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Great Depression Working Women Essay

672 Words3 Pages

My interest is in the broader topic of depression. I remember my grandparent’s stories that they would tell having to do with the Depression. My grandpa says that his parents used to make them eat everything on their plate because they (the parents) went through a period of time when there was no food to be put on their plate. This more specific topic actually came from a recent conversation I had with a mother of three who stated that a woman simply cannot be a teacher and a mother at the same time. As an education major, that extremely challenged my perspective. This topic of working women during The Great Depression seemed just down my alley! During the time frame of the Great Depression, a working woman would generally reflect a family’s economic need. During this time, a middle-income family could live fairly comfortable with an annual wage of about $1,000. This annual earning was also increasing during the time period for all classes of society. Thus, married women, in spite of economic need, were working and these numbers began to increase. This could be related to a variety of complex reasons such as “social, demographic, and technological developments as families became town based rather than rural.” The awareness of the “American Standard of Living” became a concept that every family could …show more content…

A study was done to research how these families responded to this time and what could have been done differently. It seems that a basic change of spending habits from the newly defined phrase of “economic need” was at stake. Families would need to step away from trying to live in abundance and budget to live in only the essential items. “Americans created their own economic problems through the love of luxury and ignorance of money management.” They would need to make better buying habits and change their values of

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