Long before the 1970s and the feminist revolution that shattered traditional notions of the family, black women in America had already accomplished their own revolution. Bart Landry's groundbreaking study adds immeasurably to our accepted concepts of "traditional" and "new" families: Landry argues that black middle-class women in two-parent families were practicing an egalitarian lifestyle that was envisioned by few of their white counterparts until many decades later. The primary transformation of the American family, Landry says, took place when nineteenth-century industrialization brought about the separation of home and workplace. Only then did the family we call traditional, in which the husband goes out to work while the wife stays at home, become the centerpiece of white middle-class ideology. Black women, excluded from this model of respectability, embraced a threefold commitment to family, community, and career. They embodied the notion that employment outside the home was the route to more equality in the home, and that work was worth pursuing for reasons other than economic survival. With a careful and convincing mix of biography, historical records, and demographic data, Landry shows how these black pioneers of the dual-career marriage created a paradigm for other women seeking to escape the cult of domesticity and thus foreshadowed the second great family transformation. If the two-parent nuclear family is to persist beyond the twentieth century, it may be because of what we can learn from these earlier women about an ideology of womanhood that combines the private and public spheres.

"Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a very comprehensive account of the family revolution in America. I learned a great deal reading this thoughtful book. Landry’s discussion of the dual career marriages of black women decades before the feminist revolution, and the lessons they provide not only for understanding dynamic changes in American families but also for anticipating the future of the modern two-career family, is insightful and persuasive."—William Julius Wilson, author of The Bridge over the Racial Divide "Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a perceptive analysis that connects the historical circumstances of Black women to the transformation of modern American family structures. This is an important contribution which should engage general readers, students, and public policy leaders and deepen our understanding of the origins and value of the dual career family."—Darlene Clark Hine, author of Speak Truth to Power "Landry blends history, demography, and contemporary social analysis to illuminate the form and function of African-American families over time. He does a particularly good job of describing how, decades ago, middle-class black families prefigured the relatively egalitarian, two-wage earner households that are so common today. An incisive and rewarding book."—Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work "This is first-rate, engaging, provocative, solid scholarship. I enthusiastically recommend it!"—Walter R. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles "Landry has made a significant contribution to an existing body of literature on the family and race--and, more important, he has advanced a position that is not present in that literature."—Troy Duster, University of California, Berkeley, and New York University "A very important book that contributes vitally to the small but growing literature on African American women and their agency in making lives for themselves and their families and in shaping American society."—Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Colby College

“Enriches and complicates African American and women’s history by connecting threads of race, gender, class, and region.” —Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History, Michigan State University Winner of the Liz Carpenter Award from the Texas State Historical Association Women of all colors have shaped families, communities, institutions, and societies throughout history, but only in recent decades have their contributions been widely recognized, described, and celebrated. This book presents the first comprehensive history of Black Texas women, a previously neglected group whose 150 years of continued struggle and some successes against the oppression of racism and sexism deserve to be better known and understood. Beginning with slave and free women of color during the Texas colonial period and concluding with contemporary women who serve in the Texas legislature and the United States Congress, Ruthe Winegarten organizes her history both chronologically and topically. Her narrative sparkles with the life stories of individual women and their contributions to the work force, education, religion, the club movement, community building, politics, civil rights, and culture. The product of extensive archival and oral research and illustrated with over 200 photographs, this groundbreaking work will be equally appealing to general readers and to scholars of women’s history, black history, American studies, and Texas history. “Occasionally a book comes along that is monumental in scope, overwhelming in amount of research, and so powerful in its impact as to be categorized at once as a lasting contribution to our knowledge of humankind. Black Texas Women is one of those rare books.” —The Journal of American History

Literature cited in AGRICOLA, Dissertations abstracts international, ERIC, ABI/INFORM, MEDLARS, NTIS, Psychological abstracts, and Sociological abstracts. Selection focuses on education, legal aspects, career aspects, sex differences, lifestyle, and health. Common format (bibliographical information, descriptors, and abstracts) and ERIC subject terms used throughout. Contains order information. Subject, author indexes.

This book explores the history of marriage and marriage-like relationships across five continents from the seventeenth century to the present day. Across fourteen chapters, leading marriage scholars examine how the methodologies from the new history of emotions contribute to our understanding of marriage, seeking to uncover not only personal feeling but also the political and social implications of emotion. They highlight how marriage as an institution has been shaped not just by law and society but also by individual and community choices, desires and emotional values. Importantly, they also emphasize how the history of non-traditional and same-sex relationships and their emotions have long played an important role in determining the nature of marriage as an institution and emotional union. In doing so, this collection allows us to rethink both the past and present of marriage, destabilizing a story of a stable institution and opening it up as a site of contest, debate and feeling.

The first book of its kind to study this period, Gerry Holloway's essential student resource works chronologically from the early 1840s to the end of the twentieth century and examines over 150 years of women’s employment history. With suggestions for research topics, an annotated bibliography to aid further research, and a chronology of important events which places the subject in a broader historical context, Gerry Holloway considers how factors such as class, age, marital status, race and locality, along with wider economic and political issues, have affected women’s job opportunities and status. Key themes and issues that run through the book include: continuity and change the sexual division of labour women as a cheap labour force women’s perceived primary role of motherhood women and trade unions equality and difference education and training. Students of women’s studies, gender studies and history will find this a fascinating and invaluable addition to their reading material.