including insights gathered through subjective experience, and
pushes toward applying what we learn there to theorizing larger community,
regional, national, and global history. It means contemplating the
relationships between ideology and practice, and between, for example, the
personal/family dimension and larger history.
and thanks David for mixing up family and community, re-blurring those
boundaries.
Thanks for this wide-ranging provocative discussion.
Best,
Norma
Maureen Conklin's comments have provoked me to throw out something that
I
have used as a definition of family in teaching--I would much
appreciate
comments:
Rather than focus on the family as a bounded collection of people, I
would
like to suggest that family is better understood as a system of
regulation.
It is a system that exists in all human societies, to the best of our
knowledge, and although the particular regulations vary, the system
usually
specifies responsibilities, privileges and limitations with respect to
--reproduction and child-raising,
--sexual activity,
--interpersonal responsibility both economic and emotional.
Obviously family is not the only set of such regulations but,
especially in
preindustrial societies, family has been central to all social
organization.
Other thoughts?
best, Linda
--
Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
Oakland, CA 94618
510/465-2094 (phone & fax)
<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site
at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for
more resources for teaching U.S.
History.
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Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 18:40:15 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Christopher Capozzola
Subject: teaching about families
Thanks to everyone for a really thought-provoking forum that is helping me
with my research and teaching. I just thought I would toss in a suggestion
for teaching about families that I have found helpful, which is to use
photography. I find that by looking at photographs, students are often able
to articulate how the idea of "family" is constructed culturally, in ways
that they're not always able to draw out of other texts.
For turn-of-the-century US culture, I've used images in works by Laura
Wexler, including her book _Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of
Imperialism_. In the same course, images of family life in the documentary
photographers like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine can also open up discussions
about norms for what a "proper" family were.
I also teach a course on recent American history and used the work of Sally
Mann, a contemporary photographer whose photographs of her own children are
very controversial; students always respond strongly to them. I've also
used images from _Love Makes a Family_ which is about lesbian and gay
families, and -- as its title suggests -- forces viewers to think about
what exactly a family is. Marianne Hirsch, ed., _The Familial Gaze_ has
lots of critical work that helped me out, but I don't know how it would go
over in the classroom.
Christopher Capozzola
Middlebury College
caps@middlebury.edu
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Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 22:50:37 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JJNadelhaft@AOL.COM
Subject: Children
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I have been away from my email for over a week and have just gotten through a
hasty reading of the messages that backed up. So, I may be suggesting a
source which has already been mentioned.
There have been references to material outside US history, including to
sources for medieval and early modern Europe. But I didn't notice (again
perhaps because of haste) Richard Orme's remarkable MEDIEVAL CHILDREN (Yale,
2001). Early on (page 9) Orme notes that Aries is totally wrong regarding
childhood in the middle ages. It's quite a good read.
Jerome Nadelhaft
Emeritus Professor of History
University of Maine
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I have been away from my email for over a week and have just gotten through a hasty reading of the messages that backed up. So, I may be suggesting a source which has already been mentioned.
There have been references to material outside US history, including to sources for medieval and early modern Europe. But I didn't notice (again perhaps because of haste) Richard Orme's remarkable MEDIEVAL CHILDREN (Yale, 2001). Early on (page 9) Orme notes that Aries is totally wrong regarding childhood in the middle ages. It's quite a good read.
Jerome Nadelhaft
Emeritus Professor of History
University of Maine
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Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 19:31:39 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Selig, Diana"
Subject: Fam: teaching family history
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I'm enjoying this discussion and would like to pick up on several themes
that have emerged and share some teaching strategies that I have used.
I teach a history seminar called "American Families in the Twentieth
Century." (The use of the plural here is intentional, as I want to
emphasize to students the diversity of family forms and their changes over
time.) One of the topics I ask my students to consider, throughout the
course, concerns the impact of modernization on the family. A number of our
readings explore the effects of immigration, industrialization, and
urbanization, developments that, as Linda noted, bring family matters into
sharp relief. I hadn't heard her definition of the family as a system of
regulation, but think that it will be useful in articulating how historical
developments have altered some of those regulations while maintaining
certain responsibilities.
I start by assigning selections from William I. Thomas and Florian
Znaniecki's _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_, the influentual
sociological study of 1918 that argued that immigration led to the
disintegration of family ties. I then ask students to consider the
strengths and weaknesses of this modernization theory in light of other
readings that highlight the persistence, and the reorientation, of family
connections (this year I used the novel _Bread Givers_ by Anzia Yezierska
and the memoir _Farewell to Manzanar_ by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; there are
also good historical studies of immigrant families.) I want students to
challenge both the romantic notion of the traditional agrarian family and
the assumption that the family fell apart through modernization. Later in
the semester, I assign the Moynihan Report of 1965 (selections) and Carol
Stack's _All Our Kin_ to explore how the modernization thesis has shaped
debates in other contexts. I've also taught Kath Weston's _Families We
Choose_, an anthropological study of lesbian and gay kinship that is a nice
complement to _All Our Kin_.
A second theme that I ask my students to consider concerns the nostalgia
that many Americans voice today for what they perceive as the traditional
family of another time. Like other contributors to this discussion, I want
to help students evaluate that nostalgia with a critical eye. Here, I've
used selections from Stephanie Coontz's books, particularly the first
chapter of _The Way We Never Were._ I've also found it effective to assign
parts of _Middletown_ for students to see that Americans in the 1920s were
concerned over the effects of rapid change on family life-- much as they are
today-- and were nostalgic for the family patterns of the 1890s. Beth
Bailey's _From Front Porch to Back Seat_ also makes this point well (and I
too have found that my students enjoy it). We view an episode of a sitcom
such as "Ozzie and Harriet" to get a sense of the idealized image of the
1950s family, and then discuss what realities it omitted. Elaine Tyler
May's _Homeward Bound_ (which my students also enjoy) helps students see
what limitations this model placed on family members.
This brings me to a point that Linda raised earlier in this discussion, but
that I don't think we have followed up on yet: the idea that families both
share collective interests and serve as battlegrounds for competing
interests. This, I think, is a critical insight to share with students--
it's one I first encountered through Linda's _Heroes of Their Own Lives_,
which I have also taught in this course. I encourage my students to think
about what they mean when they say that something is good or bad for "the
family," since after all, particular developments affect different members
in different ways, depending on such factors as gender and generation.
(Here we again look at _The Polish Peasant_, which suggests that
individualization benefited children of immigrants and women in some ways,
even as it led the "disorganization" of the agrarian family and a weakening
of familial solidarity.) I'm wondering if others have developed effective
strategies to encourage students to look at families as both unitary
entities and as collections of individuals with competing needs.
Another question I have for the list follows earlier comments about the
tendency to equate family history with women's history. As others have
said, this is a dangerous trap: as I tell my students, it diminishes women's
activities outside the family in such arenas as work and politics, it
diminishes men's participation within the family, and it overlooks the roles
of children. Do list members have suggestions of readings that address
men's roles in the family in particular? This semester I have assigned, for
the end of the term, Jesse Green's recent memoir _The Velveteen Father_,
which will open discussion of adoption and of gay families as well as of
fatherhood-- but I have had less luck finding good readings for earlier in
the century. (I'll check out _Barrio Boy,_ at Linda's suggestion.)
A final question for the list has to do with the role of the state in
regards to family matters. I very much agree that it's important to
emphasize the active roles women have played in shaping public policy
regarding families. I talk with my students about the ways in which the
public world of the state and the private world of the family-- which at
first seem entirely distinct-- have been, and still are, deeply intertwined.
I often bring in news clippings from current policy debates to make this
point. What other strategies can we adopt to help students think about
these connections?
Diana Selig
Assistant Professor of History
Claremont McKenna College
850 Columbia Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711-6420
909-607-3396 phone
909-621-8419 fax
diana.selig@claremontmckenna.edu
www.claremontmckenna.edu
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:33:29 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families: community
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I thought David McMullen's bringing the concept of "community" into this
discussion was very thoughtful and thought-provoking, because I wonder if
it is not an easily reified, romanticized idea, as is family. For
example, I dislike the common phrase "the black community" because it
carries a subtle implication that blacks are homogeneous and coherent in
beliefs, behaviors, etc.
I think, however, that there's a crucial difference between the two
concepts. In modern scholarly work, we recognize that communities are
mobile and volatile; they can be created and fragmented through how
people behave in response to the larger world. The civil rights
organization SNCC called itself at times "the beloved community" in
recognition of the powerful bonding they created by their courageous
activism. In labor history it is easy to find examples of community
built but also of community fragmented--in fact, there are many examples
of workers' community deliberately fractured by the strategic maneuvers
of employers.
But family, although I think it is ultimately as completely socially
constructed as community, is often understood by its
members to be fixed biologically. And this understanding is
part of the great power of family as ideology.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:25:35 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families: gender in teaching
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Forgive me for being a bit behind in responding ...
Mark Marianek brought up the fact that women are far more interested in
family history than men, something I have observed also. I think this
arises from a deep area of gender socialization: family = domestic = female
space. This is a relatively new (in historical time), Victorian notion
that remains, I think, not only operative today but threatening to men.
The very act of engaging in discussion of such issues threatens
masculinity, it seems.
We see this anxiety or disinterest among historians: compare the number of
white people who have written excellent work about people of color to the
number of men who have written about women or gender.
The self-exclusion of male students is a loss. When I have taught small,
discussion-type family history classes the guys that were there were
terrific, because just by being themselves they seemed to explode gender
stereotypes.
best, Linda
incidentally: Steve Mintz and I recently co-edited a special issue of the
OAH Magazine of History on teaching family history. I think it was the
most recent issues, but it could be one back.
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:49:58 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families: children's agency
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In response to Mona Gleason on the subject of children's agency:
I think it is important to distinguish agency from moral or legal
responsibility. I think that adults typically bear the entire
responsibility for their behaviors towards children no matter what
invitation or provocation children present. Nothing excuses abusing a
child. The fact that a child may behave in a seductive manner--something
which is quite common among children who have learned that it is the best
way they can get love, attention, or other favors--has absolutely no
bearing on an adult's moral and legal culpability for engaging in sexual
behavior with a child. This seems to me to be not only a crucial matter
of policy, but also a matter of how we write history, because I don't
think historians should dodge fundamental moral issues.
But even if we think that children are never responsible, not even
fractionally responsible, for their abuse, we still need to study the
interaction between child and abuser. Those who have lived closely with
children know that they are born with temperaments. Some young children
with wonderful parents have problems controlling anger, for example. In
my history of family violence, I saw that abuse often resulted from true
power struggles, most commonly between parents demanding work of their
children and children refusing to do it, or between parents demanding
obedience and restraint and children demanding autonomy and freedom. It
is a rare child abuser who does not think that the child provoked the
abuse. If we respond to that abuser by saying s/he must be wrong, that
children don't take initiatives, the abuser knows that we are incorrect.=20
If we don't see the children's agency, we misunderstand the context of
the abuse (and, for those directly involved, we would make it harder to
approach the problem so as to help). The abuser needs to understand that
it doesn't matter what children do , s/he is still
100 percent responsible.
Now I'm aware that all this is easy to say in the abstract. The hard
part is in the details. What constitutes abuse, for example? A
spanking? A parent who allows a 5 year old to watch a sexy movie? One
argument that has raged for over a century: at what age can a child
consent? Since we're now trying children as adults for some crimes (a
procedure which outrages me, frankly, does that mean the children have
the privileges of adults?
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:57:07 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: families: teaching
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I'm gobbling up all the good teaching hints and bibliographical
suggestions. I must say that I think Mona Gleason is being too modest
about her experiences teaching about childhood. I suspect that the
discussions she elicits from using Sutherland's oral histories result
from her own skill, because she is giving us ideas about where to lead a
discussion that are creative and original, at least to me. The
Sutherland along with Joe Illick's forthcoming "American Childhoods"
sound terrific to me.
I also like Christopher Capozzola's suggestions about photographs. I
have a slide show I sometimes use.
I like also to use novels--I've used The Dollmaker
and Sue Miller's The Good Mother although it is
not historical. I would much appreciate any suggestions for other
fiction, preferably historical.
best wishes, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:35:15 EST
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: MaryHaas@AOL.COM
Subject: Question on families
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I am enjoying reading the discussion concerning the content and references
people are using to teach about families. Certainly, all that I have read
are encouraging a comprehensive look at families and their contributions and
changes throughout history. I wish that the students that I teach have had
your courses. I am a methods instructor in social studies and would
appreciate your giving some thought to the following concern that I face.
Elementary teachers and teacher candidates often select to develop units of
studies about families for children in the first and second grade. The
content my students select to teach and what their host teachers suggest to
the teacher candidates to teach about families is often the most superficial
information or ideas that probably lead to developing misconceptions and
promote intolerance.
I tell my students to have the young learners investigate questions such as:
"Why are families important?" or "How do/ have families help the community?"
for their five lessons on the family for primary grade children.
I am interested in suggestions of other appropriate questions that examine
the family for very young learners. Topics or subtopics that can be grouped
together logically in 20-25 minute time spans over a short time period of
about 5 to 10 days. I would also like recommendations of short articles that
my teacher candidates might read, and share with their cooperating teachers,
to increase their personal understanding of important ideas about families
and that will serve as an introduction to the various roles of family in
history. Improving the quality of the school curriculum need the input of
scholars with special interests to assure that the content to be taught is
worthy and accurate. Reading an isolated story or book about a family of a
particular type does not do the job of helping students create a
comprehensive understanding of families. Thank you for your suggestions.
Mary E. Haas
Professor Educational Theory and Practice
Social Studies K-12
West Virginia University
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:00:42 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Ann Short Chirhart
Subject: Families, children, and social change
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I've been fascinated by all the comments about families. My own work
focuses on southern black and white families and communities in the early
twentieth century in Georgia. I argue that families and communities
instructed children in ways that preserved and challenged traditional rural
societies. These families specifically selected daughters to become
teachers, women who eventually became agents of change for modernity in
Georgia. Of course, black and white families and communities have
different motives and goals, but these families and their daughters
recognized a need for change in rural Georgia. I've used oral interviews
to explore the ways the daughters were raised--what they were taught by
families and communities and how they renegotiated these values.
Violence was emphatically an aspect of raising children yet often used for
different purposes. African-American families used violence to train their
children about the dangers inherent in the Jim Crow South. Black and white
families also justified violence from the context of their conservative
evangelical Protestant beliefs.
Often, I have found it difficult to distinguish the family from the
community. For example, other historians like Joan Cashin, Lorri Glover,
Stephanie Shaw, Glenda Gilmore, and Elsa Barkely Brown detail the intricate
networks between and among families and friends that often reached to the
North. Friends provided financial and emotional support for black
daughters attending school away from home so that these daughters could
become teachers and reformers for the race. I agree that the household is
an extremely useful term to describe families in the South, but I often
have problems deciding where the household ends.
As far as raising children, according to my research, in contrast to other
ethnic groups, African-American families went to extraordinary lengths to
educate their daughters. Mothers worked so that daughters could stay in
school. Daughters, at least the daughters I have interviewed, accepted
their future role as community reformers for racial uplift. This pattern
seems to differ significantly from that of Italian-American families
(Pleck's work), Jewish families (Orleck and Glenn), Irish families, and
Asian families. I'm not as familiar with the literature on Hispanic
families as I should be, but from what I know, other groups tended to send
their sons to school.
Here we have examples of families as regulators but regulators in a
positive way, families working for change but offering little independent
agency for their children. And the children never seem to object because
of what is at stake--the survival of their communities. At the same time,
the daughters adapt some modern values as they are educated and transmit
them to their schools and communities.
Moreover, this pattern indicates the vital role fathers, mothers, and
children played in preserving and transforming culture. Fathers also
encouraged daughters' education and contributed to the family
income. Perhaps using the term household, at least for rural families,
allows us to look at the pooled resources all family members contributed to
family continuity and change. We can focus on the household as a unit with
gendered roles rather than what mom did at home.
I'd appreciate any feedback.
Best,
Ann
Ann Short Chirhart
Assistant Professor of American History
Department of History
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, Indiana 47809
812-237-2723
aschir@mindspring.com
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Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 15:19:58 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Roy Rosenzweig
Subject: Re: families: OAH Magazine of History
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If you are interested in the special issue of OAH Magazine of History
that Linda Gordon and Steve Mintz co-edited, you can see the table of
contents (and order a copy) at
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/family/index.html
Roy
>
>
>incidentally: Steve Mintz and I recently co-edited a special issue of the
>OAH Magazine of History on teaching family history. I think it was the
>most recent issues, but it could be one back.
>
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Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 00:16:28 +0000
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
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From: Eric Chase
Subject: Families Historiography and Gender
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Hey all,
I've been a silent observer and taking in lots of great information. My 2
cents on teaching family and gender in history stem from my research into
the Luddites of England around 1813 and the Great Strike of 1860 in Lynn
Mass.
Most info that is available on the Luddites come from scholars of the time.
Their impression of the Luddites was that they were all men. This does not
take into consideration that food riots going on around the same time were
conducted by women caling themselves "Lady Luddites" nor the fact that for
such a huge uprising, very few Luddites were ever caught. This is due to
popular support of all the communities and the basic social structure, the
family.
My point being that information about the past was handed down through the
chroniclers of the past. These fine young gentlemen were mostly just that,
fine young gentlemen. Their perception of women and family roles in such
events as the Luddite uprising go through their lens and not necessarily
that of the actual participants. I'm sure I'm not saying anything people
already do not know, but it is good to restate it.
My suggestion in teaching roles of family and gender (reiterating others
here) is to look for the more obscure references. Look at other social
institutions that existed simultainiously with the event being taught, and
obviously look for those great first hand accounts of the paricipants. In
the case of the Luddites, the Primitive Methodists, William Godwin, Mary
Shelley Wolstiencraft and others provide a larger picture for who the
Luddites are in their entirety and not just the men involved.
The same goes for the Great Strike of 1860, but I'll spare you all the
lecture and save it for my students :)
Eric Chase
History and Sociology
South Puget Sound Community College
Olympia, WA
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Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 05:10:16 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "A. Carl Duncan"
Subject: Using family in Ethnic Studies
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I am developing an Ethnic Studies course for middle and high school students. The core of the course is understanding family dynamics as a means for explicating an ethnic community. I focus on four general ethnic groups African American, Mexican American, Southeast Asian American, and Native American. Family studies reveal the diversity of each ethnic group. Family studies address the particular history, contributions, and challenges of each group in America.
I would like some input as to how I can refine the task of teaching such complex and higher order subject matter to secondary students. Included here are comments by David McMullen and Linda Gordon that highlight this complexity. Thanks for an interesting and enlightening forum.
Carl Duncan
AVID Coordinator
Kucera Middle School
Rialto, CA 92377
kweliace@earthlink.net
aduncan@rialto.k12.ca.us
As we explore the term "family," I wonder if it is not very similar to the word "community." We often begin with a very inflexible definition of community, such as a town or village, yet the more we explore examples of community, the more flexible we become. I am reminded of the book Talley's Corner (I apologize, I have forgotten the name of the author), about a group of African-American men who hung out together on a District of Columbia street corner in the 1960s. With family, we seem to do the reserve. We start out with a narrow definition and begin to expand. Ultimately, the men in Talley's Corner might also be defined
as a family.
David McMullen
Ph.D. Candidate in History
University of Aberdeen/UNC-Charlotte
E-mail: DLMcMullen@aol.com
In modern scholarly work, we recognize that communities are mobile and volatile; they can be created and fragmented through how people behave in response to the larger
world. The civil rights organization SNCC called itself at times "the beloved community" in recognition of the powerful bonding they created by their courageous activism. In labor history it is easy to find examples of community built but also of community
fragmented--in fact, there are many examples of workers' community deliberately fractured by the strategic maneuvers of employers.
But family, although I think it is ultimately as completely socially constructed as community, is often understood by its members to be fixed biologically. And this understanding is part of the great power of family as ideology.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for
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I am developing an Ethnic Studies course for middle and high school students.
The core of the course is understanding family dynamics as a means for
explicating an ethnic community. I focus on four general ethnic groups
African American, Mexican American, Southeast Asian American, and Native
American. Family studies reveal the diversity of each ethnic group. Family
studies address the particular history, contributions, and challenges of
each group in America.
I would like some input as to how I can refine the task of teaching
such complex and higher order subject matter to secondary students. Included
here are comments by David McMullen and Linda Gordon that highlight this
complexity. Thanks for an interesting and enlightening forum.
Carl Duncan
AVID Coordinator
Kucera Middle School
Rialto, CA 92377
kweliace@earthlink.net
aduncan@rialto.k12.ca.us
As we explore the term "family," I wonder if it is not very similar
to the word "community." We often begin with a very inflexible definition
of community, such as a town or village, yet the more we explore examples
of community, the more flexible we become. I am reminded of the book
Talley's Corner (I apologize, I have forgotten the name of the author),
about a group of African-American men who hung out together on a District
of Columbia street corner in the 1960s. With family, we seem to do
the reserve. We start out with a narrow definition and begin to expand.
Ultimately, the men in Talley's Corner might also be defined as a family.
David McMullen
Ph.D. Candidate in History
University of Aberdeen/UNC-Charlotte
E-mail: DLMcMullen@aol.com
In modern scholarly work, we recognize that communities are mobile
and volatile; they can be created and fragmented through how people behave
in response to the larger
world. The civil rights organization SNCC called itself at times
"the beloved community" in recognition of the powerful bonding they created
by their courageous activism. In labor history it is easy to find examples
of community built but also of community
fragmented--in fact, there are many examples of workers' community
deliberately fractured by the strategic maneuvers of employers.
But family, although I think it is ultimately as completely socially
constructed as community, is often understood by its members to be fixed
biologically. And this understanding is part of the great power of family
as ideology.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web
site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for
teaching U.S. History.
--------------1BCB243BCA364620938B730B--
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=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 22:00:59 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: Re: Using family in Ethnic Studies
In-Reply-To: <3C9495B8.89E5CC6F@earthlink.net>
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Regarding Mexican Americans, I have used Ernesto Galarza's memoir Barrio
Boy, and it is definitely accessible to high school students.
At 05:10 AM 03/17/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>>>>
I am developing an Ethnic Studies course for middle and high
school students. The core of the course is understanding family dynamics
as a means for explicating an ethnic community. I focus on four general
ethnic groups African American, Mexican American, Southeast Asian
American, and Native American. Family studies reveal the diversity of
each ethnic group. Family studies address the particular history,
contributions, and challenges of each group in America.
I would like some input as to how I can refine the task of teaching such
complex and higher order subject matter to secondary students. Included
here are comments by David McMullen and Linda Gordon that highlight this
complexity. Thanks for an interesting and enlightening forum.
Carl Duncan
AVID Coordinator
Kucera Middle School
Rialto, CA 92377
kweliace@earthlink.net
aduncan@rialto.k12.ca.us
As we explore the term "family," I wonder if it is not very
similar to the word "community." We often begin with a very inflexible
definition of community, such as a town or village, yet the more we
explore examples of community, the more flexible we become. I am
reminded of the book Talley's Corner (I apologize, I have forgotten the
name of the author), about a group of African-American men who hung out
together on a District of Columbia street corner in the 1960s. With
family, we seem to do the reserve. We start out with a narrow definition
and begin to expand. Ultimately, the men in Talley's Corner might also
be defined as a family.
David McMullen
Ph.D. Candidate in History
University of Aberdeen/UNC-Charlotte
E-mail: DLMcMullen@aol.com
In modern scholarly work, we recognize that communities are
mobile and volatile; they can be created and fragmented through how
people behave in response to the larger
world. The civil rights organization SNCC called itself at times
"the beloved community" in recognition of the powerful bonding they
created by their courageous activism. In labor history it is easy to find
examples of community built but also of community
fragmented--in fact, there are many examples of workers'
community deliberately fractured by the strategic maneuvers of
employers.
But family, although I think it is ultimately as completely
socially constructed as community, is often understood by its members to
be fixed biologically. And this understanding is part of the great power
of family as ideology.
best, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web
site at <http://historymatters.gmu.edu for
more resources for
teaching U.S. History.
<<<<<<<<
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:57:15 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: the state
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I want to thank you all for these comments--they're all getting filed away
in my family teaching file!
Diana Selig brought up two new issues: men in families and the role of the
state. The first is too hard for me--I don't know enough good literature
on this and would like suggestions too.
But as to the state: I do a special unit on this question, at least 2 weeks
in length. (I organize the first half of my course chronologically, the
second half topically.) One exercise that I have enjoyed (and hope the
students did too) was asking them to make lists of the many ways in which
government influences family life. Our lists include: welfare; child
custody; marriage and divorce law; death and burial; compulsory education;
tax policy; highway construction; home mortgage guarantees; minimum wage;
medical insurance and, of course, lack of it; reproduction control policy;
child care policy .... the list can get quite long. Obviously one could
devote a whole course to family and state. I choose one or two case
studies, such as marriage/separation (I've used parts of Hendrik Hartog's
"Man and Wife in America") and reproduction control, and I spend, if I can,
a week on each.
The key point that I want students to "get" is that family life has always
been socially regulated. I try to show how even pre-state societies
developed powerful rules about and constraints on appropriate familial
structure and activity.
The other side of this point, is of course, that there is no "natural." It
is harder to make this sink in, and all of us sometimes fall back into
using the term "natural", but I do think it is vitally important to
challenge it. This is because "family values" enforcers frequently claim
that their particular set of values is the natural one or the God-given one
or the "traditional" one--I suggest that polemically and ideologically
these different groundings for family values (nature, God, tradition) work
similarly. There is simply no such thing as a natural family or "natural"
childbirth, etc.
The correlate of this, of course, is that all humans had and have "family
values." To illustrate this, I sometimes present some of the old arguments
that slaves had no family ties and show how historians, notably Herbert
Gutman, collected evidence that destroyed those arguments.
best wishes, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:59:06 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: modernization, question
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I found Diana Selig's discussion of how she approaches modernization
extremely helpful.
I would much like to hear any comments of how you have taught modernization
in a global perspective--i.e., the different impacts that modernization has
had in different cultural and economic contexts.
thanks, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 09:08:24 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Linda Gordon
Subject: fam: child-raising and gender
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I think that Ann Short Chirhart is offering a terrific way to conceptualize
how families both preserved and challenged traditional rural values. Using
her approach, one could ask students to think about, what parents' goals
for their children are in different classes, cultures, racial groups, and
how these goals are gendered.
In relation to gender, I would argue that while there are some gender
continuities across cultural difference--notably, the expectation that
women raise small children--that there are also differences. Ann's example
of African American desires for daughters is a good example, because the
honoring of women's achievement is BOTH an adaptation to economic
oppression AND an autonomous cultural value.
There are some household structures that produce significantly different
gender systems, however. One example I have used is convents. Nuns do not
share the view that becoming a housewife and mother is the highest goal or
"fulfillment" for a woman. In this respect, I now wonder, are there
similarities between the nuns' views and those of many poor African Americans?
I would appreciate suggestions of readings for students on convents,
monasteries, etc., that offer information on household/family structure.
thanks, Linda
Linda Gordon tel. 212-998-8627
Professor of History fax 212-995-4017
NYU
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 09:50:46 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Kriste Lindenmeyer
Subject: Re: teaching family history
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What essays on the historiography of family and childhood history do
subscribers recommend?
Kris
Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer
Dept. of History
UMBC
410-455-6521
410-455-1045 (fax)
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 10:20:38 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Mona Gleason
Subject: families - teaching
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Thanks to Linda for providing a useful way of thinking about the whole
question of agency in the history of childhood and the family. Based on her
comments, we can see the need for recognizing the complexity and
"messiness" regarding children and their status as "dependents" - some
possible categories of analysis come up for me: "formal" vs "informal"
agency, legal vs moral agency, systemic (ie structural) agency vs
"individual" agency...the possible categories for determining and
evaluating whether children resist oppression or show agency need to be
arranged and viewed, I think, as existing along an ever-changing spectrum
(shaded by age, race, class, gender, sexuality.....)
In terms of teaching, another strategy that I have used in my history of
childhood courses (that could be adapted for history of the family courses)
comes from an article by Kate Rousmaniere, "From Memory to Curriculum,"
Teaching Education, vol 11, 1 (2000): 87-98. As part of a course for
pre-service teachers, Rousmaniere has her students engage in a timed
writing exercise (in class) around a particular theme in their memory of
schooling - she calls it educational autobiography. I have modified this
approach for my History of Childhood course in which students are asked a
question, eg. "Do you remember having to work as a child? What kinds of
jobs did you do? What were some attitudes towards work in your family?"
etc.. I have students write for 15 minutes or so, gather up their writings,
read them, comment on them, and hand them back - we don't do this every
week but the writings can form the basis of a final, more formal assignment
in which they compare, intertwine, juxtapose, etc., their own histories
with the course work. These writings also tend to form the groundwork for
our weekly thematic discussions.
Students seem to enjoy this - they become more invested in the course, see
themselves as historically "placed," and create their own primary sources
based on their memories. Sometimes students are happy to deal with painful
memories, others avoid this "soul searching" - the writings are not made
"public" so they use them in a way that suits them and brings the past and
present together in an immediate way that is comfortable for them. The
exercise, again, allows us on-going space to talk about the difficulties
and possibilities of using memory as a historical source.
all best,
Mona Gleason
****************************************
Mona Gleason, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Educational Studies
2044 Lower Mall, Ponderosa Annex G
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6T 1Z2
http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/pages/gleason/gleason.html
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Thanks to Linda for providing a useful way of thinking about the whole
question of agency in the history of childhood and the family. Based on
her comments, we can see the need for recognizing the complexity
and "messiness" regarding children and their status as
"dependents" - some possible categories of analysis come up for
me: "formal" vs "informal" agency, legal vs moral
agency, systemic (ie structural) agency vs "individual"
agency...the possible categories for determining and evaluating
whether children resist oppression or show agency need to be arranged and
viewed, I think, as existing along an ever-changing spectrum (shaded by
age, race, class, gender, sexuality.....)
In terms of teaching, another strategy that I have used in my history of
childhood courses (that could be adapted for history of the family
courses) comes from an article by Kate Rousmaniere, "From Memory to
Curriculum," Teaching Education, vol 11, 1 (2000): 87-98. As
part of a course for pre-service teachers, Rousmaniere has her students
engage in a timed writing exercise (in class) around a particular theme
in their memory of schooling - she calls it educational autobiography. I
have modified this approach for my History of Childhood course in which
students are asked a question, eg. "Do you remember having to work
as a child? What kinds of jobs did you do? What were some attitudes
towards work in your family?" etc.. I have students write for 15
minutes or so, gather up their writings, read them, comment on them, and
hand them back - we don't do this every week but the writings can form
the basis of a final, more formal assignment in which they compare,
intertwine, juxtapose, etc., their own histories with the course
work. These writings also tend to form the groundwork for our weekly
thematic discussions.
Students seem to enjoy this - they become more invested in the course,
see themselves as historically "placed," and create their own
primary sources based on their memories. Sometimes students are happy to
deal with painful memories, others avoid this "soul searching"
- the writings are not made "public" so they use them in a way
that suits them and brings the past and present together in an immediate
way that is comfortable for them. The exercise, again, allows us on-going
space to talk about the difficulties and possibilities of using memory as
a historical source.
all best,
Mona Gleason
****************************************
Mona Gleason, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Educational Studies
2044 Lower Mall, Ponderosa Annex G
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6T 1Z2
http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/pages/gleason/gleason.html
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Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 13:26:30 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Kay Rout
Subject: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
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This essay, inspired by the Yates case, makes some fascinating comments on
the expectations society has for mothers. I would use this in class to focu=
s
on family roles. A case like this stays in the public memory for quite a
while, so it would be useful beyond this week. The author targets as a caus=
e
of the murders of the children the unrealistic expectations for mothers
within the nuclear family structure. If she is right, then in an extended
family her stresses would have been fewer and not tipped Ms. Yates over the
edge. Or if such a high percentage of the nurturing were not expected of a
woman who has no legitimate needs of her own within the family, the childre=
n
might be alive.
=20
March 17, 2002
Crime and Motherhood
By ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
A=A0NATIONAL gasp went up last week when Andrea Pia Yates was found guilty in
a Texas courtroom of capital murder =8B possible punishment: life behind bars
or death by lethal injection. As it turned out, on Friday the jury opted fo=
r
life in prison.
But questions remained. What did the verdict say about the American system
of justice, its system of values? Mrs. Yates had been described over and
over during the trial as mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations,
postpartum psychoses and suicidal tendencies (she had tried to kill herself
twice). How could any mother after giving birth to those five babies seen o=
n
the haunting home videos do what she did: drown them systematically, one
after the other =8B any sane mother?
But was she sane? That was the question. In fact, that wasn't the question
before the court. Under Texas law, the question was narrower: did she know
right from wrong when she killed her children? On those grounds, the jury
found her guilty despite her history of mental illness. What, in effect,
happened in that courtroom is that while the defense tried to make the case
about mental illness, the prosecutors made it about motherhood =8B and
motherhood trumped mental illness.
"The children had become a hindrance, and she wanted them gone," said
Kaylynn Williford, one of the lead prosecutors, conjuring the image of an
overwhelmed stay-at- home mother unable to cope with the needs of a deeply
religious, demanding husband and ever-growing brood. She was, in short, the
ultimate maternal failure turned murderer, the demon mother writ large. She
had to be punished =8B severe mental instability notwithstanding.
The flip side of this demonization of Mrs. Yates is the American
sentimentalization of motherhood. It is seen as a sacred and sacrosanct
sphere. The circle of mother and child is a Hallmark card place, where the
selfless mother nurtures her young, no matter her dreams or ambitions,
conflicts or terrors. Motherhood is seen through gauze, in soft, religiousl=
y
inflected focus. Madonna and child. Through all that gauze, it's hard to se=
e
a mother like Mrs. Yates as she really is =8B one of the desperate,
destructive mothers nobody takes seriously until too late.
"To capture how deep this is in our culture =8B this sentimentality about
motherhood =8B you have to go back to the 18th century," said Victoria Brown,
a professor of American history at Grinnell College. "That's when there was
a profound shift in Protestant literature from an image of woman as Eve to
an image of woman as Mary. That is how she redeems herself from original
sin, that is how she is valuable to the community =8B as the self-sacrificing
mother.
"And along comes the American Revolution. Women do not get the vote, they d=
o
not get full citizenship. They are defined as Republican mothers who will
keep the nation together and insure democracy by being these selfless
creatures at home, who raise virtuous citizens."
It seems apparent that Andrea and Rusty Yates bought into this vision big
time =8B a vision he apparently held fast to even as she fell ill, even when
she became pregnant that fifth time against doctors' advice (for fear of
sending her into another postpartum psychotic episode). He insisted on
home-schooling the children, tightening that sacrosanct motherhood circle
around his increasingly fragmented wife.
That was her historically and religiously ordained role, motherhood, and sh=
e
would do it even at peril to her own sanity. If her anger at him or her
angst over her role was part of her madness, we will probably never know.
But no question, the prosecutor skillfully played up that motif of wifely
anger and revenge.
But what of the rest, the people who stood by and watched her disappear int=
o
madness, those close enough to see beneath the gauze of motherhood? What
could they, what should they, have done =8B the relatives, friends and doctor=
s
=8B all of whom say they knew she was unstable? They made stabs at helping,
but not enough to avert tragedy.
"We don't have an ethic in this country that says it's suitable to
interfere," said Professor Brown. "So it's not just the sentimentalization
of motherhood that's at play here, it is the privatization of it."
Motherhood is a no-entry zone, a zone of privacy. That's apparent throughou=
t
the culture =8B from a husband's refusal to heed the cry of a deranged wife t=
o
the state's reluctance to take children from mothers, however abusive or
addicted. It goes beyond the hands-off, romantic cult of motherhood. Privac=
y
=8B and individualism =8B are basic to our democratic, capitalistic system,
where nonintervention in motherhood is the personal analog to
nonintervention in the marketplace.
THE ultimate question the Yates case raises is this: Is there is a point
where intervention should occur, where mothers at risk should be helped or
children protected =8B even from their mothers? Can't such tragedies be
prevented?
After all, it's not that the public doesn't involve itself in motherhood at
some level. There is always a chorus pushing and pulling at mothers, tellin=
g
them how to do this or that, a lot of it from women themselves, as they try
not to feel guilty about failing to live up to the myth.
The airwaves and bookshelves are full of didactic advice =8B be it the hippie
homeopathic insistence on natural childbirth or the pro-family brigade's
insistence on the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood. The advice, though
often contradictory, can end up at the same place: reinforcing the myth of
the all-important mother who should be able to meet all her children's need=
s
=8B physical, psychological, emotional and economic =8B without help or
"interference" from anyone. The new importance of fathers has sometimes
ameliorated this mother- centric view of parenting, but sometimes it has ha=
d
the perverse effect of upping maternal guilt. Mothers are tough on
themselves =8B and each other.
And who was tougher on herself than Andrea Yates? That's why, she said, she
tried first to kill herself and then killed her children =8B to save them fro=
m
her inept mothering. They were turning out wrong, going to the devil. There
is a grisly, demented rationality in her irrationality, this overwhelmed,
unbalanced mother who will now spend virtually the rest of her life in
prison.=20
Anne Taylor Fleming is an essayist on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:40:47 -0600
Reply-To: "M. Rini Hughes"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "M. Rini Hughes"
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Kay:
Thank you for posting this. I have an abiding interest in the ideology of
the nuclear family and, particularly, of motherhood, and this article brings
attention to so many of the problems we experience as a society BECAUSE of
our social formation, a formation that makes the ideology the yardstick
against which ALL relationships are judged.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kay Rout"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 12:26 PM
Subject: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
This essay, inspired by the Yates case, makes some fascinating comments on
the expectations society has for mothers. I would use this in class to focus
on family roles. A case like this stays in the public memory for quite a
while, so it would be useful beyond this week. The author targets as a cause
of the murders of the children the unrealistic expectations for mothers
within the nuclear family structure. If she is right, then in an extended
family her stresses would have been fewer and not tipped Ms. Yates over the
edge. Or if such a high percentage of the nurturing were not expected of a
woman who has no legitimate needs of her own within the family, the children
might be alive.
March 17, 2002
Crime and Motherhood
By ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
A NATIONAL gasp went up last week when Andrea Pia Yates was found guilty in
a Texas courtroom of capital murder < possible punishment: life behind bars
or death by lethal injection. As it turned out, on Friday the jury opted for
life in prison.
But questions remained. What did the verdict say about the American system
of justice, its system of values? Mrs. Yates had been described over and
over during the trial as mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations,
postpartum psychoses and suicidal tendencies (she had tried to kill herself
twice). How could any mother after giving birth to those five babies seen on
the haunting home videos do what she did: drown them systematically, one
after the other < any sane mother?
But was she sane? That was the question. In fact, that wasn't the question
before the court. Under Texas law, the question was narrower: did she know
right from wrong when she killed her children? On those grounds, the jury
found her guilty despite her history of mental illness. What, in effect,
happened in that courtroom is that while the defense tried to make the case
about mental illness, the prosecutors made it about motherhood < and
motherhood trumped mental illness.
"The children had become a hindrance, and she wanted them gone," said
Kaylynn Williford, one of the lead prosecutors, conjuring the image of an
overwhelmed stay-at- home mother unable to cope with the needs of a deeply
religious, demanding husband and ever-growing brood. She was, in short, the
ultimate maternal failure turned murderer, the demon mother writ large. She
had to be punished < severe mental instability notwithstanding.
The flip side of this demonization of Mrs. Yates is the American
sentimentalization of motherhood. It is seen as a sacred and sacrosanct
sphere. The circle of mother and child is a Hallmark card place, where the
selfless mother nurtures her young, no matter her dreams or ambitions,
conflicts or terrors. Motherhood is seen through gauze, in soft, religiously
inflected focus. Madonna and child. Through all that gauze, it's hard to see
a mother like Mrs. Yates as she really is < one of the desperate,
destructive mothers nobody takes seriously until too late.
"To capture how deep this is in our culture < this sentimentality about
motherhood < you have to go back to the 18th century," said Victoria Brown,
a professor of American history at Grinnell College. "That's when there was
a profound shift in Protestant literature from an image of woman as Eve to
an image of woman as Mary. That is how she redeems herself from original
sin, that is how she is valuable to the community < as the self-sacrificing
mother.
"And along comes the American Revolution. Women do not get the vote, they do
not get full citizenship. They are defined as Republican mothers who will
keep the nation together and insure democracy by being these selfless
creatures at home, who raise virtuous citizens."
It seems apparent that Andrea and Rusty Yates bought into this vision big
time < a vision he apparently held fast to even as she fell ill, even when
she became pregnant that fifth time against doctors' advice (for fear of
sending her into another postpartum psychotic episode). He insisted on
home-schooling the children, tightening that sacrosanct motherhood circle
around his increasingly fragmented wife.
That was her historically and religiously ordained role, motherhood, and she
would do it even at peril to her own sanity. If her anger at him or her
angst over her role was part of her madness, we will probably never know.
But no question, the prosecutor skillfully played up that motif of wifely
anger and revenge.
But what of the rest, the people who stood by and watched her disappear into
madness, those close enough to see beneath the gauze of motherhood? What
could they, what should they, have done < the relatives, friends and doctors
< all of whom say they knew she was unstable? They made stabs at helping,
but not enough to avert tragedy.
"We don't have an ethic in this country that says it's suitable to
interfere," said Professor Brown. "So it's not just the sentimentalization
of motherhood that's at play here, it is the privatization of it."
Motherhood is a no-entry zone, a zone of privacy. That's apparent throughout
the culture < from a husband's refusal to heed the cry of a deranged wife to
the state's reluctance to take children from mothers, however abusive or
addicted. It goes beyond the hands-off, romantic cult of motherhood. Privacy
< and individualism < are basic to our democratic, capitalistic system,
where nonintervention in motherhood is the personal analog to
nonintervention in the marketplace.
THE ultimate question the Yates case raises is this: Is there is a point
where intervention should occur, where mothers at risk should be helped or
children protected < even from their mothers? Can't such tragedies be
prevented?
After all, it's not that the public doesn't involve itself in motherhood at
some level. There is always a chorus pushing and pulling at mothers, telling
them how to do this or that, a lot of it from women themselves, as they try
not to feel guilty about failing to live up to the myth.
The airwaves and bookshelves are full of didactic advice < be it the hippie
homeopathic insistence on natural childbirth or the pro-family brigade's
insistence on the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood. The advice, though
often contradictory, can end up at the same place: reinforcing the myth of
the all-important mother who should be able to meet all her children's needs
< physical, psychological, emotional and economic < without help or
"interference" from anyone. The new importance of fathers has sometimes
ameliorated this mother- centric view of parenting, but sometimes it has had
the perverse effect of upping maternal guilt. Mothers are tough on
themselves < and each other.
And who was tougher on herself than Andrea Yates? That's why, she said, she
tried first to kill herself and then killed her children < to save them from
her inept mothering. They were turning out wrong, going to the devil. There
is a grisly, demented rationality in her irrationality, this overwhelmed,
unbalanced mother who will now spend virtually the rest of her life in
prison.
Anne Taylor Fleming is an essayist on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:21:28 -0600
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Atkins, Annette"
Subject: Re: FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 19 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002 (#2002-17)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Thanks to all of you for so many interesting and helpful posts to this =
forum.
It must, in part, be a result of growing up as a middle child in a =
family of 12 kids, but it occurred to me some years ago that siblings =
get short shrift in much of the literature on family history. I think =
that one of Freud's gifts to the 20th century was a focus on =
relationships between parents and children. But my experience inclined =
me to notice the powerful effect of my siblings (then and now!). In =
addition, I couldn't find much in the literature about what happens to =
sibling relationships in adulthood, as if somehow we stop being part of =
our growing up family when we form our own adult family.
So, I spent a few years reading letters exchanged by brothers and =
sisters (as children, where available, more often as adults) in 19th c. =
US families -- white, middle-class, literate, native-born mostly -- =
trying to understand family life from this angle. In 2001 the =
University of Illinois published the book based on that research, We =
Grew Up Together: Brothers and Sisters in 19th Century America. It's =
organized around 10 particular families -- urban, farm, famous, big, =
small, close, chilly -- looking at the sibling relationships, family =
dynamics, family culture in each one. =20
Among other things, these families contrast sharply with images of =
"traditional families" and they revealed an interesting interplay =
between family roles and gender roles. =20
Anyway, I wrote it with an undergraduate family history course in mind =
and thought some of you might find it of interest since there's so =
little about the topic currently available.
Thanks.
Annette Atkins
Professor of History
Saint John's University
Collegeville, Minnesota 56321
(320) 363 2138 Fax: (320) 363 3300
aatkins@csbsju.edu
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always had.
-----Original Message-----
From: Automatic digest processor
[mailto:LISTSERV@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 11:00 PM
To: Recipients of FAMILIESFORUM digests
Subject: FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 19 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002 (#2002-17)
There is one message totalling 157 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. A mother under pressure: role overload =3D breakdown?
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at =
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. =
History.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:40:47 -0600
From: "M. Rini Hughes"
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload =3D breakdown?
Kay:
Thank you for posting this. I have an abiding interest in the ideology =
of
the nuclear family and, particularly, of motherhood, and this article =
brings
attention to so many of the problems we experience as a society BECAUSE =
of
our social formation, a formation that makes the ideology the yardstick
against which ALL relationships are judged.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kay Rout"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 12:26 PM
Subject: A mother under pressure: role overload =3D breakdown?
This essay, inspired by the Yates case, makes some fascinating comments =
on
the expectations society has for mothers. I would use this in class to =
focus
on family roles. A case like this stays in the public memory for quite a
while, so it would be useful beyond this week. The author targets as a =
cause
of the murders of the children the unrealistic expectations for mothers
within the nuclear family structure. If she is right, then in an =
extended
family her stresses would have been fewer and not tipped Ms. Yates over =
the
edge. Or if such a high percentage of the nurturing were not expected of =
a
woman who has no legitimate needs of her own within the family, the =
children
might be alive.
March 17, 2002
Crime and Motherhood
By ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
A NATIONAL gasp went up last week when Andrea Pia Yates was found guilty =
in
a Texas courtroom of capital murder < possible punishment: life behind =
bars
or death by lethal injection. As it turned out, on Friday the jury opted =
for
life in prison.
But questions remained. What did the verdict say about the American =
system
of justice, its system of values? Mrs. Yates had been described over and
over during the trial as mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations,
postpartum psychoses and suicidal tendencies (she had tried to kill =
herself
twice). How could any mother after giving birth to those five babies =
seen on
the haunting home videos do what she did: drown them systematically, one
after the other < any sane mother?
But was she sane? That was the question. In fact, that wasn't the =
question
before the court. Under Texas law, the question was narrower: did she =
know
right from wrong when she killed her children? On those grounds, the =
jury
found her guilty despite her history of mental illness. What, in effect,
happened in that courtroom is that while the defense tried to make the =
case
about mental illness, the prosecutors made it about motherhood < and
motherhood trumped mental illness.
"The children had become a hindrance, and she wanted them gone," said
Kaylynn Williford, one of the lead prosecutors, conjuring the image of =
an
overwhelmed stay-at- home mother unable to cope with the needs of a =
deeply
religious, demanding husband and ever-growing brood. She was, in short, =
the
ultimate maternal failure turned murderer, the demon mother writ large. =
She
had to be punished < severe mental instability notwithstanding.
The flip side of this demonization of Mrs. Yates is the American
sentimentalization of motherhood. It is seen as a sacred and sacrosanct
sphere. The circle of mother and child is a Hallmark card place, where =
the
selfless mother nurtures her young, no matter her dreams or ambitions,
conflicts or terrors. Motherhood is seen through gauze, in soft, =
religiously
inflected focus. Madonna and child. Through all that gauze, it's hard to =
see
a mother like Mrs. Yates as she really is < one of the desperate,
destructive mothers nobody takes seriously until too late.
"To capture how deep this is in our culture < this sentimentality about
motherhood < you have to go back to the 18th century," said Victoria =
Brown,
a professor of American history at Grinnell College. "That's when there =
was
a profound shift in Protestant literature from an image of woman as Eve =
to
an image of woman as Mary. That is how she redeems herself from original
sin, that is how she is valuable to the community < as the =
self-sacrificing
mother.
"And along comes the American Revolution. Women do not get the vote, =
they do
not get full citizenship. They are defined as Republican mothers who =
will
keep the nation together and insure democracy by being these selfless
creatures at home, who raise virtuous citizens."
It seems apparent that Andrea and Rusty Yates bought into this vision =
big
time < a vision he apparently held fast to even as she fell ill, even =
when
she became pregnant that fifth time against doctors' advice (for fear of
sending her into another postpartum psychotic episode). He insisted on
home-schooling the children, tightening that sacrosanct motherhood =
circle
around his increasingly fragmented wife.
That was her historically and religiously ordained role, motherhood, and =
she
would do it even at peril to her own sanity. If her anger at him or her
angst over her role was part of her madness, we will probably never =
know.
But no question, the prosecutor skillfully played up that motif of =
wifely
anger and revenge.
But what of the rest, the people who stood by and watched her disappear =
into
madness, those close enough to see beneath the gauze of motherhood? What
could they, what should they, have done < the relatives, friends and =
doctors
< all of whom say they knew she was unstable? They made stabs at =
helping,
but not enough to avert tragedy.
"We don't have an ethic in this country that says it's suitable to
interfere," said Professor Brown. "So it's not just the =
sentimentalization
of motherhood that's at play here, it is the privatization of it."
Motherhood is a no-entry zone, a zone of privacy. That's apparent =
throughout
the culture < from a husband's refusal to heed the cry of a deranged =
wife to
the state's reluctance to take children from mothers, however abusive or
addicted. It goes beyond the hands-off, romantic cult of motherhood. =
Privacy
< and individualism < are basic to our democratic, capitalistic system,
where nonintervention in motherhood is the personal analog to
nonintervention in the marketplace.
THE ultimate question the Yates case raises is this: Is there is a point
where intervention should occur, where mothers at risk should be helped =
or
children protected < even from their mothers? Can't such tragedies be
prevented?
After all, it's not that the public doesn't involve itself in motherhood =
at
some level. There is always a chorus pushing and pulling at mothers, =
telling
them how to do this or that, a lot of it from women themselves, as they =
try
not to feel guilty about failing to live up to the myth.
The airwaves and bookshelves are full of didactic advice < be it the =
hippie
homeopathic insistence on natural childbirth or the pro-family brigade's
insistence on the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood. The advice, though
often contradictory, can end up at the same place: reinforcing the myth =
of
the all-important mother who should be able to meet all her children's =
needs
< physical, psychological, emotional and economic < without help or
"interference" from anyone. The new importance of fathers has sometimes
ameliorated this mother- centric view of parenting, but sometimes it has =
had
the perverse effect of upping maternal guilt. Mothers are tough on
themselves < and each other.
And who was tougher on herself than Andrea Yates? That's why, she said, =
she
tried first to kill herself and then killed her children < to save them =
from
her inept mothering. They were turning out wrong, going to the devil. =
There
is a grisly, demented rationality in her irrationality, this =
overwhelmed,
unbalanced mother who will now spend virtually the rest of her life in
prison.
Anne Taylor Fleming is an essayist on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. =
History.
------------------------------
End of FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 19 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002 (#2002-17)
*******************************************************************
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 00:44:50 -0500
Reply-To: lg48@nyu.edu
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "lg48@nyu.edu"
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Responding to the essay on the Yates case:
I did think it absurd and cruel to find Andrea Yates "responsible," given that all agreed she was insane; but then I am i=
nclined to consider all murder insane by definition.
More troubling is the question raised in the email, how could the children have been protected and their mother helped?
One of the major obstacles to help was the religious ideology of the parents which underlay their family ideology and the=
mother's repeated exposure to mental illness. It is never easy to protect children without violating adults' right to p=
rivacy, but a welfare state might have been able to intervene. At the present moment, minimal funding of social services=
would be a gain. But more basically, I think family historians have come to understand that there is a constant and unr=
esolvable tension between privacy rights (and the right to social respect) and the need to protect weaker members of hous=
eholds. We have learned that social welfare policies have both social control and helping functions. Obviously if there=
is reason to believe that the physical safety of children is in question, then their right to protection must override a=
ny parents' rights, but few social workers can see the future.
This problem relates, in turn, to the agency of children that we were discussing a few days ago. Some of the Yates child=
ren were old enough to be able to have asked for help if they had been acculturated to thinking in tterms of a larger pro=
tective community.
Original Message:
-----------------
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mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .
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=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 12:05:19 -0500
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: Kriste Lindenmeyer
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Linda Gordon writes:
>This problem relates, in turn, to the agency of children that we were
>discussing a few days ago. Some of the Yates children were old enough
to >be able to have asked for help if they had been acculturated to
thinking in >terms of a larger protective community.
Children have often asked for help in the past--and continue to do so
today. They work through organizations that touch their daily lives
(school the most obvious). The movement toward home schooling certainly
limits the opportunities for children to ask for help from those outside
their own families. Parents often home school because they want to
isolate their children from the perceived "evils" of the larger society.
While this may be a choice good for some children, is this a trend
something that removes some of children's agency to control their own
lives? Is there a similar pattern any time in the past? Age segregation
in schools and other organizations diminished the time children spent
with adults or youngsters of varied ages. Did it also provide children
with great autonomy?
Kris Lindenmeyer
Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer
Dept. of History
UMBC
410-455-6521
410-455-1045 (fax)
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 13:03:56 -0500
Reply-To: cadams@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: CE Adams
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
In-Reply-To: <001801c1d28c$e9c99080$f4615582@umbchistory>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Thanks to everyone for a stimulating discussion!
Re children's agency in the past:
Did not children, at least till the early 20th century,
have a lot more autonomy (and a lot more often expected
of them)?
Around 1800, U.S. Grant's father Jesse, age 11, was
simply left by his father when his mother died; it was
assumed he would find someone to take him in, or an
apprenticeship. Ulysses, at age 9 in 1831, took
passengers in his father's horse-drawn wagon to
Cincinnati from his hometown c. 35 miles away.
And girls could move into a home as servants from age 9-
10. Of course, enslaved children could also find
themselves on their own too, from death or being sold
away from kin.
Also, doesn't this discussion move toward issues
of "the invention of childhood" and "the invention of
adolescence"?
Carole Elizabeth Adams
History and Women's Studies
University of Central Florida
cadams@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 15:18:59 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: "Selig, Diana"
Subject: Re: Family Diversity Projects
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Here's the contact information for the Family Diversity Projects, which I
believe someone on this list mentioned earlier. This is a non-profit
organization "devoted to educating the public about issues related to the
diversity of family life." The group has developed a series of books and
exhibits about various kinds of families today, materials valuable for
talking with students (as well as teachers and young children) about
changing family patterns. I took my class to view a photo-text exhibit
called "Love Makes a Family" that inspired good discussion.
Web page: www.familydiv.org
Email: info@familydiv.org
Phone: 413-256-0502
Fax: 413-253-3977
Diana Selig
Assistant Professor of History
Claremont McKenna College
850 Columbia Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711-6420
909-607-3396 phone
909-621-8419 fax
diana.selig@claremontmckenna.edu
www.claremontmckenna.edu
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Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 20:04:01 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
Subject: Re: FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 19 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002 (#2002-17)
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
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You might also want to look at Judith Rich Harris, THE NURTURE ASSUMPTION
(1998) on siblings. Joe Illick
On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Atkins, Annette wrote:
> Thanks to all of you for so many interesting and helpful posts to this forum.
>
> It must, in part, be a result of growing up as a middle child in a family of 12 kids, but it occurred to me some years ago that siblings get short shrift in much of the literature on family history. I think that one of Freud's gifts to the 20th century was a focus on relationships between parents and children. But my experience inclined me to notice the powerful effect of my siblings (then and now!). In addition, I couldn't find much in the literature about what happens to sibling relationships in adulthood, as if somehow we stop being part of our growing up family when we form our own adult family.
>
> So, I spent a few years reading letters exchanged by brothers and sisters (as children, where available, more often as adults) in 19th c. US families -- white, middle-class, literate, native-born mostly -- trying to understand family life from this angle. In 2001 the University of Illinois published the book based on that research, We Grew Up Together: Brothers and Sisters in 19th Century America. It's organized around 10 particular families -- urban, farm, famous, big, small, close, chilly -- looking at the sibling relationships, family dynamics, family culture in each one.
>
> Among other things, these families contrast sharply with images of "traditional families" and they revealed an interesting interplay between family roles and gender roles.
>
> Anyway, I wrote it with an undergraduate family history course in mind and thought some of you might find it of interest since there's so little about the topic currently available.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> Annette Atkins
> Professor of History
> Saint John's University
> Collegeville, Minnesota 56321
> (320) 363 2138 Fax: (320) 363 3300
> aatkins@csbsju.edu
>
> If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always had.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
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> Topics of the day:
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> 1. A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
>
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> Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:40:47 -0600
> From: "M. Rini Hughes"
> Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
>
> Kay:
>
> Thank you for posting this. I have an abiding interest in the ideology of
> the nuclear family and, particularly, of motherhood, and this article brings
> attention to so many of the problems we experience as a society BECAUSE of
> our social formation, a formation that makes the ideology the yardstick
> against which ALL relationships are judged.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kay Rout"
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 12:26 PM
> Subject: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
>
>
> This essay, inspired by the Yates case, makes some fascinating comments on
> the expectations society has for mothers. I would use this in class to focus
> on family roles. A case like this stays in the public memory for quite a
> while, so it would be useful beyond this week. The author targets as a cause
> of the murders of the children the unrealistic expectations for mothers
> within the nuclear family structure. If she is right, then in an extended
> family her stresses would have been fewer and not tipped Ms. Yates over the
> edge. Or if such a high percentage of the nurturing were not expected of a
> woman who has no legitimate needs of her own within the family, the children
> might be alive.
>
>
> March 17, 2002
>
> Crime and Motherhood
>
> By ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
>
> A NATIONAL gasp went up last week when Andrea Pia Yates was found guilty in
> a Texas courtroom of capital murder < possible punishment: life behind bars
> or death by lethal injection. As it turned out, on Friday the jury opted for
> life in prison.
>
> But questions remained. What did the verdict say about the American system
> of justice, its system of values? Mrs. Yates had been described over and
> over during the trial as mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations,
> postpartum psychoses and suicidal tendencies (she had tried to kill herself
> twice). How could any mother after giving birth to those five babies seen on
> the haunting home videos do what she did: drown them systematically, one
> after the other < any sane mother?
>
> But was she sane? That was the question. In fact, that wasn't the question
> before the court. Under Texas law, the question was narrower: did she know
> right from wrong when she killed her children? On those grounds, the jury
> found her guilty despite her history of mental illness. What, in effect,
> happened in that courtroom is that while the defense tried to make the case
> about mental illness, the prosecutors made it about motherhood < and
> motherhood trumped mental illness.
>
> "The children had become a hindrance, and she wanted them gone," said
> Kaylynn Williford, one of the lead prosecutors, conjuring the image of an
> overwhelmed stay-at- home mother unable to cope with the needs of a deeply
> religious, demanding husband and ever-growing brood. She was, in short, the
> ultimate maternal failure turned murderer, the demon mother writ large. She
> had to be punished < severe mental instability notwithstanding.
>
> The flip side of this demonization of Mrs. Yates is the American
> sentimentalization of motherhood. It is seen as a sacred and sacrosanct
> sphere. The circle of mother and child is a Hallmark card place, where the
> selfless mother nurtures her young, no matter her dreams or ambitions,
> conflicts or terrors. Motherhood is seen through gauze, in soft, religiously
> inflected focus. Madonna and child. Through all that gauze, it's hard to see
> a mother like Mrs. Yates as she really is < one of the desperate,
> destructive mothers nobody takes seriously until too late.
>
> "To capture how deep this is in our culture < this sentimentality about
> motherhood < you have to go back to the 18th century," said Victoria Brown,
> a professor of American history at Grinnell College. "That's when there was
> a profound shift in Protestant literature from an image of woman as Eve to
> an image of woman as Mary. That is how she redeems herself from original
> sin, that is how she is valuable to the community < as the self-sacrificing
> mother.
>
> "And along comes the American Revolution. Women do not get the vote, they do
> not get full citizenship. They are defined as Republican mothers who will
> keep the nation together and insure democracy by being these selfless
> creatures at home, who raise virtuous citizens."
>
> It seems apparent that Andrea and Rusty Yates bought into this vision big
> time < a vision he apparently held fast to even as she fell ill, even when
> she became pregnant that fifth time against doctors' advice (for fear of
> sending her into another postpartum psychotic episode). He insisted on
> home-schooling the children, tightening that sacrosanct motherhood circle
> around his increasingly fragmented wife.
>
> That was her historically and religiously ordained role, motherhood, and she
> would do it even at peril to her own sanity. If her anger at him or her
> angst over her role was part of her madness, we will probably never know.
> But no question, the prosecutor skillfully played up that motif of wifely
> anger and revenge.
>
> But what of the rest, the people who stood by and watched her disappear into
> madness, those close enough to see beneath the gauze of motherhood? What
> could they, what should they, have done < the relatives, friends and doctors
> < all of whom say they knew she was unstable? They made stabs at helping,
> but not enough to avert tragedy.
>
> "We don't have an ethic in this country that says it's suitable to
> interfere," said Professor Brown. "So it's not just the sentimentalization
> of motherhood that's at play here, it is the privatization of it."
>
> Motherhood is a no-entry zone, a zone of privacy. That's apparent throughout
> the culture < from a husband's refusal to heed the cry of a deranged wife to
> the state's reluctance to take children from mothers, however abusive or
> addicted. It goes beyond the hands-off, romantic cult of motherhood. Privacy
> < and individualism < are basic to our democratic, capitalistic system,
> where nonintervention in motherhood is the personal analog to
> nonintervention in the marketplace.
>
> THE ultimate question the Yates case raises is this: Is there is a point
> where intervention should occur, where mothers at risk should be helped or
> children protected < even from their mothers? Can't such tragedies be
> prevented?
>
> After all, it's not that the public doesn't involve itself in motherhood at
> some level. There is always a chorus pushing and pulling at mothers, telling
> them how to do this or that, a lot of it from women themselves, as they try
> not to feel guilty about failing to live up to the myth.
>
> The airwaves and bookshelves are full of didactic advice < be it the hippie
> homeopathic insistence on natural childbirth or the pro-family brigade's
> insistence on the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood. The advice, though
> often contradictory, can end up at the same place: reinforcing the myth of
> the all-important mother who should be able to meet all her children's needs
> < physical, psychological, emotional and economic < without help or
> "interference" from anyone. The new importance of fathers has sometimes
> ameliorated this mother- centric view of parenting, but sometimes it has had
> the perverse effect of upping maternal guilt. Mothers are tough on
> themselves < and each other.
>
> And who was tougher on herself than Andrea Yates? That's why, she said, she
> tried first to kill herself and then killed her children < to save them from
> her inept mothering. They were turning out wrong, going to the devil. There
> is a grisly, demented rationality in her irrationality, this overwhelmed,
> unbalanced mother who will now spend virtually the rest of her life in
> prison.
>
> Anne Taylor Fleming is an essayist on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer."
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at
> http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of FAMILIESFORUM Digest - 19 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002 (#2002-17)
> *******************************************************************
>
> This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
>
This forum is sponsored by History Matters--please visit our Web site at http://historymatters.gmu.edu for more resources for teaching U.S. History.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 20:10:46 -0800
Reply-To: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
Sender: "Families in U.S. History Forum"
From: JOSEPH EDWARD ILLICK
Subject: Re: A mother under pressure: role overload = breakdown?
Comments: To: CE Adams