14 July 1957
[A clipping of an article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer issue of Sunday, July 14, 1957 by Russel Reaves with the headline “The Case of the Mother Who Works” is pinned with a dress pin to the page on which this journal entry begins.]
I still maintain women are tied up at school, taught only how to make a living economically. Advertising tantalizes them with material goods. Movies with glamorous living. Popular music with an unrealistic approach to love and marriage.
The young woman of marriageable age is afraid of marriage – she has no preparation for it. She feels inadequately prepared for the tasks of homemaking or child-rearing.
Also, since woman suffrage made the male world of business the goal to achieve for status and privilege, the race for competition with the male has continued into the modern version of women at work.
The pendulum has swung very far. It is my belief the pendulum has gone almost as far as it can swing. Women’s abdication of the feminine role in favor of the male world is not all it is cracked up to be. In some form or another perhaps as more unguided children turn to juvenile delinquency; the correlation pattern will sharpen. The pendulum will then start back. Women may once again, without giving up their truly important status gains (previously the moneymaker bullied and dominated the family) will find a better feminine road.
Supplementary:
The era of the mannish suits for women have gone out of the business picture. Jean Wolf, as Blanche described her clothes. Women are dressed in more feminine clothes in business. Just as these clothes styles change, I believe women’s whole approach to the male economic “provider role” will change into an entirely different pattern. It is merely finding this pattern and rearranging the feminine role. In all likelihood, the change will start in the minds of older women. The schools will then pick up the educational readjustment. It is in the school zone area where changes can be made more rapidly.
#
I could develop this into any number of articles. All founded on the basis in fashions in women’s outlook – primarily based on what has happened since women’s suffrage.
Styles. Attitudes of women – using personalities to highlight just as Hitchcock has done in the attached article.
WHEN:
… a woman’s place was at her Masters carpet slippers and the hearth fire.
WHAT:
… brought on the changes. Industrialization – the need for workers – I’ll bet!
WHO:
… In personalities brought on the changes. Who were the women that wanted to change the attitudes toward women – what abuses were directed at women which precipitated the changes – the revolt? Who led these revolts and why? What events occurred which gave women the idea of change?
There is always a cause-and-effect.
This is a broad sociological problem of human psychology. A need brings about a change. What need – What precipitated the change? It seemed to have started in America: did it? And how wide in scope was it and is it?
Women have made changes in their socio-economic status. Which of them are good, which of them are bad? Do women have, basically, differences of nature aside from the biological functions? Are there differences between men and women emotionally by nature or does the environment alone determine emotional differences? How about the animal kingdom? Are there marked differences between the male and the female of the species? (This could lead to interesting articles of animal life. Disney has done a good deal with this – his pictures of herding instincts.)
What are the natural pattern differences between male and female in unadulterated natural determinations? Women who have paved the way for great men, their sons. How did they do it? What attitudes did they take? What kind of women were they?
Abe Lincoln was inspired by his “angel mother.” Hum-m! Just what does this mean? Edison’s mother… How about her? Mme. Curie’s mother? How about the mothers of well-known women? What influence did the mothers have?
In the case of revolting women who brought about changes – was the revolt against the mother’s lot? Inspiration from the mother? Hatred for a father? Or inspiration from a father?
Might be able to do something along this line?
Cause-and-effect…. Human behavior does not grow in a vacuum.
How about a TV program based not only knowledge (plain dates and names, no!) of a subject, but a comprehension of the subject – the meaning behind changes. With questions like:
- What precipitated the Boston tea party? Eh! Come to think of it, it wouldn’t work – there is too much speculation of an essay type – it would not lend itself to a short program.
“You Are There” is better for this type of thing.
#
I was so taken by the line in the Last Angry Man where the author says something about how seldom in the successful businessman’s career, practically never – does he bring in a little old man or a little old lady and say: This is my father and mother. Yet surely, they influence the child’s life for better or for worse – they either inspired the child, made a child revolt, or they were such a failure, someone else had to fill the bill of inspiration or revolt into the pattern of the child grown adult.
#
My guess is when it comes to this type of thinking and research for writing material I’m going into an unexplored field.
We know of Robert Oppenheimer. What do we know of his parents.
This type of pattern writing could really be developed – not on a horizontal, flat, “at this point this how it is plain” – but three dimensionally. By this I mean a greater depth of explanation – the threads of cause-and-effect – why? What caused it to happen. How and why did a person become what he was.
The reason for such portrayals could be used as a guide, a model for thinking about human values in our material world. The influence of one human being upon another.
Without emphasis upon the present moment, with no roots, no understanding of background, cause-and-effect, our modern world is fast becoming an empty material chasing culture. There is nothing wrong with material goods. It is only wrong thinking that places so little emphasis on human values – the unmeasurables. It seems to me our urban culture needs a few guideposts, a little things or some of the important less tangible values of human existence.
And as I say again, there could be a change in thinking precipitated if some careful research was done.
Money makes a “successful man”. But, what human influences guided the first steps.
Men today are removed from families, have little influence in the family. They are too busy making riches for the family (à la Body) rather than giving of themselves to their families – that sort of thing.
