Thursday, November 19, 2009
Mary Abbott's "A Better World"
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Belgian War Refugees
'Lady Lugard's Hostels for Belgian Refugees"
Was given in her honor given by Stuart Hogg. There are 11 houses and 400 people are housed in them. Two were used as hospital like locations. Part of Lady Lugard's goal was to make each of the houses a little like the home county. All of the expenses to make the houses like homes come from the committees accounts. Also the public helped by donating food and clothing. They also have a factory for the newly arrived refugees to stay. These are just a few of of the things that Hogg stated.
'The Work of the War Refugees Committee'
It an address given by Lady Lugard to the committee. She discusses the stories that she has heard from the refugees, She mentions ones about a family who lost all their children who were killed by the German soldiers. She tells the committee how and what needs to be done to help those who arrive . She expresses thanks to those who have helped. She says that those who have helped and volunteer should be written in gold.
The website has first hand accounts of those that lived through the war.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Family Versus the State Victoria de Grazia
For example, the new ideology set forth was that men should be able to work and earn enough money to support his family so his wife could stay home (embracing this idea of separate spheres). So in an attempt embrace this family ideology the government established the family allowance system. However, to even get this set wage system you have to have the right connections with the proper private or governmental organizations. This new welfare state changes the role of women. Because men should be working to earn a wage for the family the women or the elitist class have to carry this idea out with the lower classes. Also, women of the lower classes are also forced to work as their husbands are unable to make enough money for their family. Thus, family size begins to shrink and with the realization that the state is not providing a support group. Families have to begin to rely on their kin for support. Grazia then exemplifies her point through the letter the wife of Milanese man to the government (103-104).
Grazia argues that two different family ideologies emerge. The first is then the fascist familism emphasizing family unity, paternity, and female devotion to the family. This ideology is then altered through its impracticable practice and gives way to oppositional familism. This placed more focus on the father and gave priority of jobs and wages to those fathers with larger families (in hopes of increasing the population). People during this time appeared to operate on the idea that you had to maximize your resources in the short run and not worry about future generations. Her discussion of oppositional familism is limited and somewhat confusing compared to her expansive explanation of fascist familism.
Grazia’s article could fall under three of the categories we have discussed. The most fitting category would be that of the Law, State, and Church. Her article focuses on how the state regulations affect the family. This leads to the next category of family relationships and family economics. Grazia takes great length to describe how the government imposes different ideas on the roles of men and women in the family. Men should be earning enough money for a large family while women stay at home and work. Furthermore, that state is suppose to step in and subsidize a husbands wage but jumping through the hoops to get this money is impossible. The last category this could fall under then is gender. In Grazia’s description of the family she does discuss the role of children briefly but she tends to focus on the different roles that husband and wives have (men and women).
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Kristen Stromberg Childers, "Paternity and the Politics of Citizenship in Interwar France"
She tells us that since 1913, paternity began to be connected to political discourse in order to construct a productive nation that pressured men to form families. Furthermore, political discourse during interwar France began to attack the rights that single men had. As examples of not fulfilling their paternal role, single men's voting rights were attacked. Reformers advocated for a change in how much a single man's vote was worth in comparison to that of a father's. Arguably a father needed more weight to his vote because he was representing not just himself, but a whole entire family. Historically single men had already dominated voting rights, and using previous political disasters as example, conservatives believed that a shift of rights to paternally experienced voters would produce effective and enlightened reform. This can easily be summarized by showing that there was pressure to give father's more representation because they were viewed as elite and the incompetence of single men throughout history was used as a way to push for this change (pg.94).
In order to reform working conditions, men used their status as fathers to advocate for change. If the state expected a father to support his family not only monetarily, but by educating his children, men would have to have time to be home and do that (pg.95). In addition to helping his wife with the children, a change towards a eight-hour work day would allow him time to educate himself. A father with the ability to read political literature weekly meant he would be a model citizen to the French government. This tactic for reform shows a example of modernity in the equalizing of parental roles. A man is now expected to help out and not just be the breadwinner for the home. However a father will still be expected to work, and to even teach his sons that this is important (pg.98). By asking father's to do more they were seen as valuable in reconstructing the state after the damage done during the Great War.
This article fits under several themes for this class, but primarily focuses on the state expectations for father's and also a father's relationship to his family. Although the Catholic church is mentioned a little bit throughout the work, the state's pressure on men to fulfill a paternal role dominates the paper. Family relationship is the other important theme because it mentions how important men were in their families and that the amount of experience men obtained from being a father could not be supplemented by any other activity.
"Women's War Work: Remunerative, Voluntary, and Familial", by Susan Grayzel
Grayzel looks at a number of countries, comparing and contrasting what wartime work was like for women. She mentions that the highest active labor force was in Britain, and the lowest labor force was in Germany. With the welfare supervisors and factory inspectors that were employed during the war, they heavily pushed for the protection of women that were or potentially could be mothers. Grayzel argues that during the war “gender roles” were being challenged. Nurses, for example, “kept women subservient to male doctors….[and] did not offer a challenge to conventional gender roles” (Grayzel, p.37). The war was a time of strain and tension as men and women’s roles were being redefined in new ways.
Grayzel’s article also focuses on women as mothers and the double responsibility that they had for both work and home. Many women took on voluntary services, primarily though only the middle and upper classes, hoping to do their part for the war. Women also had a hard time managing their homes, as long work hours took them away from home and the increasing food shortages left them with little food to sustain their young ones. Laws were being passed during this time to protect the health of both mother and child. The welfare and factory inspectors helped with this as well as new laws supporting breast feeding in factories, etc, were being passed.
This article fits well under the categories of Family Economics because it focuses on the division and distribution of labor during World War I, Categories of Difference because Grayzel focuses on a number of countries comparing and contrasting woman’s experiences, and Law, State, and Church because the government had a large role in controlling women’s wartime work.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
"Everyday Life" by J. Robert Wegs in Growing Up Working Class
Saturday, November 7, 2009
"Keystone of the Patriarchal Family? Indissoluble marriage, masculinity and divorce in Liberal Italy," by Mark Seymour
This article relates to Mary Hartman's chapter "What Men and Women Want" because it demonstrates the fact that many felt that a man's masculine identity would be compromised if they did similar work (because of marriage equality) as women. This article fits under the category of gender because of it's exploration of traditional gender ideals which were threatened by divorce laws in Italy. It also fits under the categories of Law, Church and State, as well as Marriage and Its Dissolution for obvious reasons.
"Not Quite Pukka" by Elizabeth Buettner
Understanding European families during the after the long Nineteenth Century is very complicated. Many of the European nations, especially Britain and France, were colonial powers by this time. Families in the homeland would colonize, but they still considered themselves European subjects. This is where this article comes in. It argues that with so many families leaving Britain for India, it became socially important to know who was still British, and who had ‘gone native.” British families in Europe would ideally return to Britain, and needed to keep up their British social status. While domiciled families would not return to Europe, and so did not comfortably fit into the Euro-centric system. This would have implications in Britain itself, although this is not discussed in this paper. British peoples would be very sensitive to social markers that qualified someone as a “true Brit”
Due to the above paragraph, I would categorize this article under “Categories of Difference.” I would also categorized it under “Family relationships and family economics.” The article discusses how families would sacrifice to be able to send their children to a school in Britain. They did this because the increased social status of having their children go to Britain. For their children it was economically imperative to maintain their British markers. Without these markers British employment would be difficult, if not impossible. There would also be economic benefit for the parents. Children attending school in Britain would have been a sign that the parents were not going domiciled. Thus, it was probably a sign that they still upheld British values.