The economic pressures that the Great Depression placed upon American society brought up a conflict between traditional values and what people needed to do to survive. My last two blogs have been about women and progressivism in the U.S. I am continuing with this theme by making some observations about women during the Depression.
In the 1930s it was still not culturally acceptable for married women to work outside the home. Traditional values had men working to provide for the financial needs of the family while women remained at home to manage the household and raise the children. However, desperate times called for desperate measures, especially for families in cities. To make sure that ends met, married women began to go outside the home for work to help their husbands with the finances.
This move was discouraged by the government and conventional wisdom because it made sense that if women left the home to take employment, then there would be fewer jobs for men in the workplace. Therefore, the feminist movement lost some traction during the Depression. This makes sense too because if one looks at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one can see that basic physical needs have to be satisfied before any higher contemplation can take place. If you don't have food, then it's hard to think about whether you are on an equal playing field with men. Survival comes first.
Now don't get me wrong. The progressives were still working to advance their agenda during the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. I will save his presidency for another time. Again, remember that progressives believed that big government and big business working together was the best way to manage society and therefore advance it. The area in which women "progressed" during the New Deal is in government work.
The first female was appointed to a cabinet position in FDRs administration, Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor. Also, over 100 women were added to federal bureaucratic positions under FDR. Ms. Perkins was a driving force behind the Social Security Act of 1935, the first major piece of "socialist" legislation in United States history. This law gave aid to dependent children in the event that a male spouse died leaving children the wife could then be able to receive money to support her children. Basically, since women did not work outside the home as a rule, now the government subsidizes the lost income of a dead spouse instead of allowing the wife to get a job outside the home. Traditional female occupations were excluded from social security: maids and waitresses among others.
There was other New Deal legislation that discriminated against women. The National Recovery Agency (NRA) was one of FDR's alphabet programs that was intended to create jobs for people who could not find work. They funded mostly public works projects, but it also gave money to artists and writers. However, this agency sanctioned sexually discriminatory wage practices. Meaning that women were not given equal pay for equal work and to discourage women from staying in jobs outside of marriage and homemaking.
Also during this period the push for an Equal Rights Amendment lost a lot of steam. The main reason for this was that the some state governments had passed laws granting special protections to women. If an equal rights amendment was to pass, then these special protections would be voided. Again we see big government in the role of managing people's behavior.
In conclusion, the decade of the Great Depression was a period of clash between the traditional role of women and survival. The progressive elites in government and big business believed that it was best for society that women remain in the home and raise children instead of leaving the home to find work to help support their families. Therefore, rather than allowing the free market system decide whether women should work outside the home, the government decided for them through these progressive programs.
If any of you have any questions about this or other posts, please let me know.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The Women's Rights Movement in the 1920s
My last post dealt with a movement that created "social worker" as a new occupation that was acceptable for single women in the late nineteenth century. This is an occupation that grew out of the new study of social sciences, which is a progressive area of study. Until the late nineteenth century there was no such academic area as "social studies." By the year 1920 twenty-five percent of women who were in the workforce were married. As mentioned last time, the few areas of employment that were acceptable for single women, besides housekeeping, were fashion, education, social work, nursing, and lower level business management.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to discern what life was really like for women before 1880 because of the progressive subversion of our education system. The progressives have gone out of their way to portray women as second class citizens who were abused by their husbands and employers. It is true that women were disenfranchised from the ballot box until 1920 when the nineteenth amendment was passed. (See an earlier post about the suffrage movement.) However, it is hard for me to believe that life for women in general was so terrible that they should be in the same category as African Americans fighting for their rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
Behaviorism is another branch of progressive social studies. This was a movement that was started by John B. Watson after World War I. These "social scientists" began to challenge the fact that women were instinctively motherly. (I say, "What?!?!? What are our bodies designed to do????") Anyway, the behaviorists believed that experts; doctors, nurses, and trained educators; should advise new mothers. Rather than turning to their own mothers and grandmothers for advice and council, women were now to go outside the extended family for "expert" advice. Middle-class women began to question their roles as women and started to feel unfulfilled in their natural role. Not only did women begin to question their role as mothers, but they also started looking at their relationships with their husbands, and the role that sex played in that relationship. Sex was not just for having babies anymore.
I want to pause here and look at what may be an idealistic view of the relationship that should exist between a man and a woman, the relationship that God planned for people before the fall. First, marriage was intended to be a relationship between one man and one woman. Second, one of the purposes of marriage was to have children, or at least have every intention to have children. The man and the woman were intended to work together for the betterment of their family. If a family placed God at its head and followed His laws, then the family will be strong. Also a community of families that follows God's Law will be honorable and equitable to women and children.
Now, fast forward about six thousand years. The philosophy of progressives is atheistic. When God is removed from the social realm, all sorts of chaotic ideas come to bear. Sigmund Freud had much to contribute to the women's liberation movement. Popular women's magazines in the early twentieth century published a watered down summary of his works. What they summarized was that women were repressed and inhibited. Women read these magazines and began to rebel against Victorian manners and expectations of women. They began to smoke, drink, dance (unchaperoned at parties), wear makeup, and wear seductive clothes. This was a paradigm shift in how women behaved in public. Rather than focusing on God's expectations of them, they began to follow their animal instincts.
Now I will introduce Margaret Sanger, an atheist. She was a founder of Planned Parenthood and got into a great deal of trouble for talking and distributing information about birth control to the public. She believed that poverty was caused by women bearing too many children, especially in poor communities. Birth control did begin to catch on in the 1920s, but poor women were not the ones practicing it. Middle class women began to use birth control. Thus, birth control gave middle class women the ability to separate the act of having sex from the purpose of having sex, which is to have children.
A piece of legislation that was passed during this period was the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. This law provided federal funding for prenatal and child health care programs to the states. The law was repealed in 1929. Members of the National Women's Party, who wanted an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, did not like this law because it classified all women as mothers. (Why wouldn't it? Don't most women have the potential to be mothers? Isn't it in God's plan for all women to try to be mothers?) Margaret Sanger did not like this law because it did not promote birth control. This legislation was progressive in nature because big government tried to influence the decisions and choices of individuals.
At this point you may be thinking what is the problem with this? Rewind the tape again to God's intent for the union of men and women. Sex is for having babies. Sex is not a hug or a handshake or a recreational activity. Sex is supposed to be a sacred part of the marriage covenant between men and women. Extra marital sex kills the relationship between husband and wife. It is also none of the government's business. Tax money should not be spent to influence people's private decisions or behavior.
I will deal more with the sexual revolution in my next post that will focus on the 1960s and 1970s.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to discern what life was really like for women before 1880 because of the progressive subversion of our education system. The progressives have gone out of their way to portray women as second class citizens who were abused by their husbands and employers. It is true that women were disenfranchised from the ballot box until 1920 when the nineteenth amendment was passed. (See an earlier post about the suffrage movement.) However, it is hard for me to believe that life for women in general was so terrible that they should be in the same category as African Americans fighting for their rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
Behaviorism is another branch of progressive social studies. This was a movement that was started by John B. Watson after World War I. These "social scientists" began to challenge the fact that women were instinctively motherly. (I say, "What?!?!? What are our bodies designed to do????") Anyway, the behaviorists believed that experts; doctors, nurses, and trained educators; should advise new mothers. Rather than turning to their own mothers and grandmothers for advice and council, women were now to go outside the extended family for "expert" advice. Middle-class women began to question their roles as women and started to feel unfulfilled in their natural role. Not only did women begin to question their role as mothers, but they also started looking at their relationships with their husbands, and the role that sex played in that relationship. Sex was not just for having babies anymore.
I want to pause here and look at what may be an idealistic view of the relationship that should exist between a man and a woman, the relationship that God planned for people before the fall. First, marriage was intended to be a relationship between one man and one woman. Second, one of the purposes of marriage was to have children, or at least have every intention to have children. The man and the woman were intended to work together for the betterment of their family. If a family placed God at its head and followed His laws, then the family will be strong. Also a community of families that follows God's Law will be honorable and equitable to women and children.
Now, fast forward about six thousand years. The philosophy of progressives is atheistic. When God is removed from the social realm, all sorts of chaotic ideas come to bear. Sigmund Freud had much to contribute to the women's liberation movement. Popular women's magazines in the early twentieth century published a watered down summary of his works. What they summarized was that women were repressed and inhibited. Women read these magazines and began to rebel against Victorian manners and expectations of women. They began to smoke, drink, dance (unchaperoned at parties), wear makeup, and wear seductive clothes. This was a paradigm shift in how women behaved in public. Rather than focusing on God's expectations of them, they began to follow their animal instincts.
Now I will introduce Margaret Sanger, an atheist. She was a founder of Planned Parenthood and got into a great deal of trouble for talking and distributing information about birth control to the public. She believed that poverty was caused by women bearing too many children, especially in poor communities. Birth control did begin to catch on in the 1920s, but poor women were not the ones practicing it. Middle class women began to use birth control. Thus, birth control gave middle class women the ability to separate the act of having sex from the purpose of having sex, which is to have children.
A piece of legislation that was passed during this period was the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. This law provided federal funding for prenatal and child health care programs to the states. The law was repealed in 1929. Members of the National Women's Party, who wanted an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, did not like this law because it classified all women as mothers. (Why wouldn't it? Don't most women have the potential to be mothers? Isn't it in God's plan for all women to try to be mothers?) Margaret Sanger did not like this law because it did not promote birth control. This legislation was progressive in nature because big government tried to influence the decisions and choices of individuals.
At this point you may be thinking what is the problem with this? Rewind the tape again to God's intent for the union of men and women. Sex is for having babies. Sex is not a hug or a handshake or a recreational activity. Sex is supposed to be a sacred part of the marriage covenant between men and women. Extra marital sex kills the relationship between husband and wife. It is also none of the government's business. Tax money should not be spent to influence people's private decisions or behavior.
I will deal more with the sexual revolution in my next post that will focus on the 1960s and 1970s.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The Origins of Social Work
My most recent post dealt with the women's suffrage movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While doing my research for that piece, I discovered another progressive movement that was linked in a way to the women's suffrage movement. A suffragist, Jane Addams, was one of the founders of this movement. It was the Settlement House Movement.
Jane Addams founded the first settlement house in Chicago, Illinois in 1889. The settlement house movement was a progressive movement to aid new immigrants in their assimilation into American society and culture. They would give aid to immigrants by helping them to learn English, find jobs, and decent housing.
The first settlement house was called Hull House, and it was staffed by members of the educated middle-class. These settlement houses were started based on ideas that came from the new study of social science. Remember from one of my earlier posts that social scientists had the goal of big business and big government working together to manage society.
Women who were college educated were central to the movement. During the late nineteenth century there were very few professions outside of homemaking that were acceptable for women: teaching, nursing, fashion, and lower level business management. The new social sciences gave rise to another profession that was acceptable for unmarried women to pursue: social work.
Social workers received professional training at universities. They were committed to the values of "bureaucratic progressivism: scientific study, efficient organization, and the reliance on experts."
After pondering the above information for a few days there are several observations that I want to point out. The occupation of social worker originated in Chicago where Barak Obama was a community organizer. Community organizing seems to be an outgrowth of social work. While social workers are mainly employed by the government, community organizers are private entities who are funded in part by the government and in part by philanthropists.
On the surface social work seems to be a good thing. However, what social work and community organizing does is take God out of charity. Rather than participating in a cause that comes from God and the community of God, the government has taken something that began as an act of charity, assisting new immigrants in assimilation into the American culture, and changed it into the "Nanny State." People who may have felt the pull of charity and may have wanted to become involved in "social work" in the form of missions now have the excuse, "I pay taxes. Let the government handle it."
When we allow government to do our charity work for us, we fall into the trap of allowing government to be our conscience as well. Now we see public service messages on television from how tall our children need to be before they can wear a regular seat belt to how much we are supposed to exercise per day. The government wants to regulate our salt and sugar intake. They spend millions of dollars a year telling us that smoking is bad for us. Superficially, this is all good, but since God has been taken out of our charity, He has been taken out of almost everything in public life under the guise of the "separation of church and state."
In conclusion, out of the settlement house movement arose the new profession of social worker. This profession was created by progressives to promote the progressive agenda of big government social management. Now 122 years later this government management of people has become the norm. It is even attempting to replace the role of religious mission and charity to the point that people expect the government to intervene in circumstances from child neglect to wildfires.
My next post will delve into another aspect of the women's movement: birth control and abortion. We will meet Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. I will discuss how progressives have not only driven God out of public life; but also out of the most sacred of relationships, marriage.
Jane Addams founded the first settlement house in Chicago, Illinois in 1889. The settlement house movement was a progressive movement to aid new immigrants in their assimilation into American society and culture. They would give aid to immigrants by helping them to learn English, find jobs, and decent housing.
The first settlement house was called Hull House, and it was staffed by members of the educated middle-class. These settlement houses were started based on ideas that came from the new study of social science. Remember from one of my earlier posts that social scientists had the goal of big business and big government working together to manage society.
Women who were college educated were central to the movement. During the late nineteenth century there were very few professions outside of homemaking that were acceptable for women: teaching, nursing, fashion, and lower level business management. The new social sciences gave rise to another profession that was acceptable for unmarried women to pursue: social work.
Social workers received professional training at universities. They were committed to the values of "bureaucratic progressivism: scientific study, efficient organization, and the reliance on experts."
After pondering the above information for a few days there are several observations that I want to point out. The occupation of social worker originated in Chicago where Barak Obama was a community organizer. Community organizing seems to be an outgrowth of social work. While social workers are mainly employed by the government, community organizers are private entities who are funded in part by the government and in part by philanthropists.
On the surface social work seems to be a good thing. However, what social work and community organizing does is take God out of charity. Rather than participating in a cause that comes from God and the community of God, the government has taken something that began as an act of charity, assisting new immigrants in assimilation into the American culture, and changed it into the "Nanny State." People who may have felt the pull of charity and may have wanted to become involved in "social work" in the form of missions now have the excuse, "I pay taxes. Let the government handle it."
When we allow government to do our charity work for us, we fall into the trap of allowing government to be our conscience as well. Now we see public service messages on television from how tall our children need to be before they can wear a regular seat belt to how much we are supposed to exercise per day. The government wants to regulate our salt and sugar intake. They spend millions of dollars a year telling us that smoking is bad for us. Superficially, this is all good, but since God has been taken out of our charity, He has been taken out of almost everything in public life under the guise of the "separation of church and state."
In conclusion, out of the settlement house movement arose the new profession of social worker. This profession was created by progressives to promote the progressive agenda of big government social management. Now 122 years later this government management of people has become the norm. It is even attempting to replace the role of religious mission and charity to the point that people expect the government to intervene in circumstances from child neglect to wildfires.
My next post will delve into another aspect of the women's movement: birth control and abortion. We will meet Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. I will discuss how progressives have not only driven God out of public life; but also out of the most sacred of relationships, marriage.
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