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Subject: US: 1945-1973 (1945-1973), U.S. Women's HistoryA Purpose for Modern Women

Adlai Stevenson

DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780199794188.013.0155

Abstract and Keywords

The postwar baby boom, the rise of suburban living, and the creation of“labor-saving” appliances and gadgets transformed the lives of Americanwives and mothers after World War II. Although many American womenembraced these new roles, some women—especially college-educatedwomen—felt unfulfilled, even trapped. Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois,the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1952 and1956, addressed these concerns in a commencement speech delivered atSmith College in 1955. Stevenson argued that women—especially wives andmothers—had an important, if somewhat traditional, purpose in Cold WarAmerican society.Adlai Stevenson, “A Purpose for Modern Women,” Women’sHome Companion (September, 1955), 29–31.

Document

I THINK there is much you can do about our crisis in the humble role ofhousewife.

The peoples of the West are still struggling with the problems of a freesociety and just now are in dire trouble. For to create a free society is at alltimes a precarious and audacious experiment. Its bedrock is the conceptof man as an end in himself. But violent pressures are constantly batteringaway at this concept, reducing man once again to subordinate status,limiting his range of choice, abrogating his responsibility and returning him tohis primitive status of anonymity in the social group. I think you can be morehelpful in identifying, isolating and combatting these pressures, this virus,than you perhaps realize.

Let me put it this way: individualism has promoted technological advance,technology promoted increased specialization, and specialization promotedan ever closer economic interdependence between specialties. …

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Thus this typical Western man, or typical Western husband, operates well inthe realm of means, as the Romans did before him. But outside his specialty,in the realm of ends, he is apt to operate poorly or not at all. And this neglectof the cultivation of more mature values can only mean that his life, and thelife of the society he determines, will lack valid purpose, however busy andeven profitable it may be.

And here’s where you come in: to restore valid, meaningful purpose to lifein your home; to beware of instinctive group reaction to the forces whichplay upon you and yours, to watch for and arrest the constant gravitationalpulls to which we are all exposed—your workaday husband especially—inour specialized, fragmented society, that tend to widen the breach betweenreason and emotion, between means and ends. …

You may be hitched to one of these creatures we call “Western man” and Ithink part of your job is to keep him Western, to keep him truly purposeful,to keep him whole. In short—while I have had very little experience as a wifeor mother—I think one of the biggest jobs for many of you will be to frustratethe crushing and corrupting effects of specialization, to integrate meansand ends, to develop that balanced tension of mind and spirit which can beproperly called “integrity.”

This assignment for you, as wives and mothers, has great advantages. Inthe first place, it is home work—you can do it in the living-room with a babyin your lap or in the kitchen with a can opener in your hand. If you’re reallyclever, maybe you can even practice your saving arts on that unsuspectingman while he’s watching television!

And, secondly, it is important work worthy of you, whoever you are,or your education, whatever it is, because we will defeat totalitarian,authoritarian ideas only by better ideas; we will frustrate the evils ofvocational specialization only by the virtues of intellectual generalization.Since Western rationalism and Eastern spiritualism met in Athens and thatmighty creative fire broke out, collectivism in various forms has collided withindividualism time and again. This twentieth-century collision, this “crisis” weare forever talking about, will be won at last not on the battlefield but in thehead and heart.

So you see, I have some rather large notions about you and what you haveto do to rescue us wretched slaves of specialization and group thinking fromfurther shrinkage and contraction of mind and spirit. But you will have to be

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alert or you may get caught yourself—even in the kitchen or the nursery—bythe steady pressures with which you will be surrounded. …

WOMEN, especially educated women, have a unique opportunity to influenceus, man and boy, and to play a direct part in the unfolding drama of ourfree society. But I am told that nowadays the young wife or mother is shortof time for such subtle arts, that things are not what they used to be; thatonce immersed in the very pressing and particular problems of domesticity,many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirringdebates for which their education has given them understanding and relish.Once they read Baudelaire. Now it is the Consumers’ Guide. Once they wrotepoetry. Now it’s the laundry list. Once they discussed art and philosophy untillate in the night. Now they are so tired they fall asleep as soon as the dishesare finished. There is, often, a sense of contraction, of closing horizons andlost opportunities. They had hoped to play their part in the crisis of the age.But what they do is wash the diapers. (Or do they any longer?) …

The point is that whether we talk of Africa, Islam or Asia, women “never hadit so good” as you do. And in spite of the difficulties of domesticity, you havea way to participate actively in the crisis in addition to keeping yourself andthose about you straight on the difference between means and ends, mindand spirit, reason and emotion—not to mention keeping your man straight onthe differences between Botticelli and Chianti.

In brief, if one of the chief needs in these restless times is for a new qualityof mind and heart, who is nearer to the care of this need, the cultivation ofthis quality, than parents, especially mothers, who educate and form the newgeneration?

So, add to all of your concerns for Western man, your very specialresponsibility for Western children. In a family based upon mutual respect,tolerance and understanding affection, the new generation of children—thecitizens of tomorrow—stand their best chance of growing up to recognizethe fundamental principle of free society—the uniqueness and value andwholeness of each individual human being. For this recognition requiresdiscipline and training. …

Perhaps this is merely to say that the basis of any tolerable society—fromthe small society of the family up to the great society of the state—dependsupon its members learning to love. By that I do not mean sentimentality orpossessive emotion. I mean the steady recognition of others’ uniqueness anda sustained intention to seek their good. In this, freedom and charity go hand

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in hand, and they both have to be learned. Where better than in the home?And by whom better than the parents, especially the mother?

In short, far from the vocation of marriage and motherhood leading youaway from the great issues of our day, it brings you back to their very centerand places upon you an infinitely deeper and more intimate responsibilitythan that borne by the majority of those who hit the headlines and make thenews and live in such a turmoil of great issues that they end by being totallyunable to distinguish which issues are really great.

In modem America the home is not the boundary of a woman’s life. Thereare outside activities aplenty. But even more important is the fact, surely,that what you have learned and can learn will fit you for the primary taskof making homes and whole human beings in whom the rational values offreedom, tolerance, charity and free inquiry can take root.

Review

1) According to Stevenson, how has modern life changed the role ofwife and mother? Why might some housewives feel frustrated?2) How could wives and mothers contribute to the advancement of“western civilization” and free society?3) How might female college students in the 1950s have respondedto Governor Stevenson’s proposals?