From Working Daughters to Working Mothers: Immigrant Women in a New England Industrial Community
Since World War II, an important transformation has occurred in American society as wives and mothers have increasingly taken jobs outside the home. American women have always worked, however – the first almost solely in the home and later also as wage earners outside the home. Anthropologist Louise Lamphere here provides an analysis of both kinds of work and shows how they have been interconnected in the lives of women in the industrial community of Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Lamphere sets women’s work within the changing political economy of Central Falls, beginning in 1790 when Samuel Slater opened his first textile mill in nearby Pawtucket and ending in the 1970s. In particular, she chronicles a major shift in the paid female labor force from one of primarily young, unmarried daughters in 1915 to one dominated by working mothers in 1977. To explain the dynamics of this transformation, which occurred throughout New England, Lamphere integrates anthropological data from participant observation and interviews with historical data from state census records, newspapers, and oral histories. Because this shift entailed the intersection of ethnicity, class, and gender, she traces the arrival of immigrant groups and the formation of ethnic communities over several decades. Finally, Lamphere draws on her own experience of working in an apparel factory to describe employment under a piece-rate system; she discusses the tactics that women use to safeguard their pay, to reduce competition among workers, and to build ties across the boundaries between ethnic groups.
From Working Daughters to Working Mothers offers a dynamic picture of working-class women, one that sees them not as passive victims but as active agents who draw upon a range of strategies and behaviors both to deal with their employment and to help their families cope with the industrial order. The book will be engaging read for anthropologists, social and labor historians, sociologists, political economists, and students of women’s studies.
Louise Lamphere 