History of Psychology
2005, Vol. 8, No. 3, 289 –316
Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation
1093-4510/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1093-4510.8.3.289
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT:
Themes From the SRCD Oral History Project
Claire E. Cameron and John W. Hagen
University of Michigan
Research in child development has emerged as a major intellectual discipline and a
topic of great interest and importance to society. The Society for Research in Child
Development (SRCD) has been the leading scholarly society concerned with the
advancement of this research. As part of its focus on a history of the field, the SRCD
has undertaken an oral history project in which prominent members are interviewed.
Of the 102 completed interviews, 47 are women’s accounts, which document
important contributions women have made to child development. The experiences
reported by individual participants reflect themes in the general history of women in
psychology and child development during the early and mid-1900s. Women encountered obstacles to their efforts, even as they were supported by others and
struggled to achieve prominence amid the sometimes ambiguous or conflicting
circumstances that characterized women’s entry into child development.
Research in child development has emerged as a major intellectual discipline
and a topic of great interest and importance to society. The Society for Research
in Child Development (SRCD), founded in 1933, has been the leading scholarly
society concerned with the advancement of this research. As part of its focus on
a history of the field, SRCD has undertaken an oral history project in which early
members and leaders are interviewed. In this article, we describe the experiences
of female interviewees. These accounts are invaluable for augmenting our knowledge of the experiences of women in academia. They also demonstrate that
women played important roles in the field throughout its history, despite obstacles
encountered from the very beginning.
A brief history of child development and women’s participation in the field
shows that, along with obstacles, women were also encouraged and supported as
Claire E. Cameron and John W. Hagen, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Claire E. Cameron is a doctoral candidate in the Combined Program in Education and
Psychology at the University of Michigan. She has been involved with the Society for Research in
Child Development (SRCD) Oral History Project for 3 years. Her research has mainly focused on
the development of young children in the transition to school, including the acquisition of selfregulation.
John W. Hagen is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and executive officer
of the SRCD. His research includes the history of child development, public policy, and positive
development in children and youth.
Preliminary themes from this project were presented at a discussion hour titled “Women in
Child Development” at the 70th Anniversary Biennial Meeting of the SRCD, Tampa, FL, in 2003.
We thank the William T. Grant Foundation for partial support of the SRCD’s Oral History Project.
We would also like to thank Pamela Davis-Kean and Abby Stewart for their enthusiasm and helpful
suggestions at the early stages of the article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Claire E. Cameron, Department
of Psychology, 525 E. University, Suite 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, or to John W. Hagen, Society
for Research in Child Development, 3131 South State Street, Suite 302, Ann Arbor, MI 48108.
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
they worked to achieve. Psychology and child development were relatively young
fields, working toward scientific legitimacy (Napoli, 1981, p. 123), even as
women made some of their first collective attempts to enter academia in greater
numbers. The interplay between the goals and growth of the field created an
ambiguous environment for female scholars, who helped shape this field. The
themes of obstacles, buffers (or supports), struggles, and ambiguous events are
revealed first in the brief history of child development, described here, and later
are reflected in the individual accounts offered by female participants in the
SRCD Oral History Project.
Brief History of Child Development
The roots of the field can be traced directly to developments in American
society and the emergence of scientific inquiry in the biological and behavioral
sciences in the 1920s. Individuals concerned about the development of John
Dewey’s “whole child” in both pediatrics and child psychiatry early in the 20th
century helped the field of child development to emerge (Senn, 1983). Part of the
concern for children’s well-being arose after a large number of young men were
found physically or cognitively unfit to serve in World War I. This alarming
discovery sparked substantial funding from philanthropists, including John D.
Rockefeller, to stimulate research and applied work on child development.
Among other events, the establishment of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund (LSRM) in 1923–1924, and the founding of the Committee on Child
Development (CCD) by the National Research Council in 1924, led to the
characterization of the 1920s as “The Decade of the Child” (Smuts, 1986).
In 1933, the CCD became the SRCD, an organization whose current membership is 5,500. It began as a group of 400 and is composed of individuals
interested in studying child development from many perspectives and disciplines.
Although most of SRCD’s current members are in psychology, it has always been
a goal of the organization to involve all disciplines and fields relevant to child
development. In this article, we refer to the field of child development, which is
implied to include psychologists as well as anthropologists, pediatricians, sociologists, and other groups of scholars as well. Despite setbacks during the Depression and World War II, in which research and conference funding for many areas
of psychology were limited, the organization is healthy, demonstrating the importance and growing impact of child development as a field over the 20th century
(Rheingold, 1986). “The gift of [the last] century has been to attempt to elaborate
scientific descriptions of growth, development and maturation and then to apply
this knowledge to child care and rearing” (Work, 1983, p. 10). Within this
statement are the complementary yet sometimes opposing goals for scholars in
child development regarding whether basic or applied work should be the focus
of the field’s investigative efforts (Cahan, 1991). The purposes of the LSRM and
the CCD embodied this dilemma: On the one hand, the LSRM sought to foster
child development research but also made educating parents a main priority. On
the other hand, the CCD was most concerned with rigorous scientific inquiry
related to the development of children and did not want to be characterized as an
applied organization (Cahan, 1991; Schlossman, 1986; Smuts, 1986). The CCD
made two focused efforts toward furthering this goal. First, conferences, begun in
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
291
1926, were seen as crucial to fostering and disseminating research. Second, the
recruitment and participation of men was also thought to increase child development’s legitimacy as a scientific discipline. Within the broader field of psychology, academic psychologists looked down on members of the more practical
areas, which may have been in part due to the involvement of women in these
applied fields, which included child development (Cahan, 1991; Napoli, 1981).
Women in Child Development
Since the early days, women have been prominent in both basic and applied
research on child development, which has not been the case for other academic
disciplines. The prominence of women in child development is due in part to its
early focus on child rearing and applied areas, historically female domains.
Women in the early part of the 20th century were more likely to pursue teaching,
nursing, and social work than to take jobs in the sciences (McCoy & DiGeorgioLutz, 1999). However, women played central roles in the establishment of new
areas of scientific psychological inquiry. Psychology in general, and the field of
child development, specifically, were open to having women participate because
their involvement increased membership numbers and the potential impact of the
discipline (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987; Wilson, 2003). However, women’s
participation may also have diminished the field’s scientific reputation, because
many people, including some prominent authorities, doubted women’s cognitive
and physical abilities to perform in professions defined and dominated by men
(Kelly, 1991; Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987).
However, there were prominent men who did value the involvement of
women in the field. G. Stanley Hall in the 1910s and Lawrence K. Frank in the
1920s and 1930s saw child development as “the women’s science,” and they
encouraged female scholars’ pursuits. Events in the first few decades of the 1900s
demonstrated female researchers’ efforts to take advantage of the scientific
opportunities afforded their male counterparts. For example, in 1926, five of six
members of the professorial faculty at the University of Iowa’s Child Welfare
Research Station were women, who also initiated the organization (Hartup,
Johnson, & Weinberg, 2002). In addition, the National Council of Women
Psychologists, created in 1941, held a meeting to explore how they would support
the U.S. World War II war effort. Their attempts to collaborate with established
(male) scholars were met with the recommendation that they “be good girls” and
leave the planning to the men (Napoli, 1981, p. 123).
The events summarized in this brief history demonstrate the mixed messages
women received about their involvement in the field of psychology in general and
the area of child development in particular. Although women were involved in
both basic and applied work in psychology at the turn of the century (Scarborough
& Furumoto, 1987), by the early decades of the 1900s, most women worked in
applied domains (Napoli, 1981). Despite having increased access to applied
positions in psychology and child development, women struggled to find their
place in academia. In this article, we attempt to show that over the years, the
prominent women interviewed by SRCD have encountered great obstacles in their
scholarly pursuits. This is true even in child development, a field that owes many
of its early theoretical contributions to female scholars (Hagen, Velissaris, &
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
Nelson, 2004). Unlike most of their peers during the time period, almost all the
women interviewed in the SRCD project were persons whose contributions were
to basic research and theory.
Rationale
Some scholars underscore the importance for researchers of maintaining
historical knowledge of their disciplines (Fuchs & Viney, 2002). Stewart (2003)
encouraged the consideration of qualitative assessments (i.e., ethnographically
informed methods) when summarizing and interpreting experiences of women
and members of minority groups. In addition, Senn (1975) described the importance of narrative for obtaining oral histories, which are “fascinating and important additions to other primary source material” (p. 3). Perspectives offered by the
women interviewed by SRCD span crucial periods in social movements of the last
century, continuing work begun by Scarborough and Furumoto (1987), who
documented the lives of the first generation of women who were prominent in
psychology. The goals of this article are to describe the experiences of women
whose careers in child development began before World War II, or during and
after World War II, within a historical context. We also attempt to offer further
insight about the lives and careers of 20th-century women in child development.
Method
The SRCD Oral History Project commenced with interviews in 1990, and the project
continues today. As noted, the SRCD project has identified prominent members of the
field to document autobiographical and SRCD-related experiences of some of the most
influential people in child development. It is a testament to the central role women have
played in the field that so many of those chosen to be interviewed are female scholars.
Participants and Procedure
Of the 102 interviews completed by 2003, 47 are interviews of women. Thirteen
women interviewed entered the field in either the 1920s (n ⫽ 2), 1930s (n ⫽ 5), or 1940s
(n ⫽ 6). Most women (n ⫽ 28) entered the field during the 1950s (n ⫽ 14) and 1960s (n ⫽
14); four women received their doctoral degree in the 1970s, and one completed her PhD
in the 1990s, although she was active for some time before receiving her degree. Table 1
displays participants’ names along with the year and their age at degree receipt. To better
communicate a sense of history, the first time specific persons are mentioned in this
article, their names are followed by (x, y), with x representing the degree earned and y
representing the year in which it was earned. Brief biographical information is also
provided the first time a participant’s name appears in the text.
In addition to providing information about their intellectual and professional lives,
participants reflected on personal influences on their careers in a tape-recorded interview.
All participants answered a series of open-ended questions from a written protocol,
displayed in the Appendix. Important to note is that participants were not asked specifically about gender; therefore, all comments regarding the topic of gender emerged in
response to other questions, such as queries about participants’ childhoods or professional
experiences. Interviews were conducted by participants’ colleagues (some of them former
students), spouses, relatives, SRCD researchers, and in one case, by the participant herself.
Interviews occurred in one to two sessions over a couple days, but because some took a
few hours, these were conducted over a longer period of time. After completion, a
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
293
professional transcribed interviews. Then they were edited and approved by both the
interviewer and interviewee.
Categorizing Interview Remarks
To gather data for this study, Claire E. Cameron reviewed the transcribed interviews
in their electronic form and categorized participants’ remarks relevant to general topics of
interest. John W. Hagen, also the executive officer of SRCD, who read all the interviews
after completion, had previously identified these topics. Throughout this process, both
authors maintained a dialogue about the interviews and the best way to organize the
information contained within them. Comments relevant to a given topic were taken
directly from the transcripts and placed into a new document. In addition to women’s
experiences in the field, these topics included experiences of minority members of SRCD,
participants’ opinions on the relation between research and policy, and information about
SRCD committees, meetings, history, and interviewees’ participation in the organization.
Coding Remarks Related to Gender
Most often, but not always, remarks related to gender were autobiographical. Of 47
women interviewed, 32 participants made comments relevant to gender influences. For
this study, a final document called “Women in the Field” was created that included all the
quotes participants made in reference to gender, organized by decade, beginning with
1900. From this document the themes presently summarized emerged; quotes and paraphrased experiences represent the data for this study. From these quotes, 43 experiences
related to gender were identified and quantified by decade and by the number of
participants who had the experience. The numbers reported in this presentation are
event-based, which means that a person may be represented more than once in different
categories. Most often, if an event was represented five times, that meant it was reported
by five different women, but in a handful of cases, the same woman reported the same
experience happening more than once in her life. The events, comprising 43 types of
experiences, were placed into four general categories, which help describe women’s
overall experiences in child development in the 20th century. For the most part, experiences were easy to identify for both authors and required no discussion; in the 15 cases
where categorization was initially ambiguous, agreement on type of experience was
obtained through discussions between the two authors.
Results and Discussion
A systematic account of women’s experiences comprises most of this section.
However, drawing from Scarborough and Furumoto’s (1987) book, in which
individuals’ lives served to illustrate historical themes, a roughly chronological set
of six participants’ experiences has been included in Table 2 in a collective
vignette. These experiences demonstrate the major themes we identified, as well
as revealing the descriptive nature of the interview data and the way in which they
were coded. Participants encountered obstacles, were supported with buffers, and
struggled to achieve both personal and professional goals. The effects of some
experiences were ambiguous or inconsistent from person to person. Throughout
our analysis, it was evident that women’s lives and choices were firmly rooted in
their families and were influenced by society’s view of women and the historical
events of the time. Nevertheless, these women persevered, and we are pleased to
be able to offer candid insights into the lives of these many persons who have been
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
Table 1
Participants’ Names, Graduate Institution, Date and Age at Degreea Receipt
Name
Mary Ainsworth
Louise Bates Ames
Kathryn Barnard
Diana Baumrind
Leona Bayer
Bettye McDonald Caldwell
Joan Cantor
Stella Chess
Rachel Keen (Clifton)
Virginia Crandall
Marie Skodak Crissey
Therese Décarie
Dorothy Eichorn
Doris Roberts Entwisle
Eleanor J. Gibson
Jean Berko Gleason
Frances Keesler Graham
Algea Hale-Harrison
Eillen Mavis Hetherington
Lois Wladis Hoffman
Alice Sterling Honig
Frances Degen Horowitz
Lilian Katz
Tracy Kendler
Eleanor Maccoby
Jean Matter-Mandler
Shirley Moore
Ruth Munroe
Lois Barclay Murphy
Katherine Nelson
Joy Osofsky
Mechthild Papousek
Marian Radke-Yarrow
Harriet Rheingold
Nancy Robinson
Judy Rosenblith
Sandra Wood Scarr
Pauline Sears
Alberta Siegel
Linda Siegel
Diana Slaughter-Defoe
Marilyn Smith
Institution
University of Toronto
Yale University
University of Washington
University of California,
Berkeley
Stanford University
Washington University
University of Iowa
New York University
University of Minnesota
Ohio State University
University of Iowa
University of Montreal
Northwestern University
Johns Hopkins University
Yale University
Harvard University
Yale University
University of Michigan
University of California,
Berkeley
University of Michigan
Syracuse University
University of Iowa
Stanford University
State University of Iowa
University of Michigan
Harvard University
University of Iowa
Harvard University
Columbia University—
Teacher’s College
University of California,
Los Angeles
Syracuse University
Max Planck Institute for
Psychiatry
University of Minnesota
University of Chicago
Stanford University
Wheaton College
Harvard University
Yale University
Stanford University
Yale University
University of Chicago
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Degree date
1947
1944
1972
1955
1928 (MD)
1951
1954
1939 (MD)
1963
1961 (MA)
1938
1960
1951
1960
1938
1958
1942
1970
1958
Age at
which
degree was
received
34
36
34
28
25
Early 20s
23
25
26
28
37
27
28
24
34
32
1958
1975
1959
1968
1943
1950
1956
46
27
36
25
33
27
1964 (EdD)
1937
34
35
1968
1969
1972
1944
1955
1958
1958
1965
1939
1955
1966
1968
1966
25
47
28
29
31
24
27
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
295
Table 1 (continued)
Name
Alice Smuts
Ann Streissguth
Mildred Templin
Ruth Updegraff
Ina Uzgiris
University
University
University
University
University
Institution
of Michigan
of Washington
of Minnesota
of Iowa
of Illinois–Urbana
Degree
date
1995
1964
1947
1928
1962
Age at
which
degree was
received
32
34
26
25
a
Degree is a PhD unless otherwise specified. Some information was not available for all
participants.
so influential in our field. The collective vignette in Table 2 begins with an
account of a happy childhood in the 1920s.
As noted, four themes were evident in the interviews, based on the types of
experiences participants reported having; these four themes are also reflected in the
general history of women’s entry into their professions. Of the 43 experiences, 20
were labeled as obstacles, meaning that they prevented women from making their
own choices, developing a sense of efficacy, or advancing in their fields. Thirteen
experiences were called buffers, serving to help women in their quest for education or
recognition or supporting their sense of self-worth. Five experiences, labeled struggles, exemplified women’s efforts to actively combat the effects of discrimination and
the imposition of traditional notions of women’s roles upon them. Finally, 5 experiences were ambiguous events and did not clearly fit into one of these three categories,
but their roles in shaping women’s lives provide valuable descriptive information and
allow opportunities for discussion. Experiences in these four categories may be
interpreted in various ways, but the categorization of experiences as obstacles, buffers,
struggles, or ambiguous events was based on the perceived effect of each experience
on women’s career advancement.
The following sections represent the four categories described above; participants’ quotes act as examples illustrating each theme. First, obstacles are summarized in order to demonstrate the types of discrimination and hardships women
encountered. Then, buffers and struggles are each presented to describe the
resources women had to combat the obstacles they confronted. Finally, we discuss
the ambiguous events and their implications for women’s careers.
Obstacles for Women in Child Development
As suggested in the broader history of women in child development, the
largest portion of the personal experiences reported by individual women reflect
hardships they endured because of gender discrimination at all stages in their lives
and careers. This category was labeled obstacles, which signified that women’s
self-perception or quest for education or recognition were undermined or limited
in some way. Table 3 shows the number of obstacles that were mentioned, the
decade in which they occurred, and the number of participants who reported
having had the experience, for each decade between 1900 and 1990 (no experi(text continues on p. 299)
Participant
Comment and decade referenced
Marian Radke-Yarrow (PhD, 1944), I guess I would say that my parents carried out very
a leader in research on parent and
traditional male, female roles, and that was very
child interactions
comfortable. My recollections [that] keep coming up over
and over are [from] early to middle childhood when I would
go to meet my father coming home from work . . . then with
my mother I think of really tagging around with all of the
“female tasks of housekeeping and being a mother.” And I
think those were very strong imprints, and pleasant ones.
(1920s)
Dorothy Eichorn (PhD, 1951),
I think that I sort of grew up with the sense that girls could do
executive officer of SRCD during
anything and we were allowed to do anything pretty much
the 1970s and 1980s
too . . . When we got old enough we went to girls’ camp so
there was a lot of interest in natural kinds of
sciences . . . [At high school graduation] I was salutatorian, I
think, not valedictorian. I always was careful not to overdo
it and so it was close between a boy and me. (1930s)
Doris Roberts Entwisle (PhD,
What [my mentor, a prominent psychologist] didn’t value was
1960), a leading sociologist in
later on that year [mid-1940s] I had met my future husband,
children and family processes
who was in medical school, or the fact that I was going to
link up with somebody who might want a wife. He told me
explicitly, I might as well be a secretary. So, when I did
drop out of that graduate school to move to Boston, where
my husband was in medical school, I had to work because
we were extremely poor. We didn’t have any other means of
support, and work conditions for women in that year were
far from ideal. They have improved greatly since
then . . . Also during that period, the limits on what women
could do, and many occupations were quite severe . . . I
resigned my job [as a research assistant to a statistician at
Harvard] after I was about five months pregnant, because,
again, conditions were very different in those days, pregnant
women were very unwelcome around the workplace, so it
wasn’t really feasible. (1940s)
Table 2
Collective Vignette of Participants’ Experiences
1. Discouraged from marriage (o)
2. Supported husband’s career (o)
3. Experienced discrimination in
academia (organizational level)
(o)
4. Raised children (a)
1. High expectations of women (b)
2. Interest in math or science (b)
3. Aware of gender roles growing
up (o)
Code
1. Traditional roles at home (a)
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
Comment and decade referenced
[When] growing up in the 1950s . . . the idea of a
woman going into a professional field was not one
that was very common. And if a woman was to
choose a profession it [was] more often [one]
considered more traditionally female at that time,
like nursing or social work or teaching. My
family background was not one that encouraged
me to pursue higher education or a professional
field, it was one that encouraged women in
general . . . to having a family and orienting their
life around family and community. (1950s)
I was surrounded by males, at least at that
point . . . who were more feminists than I was in
that day. So that would be about 1960, and my
husband was not enthusiastic about me quitting
my job [to care for my coming child], he believed
in me working. He believed that an intelligent
woman should actualize her potential and should
contribute intellectually to the world. (1960s)
I didn’t feel as though my career had very much to
do with my sex. And I understand it’s true that a
lot of people who are members of what you might
call disadvantaged groups, in some sense, don’t
feel that they personally have ever been
discriminated against. And in my own case I felt,
indeed, that such a thing was rare. (1990s)
1. Did not feel discrimination (b)
1. Supported by husband (b)
2. Raised children (a)
Code
1. Discouraged from higher
education (personal level)
(o)
2. Appropriate women’s roles for
the time (o)
Note. a ⫽ ambiguous event; b ⫽ buffer; o ⫽ obstacle; SRCD ⫽ Society for Research in Child Development.
Eleanor Maccoby, (PhD, 1950) a leading
scholar in the socialization of children and
youth
Lois Wladis Hoffman (PhD, 1958),
influential researcher on working mothers
Participant
Joy Osofsky (PhD, 1969), an influential
researcher in emotional health in early
childhood
Table 2 (continued)
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
297
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
3
1960s
1
Or, Or, Or, Or–Pr
Pr, Or–Pr Or, Or
Or–Pr
2
1
Or–Pr, Or
4
3
1
Pr, Or
Or
1
Or
1950s
1
Pr
6
1
Or
1
1940s
3
1
Pr, Pr, Pr
2
1
2
2
Or
Or, Pr, Or
2
1
2
1930s
Pr
1900s 1910s 1920s
1
1
1
Or
1970s 1990s
Note. Pr ⫽ personal discrimination; Or ⫽ organizational discrimination; Or–Pr ⫽ both cases reported by the same participant in the same
decade.
Suffered discrimination professionally
Early obstacles
Aware of women’s roles early on
Birth a disappointment
Controlling or sexist parent
Discouraged from undergraduate education or
suffered discrimination during this time
Parents chose her college
Suffered other discrimination (racial or religious)
Mid-career obstacles
Appropriate women’s roles for the time
Discouraged from or delayed marriage
Discouraged from graduate education
Felt alone in school or organization
Felt uncertain of research abilities
Followed or supported husband’s career
Judged on appearance
Suffered discrimination in graduate school
Rejected other field because not practical for
women
Worked in clerical jobs
Later obstacles
Nepotism (experienced rules or mentioned)
Suffered discrimination in academia
Obstacle code
Table 3
Number of Obstacles Reported During the Specified Decade
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
299
ences were reported during the 1980s). The 20 obstacles identified were further
categorized according to when, in general, they affected women’s lives the most
(early, middle, or late in their career development).
Experiences also revealed both personal (at the individual level), and organizational (at the structural level) discrimination. Personal discrimination, represented by “Pr” in Table 3, was coded when a participant reported being told by
an individual or informal group of individuals, on the basis of their opinion, that
she should not pursue her education or career goal. Organizational discrimination,
represented by “Or,” was coded when a woman was denied education or a
position because of administrative rules, laws, or policies in place at a higher level
of organization.
Early obstacles. Participants described six early obstacles, which included
having an awareness of stereotypical women’s roles early on (n ⫽ 2), reporting
her parent’s disappointment in her birth as a girl (n ⫽ 2), having a controlling or
sexist parent (n ⫽ 4), being discouraged from undergraduate education or suffering discrimination as an undergraduate (n ⫽ 5), suffering from racial or
religious discrimination (n ⫽ 3), and having her parents choose her college
(n ⫽ 1).
Bettye McDonald Caldwell (PhD, 1951), the well-known researcher of early
childhood and a past editor of Child Development, was a second daughter, born
in the 1930s: “I’m the younger of two daughters, and apparently [it] was a big
disappointment that I was not a boy, because [my parents] certainly wanted one
for the second [child].” Three women reported having a controlling, traditional, or
sexist parent who had limited notions of women’s abilities. One woman described
her father’s dominating role in the family: “Mostly I see the very strong,
controlling hand he had all the time . . . and women were not allowed much
freedom. Even my mother was allowed almost no freedom in her life and needless
to say I was not allowed very much.” Another participant’s father was reported as
having “great theories about women, and one was that they could not learn
mathematics and did not need to. And as an educator, he lectured on this a great
deal. [As a woman,] I needed arithmetic, but that is all.” Because it represented
a woman being prevented from making her own choices, another early obstacle
was having her college chosen by her parents. This event happened to the
well-known scholar of cognitive development, Jean Matter-Mandler (PhD, 1956).
She commented: “I was a good girl of the 1930s and ’40s. I did not really expect
to choose where I went to college. Parents did that sort of thing for you.”
Another early obstacle, identified by four women, was being discouraged
from even obtaining higher education, either by their parents or by the administration at a college. In an example of personal discrimination in the 1930s,
Therese Décarie (PhD, 1960), whose research first demonstrated the effects of
thalidomide on infants, was told by her high school teachers, “Higher education
is not for young ladies.” One future psychologist was advised by her mother in the
midst of the Depression to concentrate on finding a suitable husband instead of
pursuing a college degree. Lois Wladis Hoffman (PhD, 1958), a prominent
scholar whose work was concerned with working mothers, was not accepted at
Pembroke College in the early 1950s because she was Jewish. Her subsequent
application at Northwestern University was also rejected. She later realized
Northwestern was not accepting out-of-state female students. In an autobiograph-
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ical chapter, Hoffman observed, “It is interesting to note that I was immediately
angry at the religious discrimination of Pembroke, but it was many years before
I realized Northwestern had been guilty of sex discrimination,” (Hoffman, 1996,
p. 106).
Mid-career obstacles. Ten obstacles were identified as occurring in the
middle of women’s careers, when they were purposefully pursuing goals in their
chosen disciplines. Mid-career obstacles were as follows: being made aware of
appropriate women’s roles for the time (n ⫽ 13), being discouraged from or
delaying marriage because of its potential impact on her career (n ⫽ 2), being
discouraged from graduate education at a personal or organizational level (n ⫽ 5),
feeling alone or being the lone woman in her department or profession (n ⫽ 5),
feeling uncertain of her research abilities (n ⫽ 2), following or supporting her
husband’s career (n ⫽ 7), being judged on her appearance (n ⫽ 4), rejecting
another discipline because of discrimination in that field against women (n ⫽ 4),
suffering discrimination in graduate school (n ⫽ 4), and working in clerical
positions to support herself or her family (n ⫽ 3).
Three participants (1 each in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s) did clerical work
at some point in their lives. After World War II ended and the U.S. male
workforce returned, women who had held high-paying union jobs found themselves in minimum-wage positions such as this and were strongly encouraged to
return to homemaking (Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, & Armitage, 2001). During
high school and college in the 1950s, Katherine Nelson (PhD, 1968), a leading
psycholinguist, worked “for various aspects of the U.S. government doing very
dull typist jobs, which was about what was available [for women] at the time.”
Expanding on the theme of limited career opportunities, four women rejected
an academic field in which they were interested because of limitations for women
in those fields (which included medicine, anthropology, and labor law). Hoping to
do graduate work in anthropology, Alberta Siegel (PhD, 1955), the first tenured
female faculty member at Stanford University’s medical school and former editor
of Child Development, spoke to the chairman of the anthropology department,
who told her anthropology was a difficult field for a woman. Siegel took a female
professor’s advice and entered child psychology instead, which “was a hospitable
field for women.” Judy Rosenblith (PhD, 1958), well known for both her research
and textbooks, also considered anthropology but decided that the fieldwork and
traveling involved would not be ideal for a woman with a family. After completing her undergraduate education in the early 1950s, Lois Wladis Hoffman planned
to attend law school in order to become a labor lawyer. After she discovered that
the National Labor Relations Board, for which one had to work if one were a labor
lawyer, did not hire women at that time, she decided to pursue a PhD in sociology.
These examples reflect a theme outlined in the brief general history, showing that
psychology, and child development in particular, were more open to female
scholars, relative to other disciplines.
Five women were discouraged from attending graduate school by either
individuals or organizations. Bettye McDonald Caldwell did not receive financial
or emotional support from her parents when she decided to pursue her doctorate
in the early 1950s. In the late 1940s, Dorothy Eichorn was rejected from Harvard
University with a letter explaining that in their experience, women got married
and had children and did not remain on a career path. Joy Osofsky (PhD, 1969),
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
301
an early childhood researcher, found obtaining a PhD difficult, especially for a
woman who was also married. Like four other women, Osofsky reported often
being the lone woman in discussions and other academic contexts, which she said
made her more likely to conform rather than to express feminist ideas.
Tracy Kendler (PhD, 1943), who with her husband, Howard Kendler, conducted landmark studies in children’s learning, was told in her 1940 admissions
interview for the University of Iowa that there was no work for women in
psychology. One of her professors at Iowa, where she did enroll, plainly enjoyed
talking with her male peers but was noticeably uncomfortable around her. Told to
concentrate on her duties as a wife to fellow student Howard, Kendler remained
on the sidelines of research throughout graduate school, being denied, as was at
least one other interviewee, opportunities for funding through research assistantships and positions in labs related to their field. A complete account of Kendler’s
professional experiences is available in a biographical article edited by her
husband, published after she passed away in 2001 (Kendler, 2003).
Another obstacle occurring in midlife for participants was basing their choices
largely on their husbands’ careers, an experience identified by seven women.
Women deliberately made a choice to follow their husbands, but we categorized
this event as an obstacle because of the effect of this choice on women’s own
career opportunities. Interviewees worked as teachers, secretaries, or in service
fields to support their husbands through medical and graduate school. In addition
to supporting their husband’s work, geographical and career moves women made
were often based on their husbands’ employment.
Virginia Crandall (MA, 1961), a prominent scholar on personality and parent–
child relationships, and Katherine Nelson delayed their pursuit of graduate degrees in psychology until after starting their families. As a married undergraduate
at the University of Michigan, Crandall left Ann Arbor to join her husband at the
army base where he was stationed in Texas. She switched her major to English in
order to be able to teach and support their family, which included their children,
after World War II. Although she worked closely with her husband Vaughn on his
research, it was not until she took over their project, after his sudden death in
1963, that she began to feel as though the work were her own. Judy Rosenblith
described her family’s move to Lee, South Dakota: “When we went, it was done
on the basis that I applied to graduate schools where my husband was likely to be
able to find a job. That was his and my arrangement.” After earning her PhD in
1943, Tracy Kendler decided to go where her husband’s career led them; they
moved to Chicago and then to Washington, DC. Dorothy Eichorn moved somewhat less willingly to Napa Valley in California, where her husband had been
offered a job as minister at the state hospital. They moved from Chicago, where
Eichorn had been offered two excellent positions. She described her feelings: “I
was not very happy about moving, I was not even particularly agreeable about it.”
Despite this, the family moved to California in 1951. These women, all of whom
have been influential in the field of child development, fit academic and professional growth into their husband’s careers and their duties as wives and mothers.
Obstacles later in women’s careers. As women advanced in their careers
and began achieving prominence, they encountered more hardships. The three
obstacles occurring later in women’s careers were as follows: experiencing
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discrimination in academia (n ⫽ 8) or in a professional research position (n ⫽ 2)
and suffering the effects of nepotism (n ⫽ 3).
Following their husbands’ choices not only required women to decline great
career opportunities, but also made finding work more difficult. For example,
rules against nepotism prevented women from obtaining a position in the field in
which they were trained because their husbands were already hired in some
capacity. Tracy Kendler was offered a research psychologist position in 1963 at
the University of California—Santa Barbara, which allowed her to apply for
research grants but not tenure, because her husband was already on faculty there.
Jean Matter-Mandler was employed as a research assistant at the Laboratory of
Social Relations at Harvard University, “where the wives of academics hung out
and ran their husbands’ research.” This was in the mid-1950s, which she also
described as “the most anti-women’s lib period imaginable. Women did not get
jobs in psychology, they got peripheral jobs.” A decade later in 1965, MatterMandler’s job moved beyond the periphery into obscurity. She could not get a job
in the psychology department, of which her husband was chair, so she worked in
the biology and then neuroscience departments, which she described as “strictly
a paper way for me to apply to NIH for a grant.”
Discrimination within academia kept women from obtaining faculty positions, participating in organizations, and obtaining research support and funding.
Tracy Kendler was denied a vacated faculty job as assistant professor for child
and adolescent development at Barnard College in 1955:
The departmental chairman told me that he had an application from a man who had
taught at Vassar College. He said if this man wanted the job, it was his, not because
he was any better than I, but simply because he was a man. He really meant to
assure me that the only reason I would not get the job was because a man would
not have the divided responsibilities of a married woman with children. (SRCD
interview, 1995)
Subsequently, the (female) president of Barnard intervened, and Kendler was
given the appointment. However, discrimination at Barnard, sister college to
Columbia University, continued after this small victory. Kendler was unhappy to
discover that Barnard faculty did not have graduate students, nor could they teach
graduate courses at Columbia. Women were also officially excluded from the
University Faculty Club unless they were guests of male members. A similar
unpleasant awakening occurred in 1951 for Marian Radke-Yarrow (PhD, 1944),
a leader in research on parent and child interactions: “I was so naı̈ve as to not
know that there were such things as sexual discrimination in academia, good
ivy-covered academia.” Although she was a faculty member, she was not allowed
to join Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s faculty club.
Judy Rosenblith was told not to compare her salary with that of male faculty
members when she took a position at Brown University in the mid-1950s. The
issue of salary was a catalyst for more personal discrimination in Eileen Mavis
Hetherington’s experience at a Midwestern university.
It was a very sexist psychology department. In fact the University of _____ is a
very sexist school. And it [has] several times lost lawsuits that were filed by female
faculty by discrimination . . . I was a full professor (1966 –70) and would object to
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
303
getting the lowest salary of any of the full professors, although I was one of the
most productive people on the faculty, and certainly one of their most popular
teachers. And they would say, “You do not need the money, your husband has a
good salary.” And they’d say, “Well, why do you care so much?” and I’d say,
“Because I want it, I think money is a sign that I am appreciated.” And one had
the nerve to say, “We love ya honey.” So . . . it was very blatant sexism. (SRCD
interview, 1997)
Gender discrimination also existed outside academia in research institutes.
Marian Radke-Yarrow, who worked for the National Institutes of Health for over
20 years (1953–1974), experienced gender discrimination when it came to establishing her research budget. A male colleague received a budget for $160,000,
while she was told to keep hers to four digits. She also heard the director of the
National Institute for Mental Health say that “over his dead body would there ever
be a woman lab chief.” The director was alive to apologize when she became one,
12 years later. Alice Sterling Honig (PhD, 1975), a distinguished scholar of social
emotional development, has advice for female researchers applying for grants
today. Although she did not report overt discrimination, she regretted not being
more persistent in her own ventures and said that she often applied for a grant but
failed to reapply when it was rejected. Her suggestion to young women now is to
persevere in their attempts to obtain grant monies.
Summary. The SRCD interviewees encountered various obstacles on their
path to academic recognition. At all stages in their lives, they experienced
discrimination on personal and organizational levels. The most common early
obstacle, reported by four women, was being discouraged from attending an
undergraduate institution, either by their parents or by the institution itself. In the
middle of their careers, 13 women were informed of appropriate roles for women
at the time, and at least seven women followed or supported their husband’s
careers, often at a disadvantage to their own career goals. After their careers were
established, nine women reported suffering gender discrimination within academia or in a professional research context. Because of their multiple goals,
including family, a few women entered the field later in life (as shown in Table
1), which was true to an even greater extent for the first women in psychology.
Scarborough and Furumoto (1987) noted that women in later generations “were
more likely to be introduced to psychology in their college years and found it
more possible to move directly to . . . graduate training programs” (p. 135).
Buffers Supporting Women’s Efforts
Buffers were identified as experiences demonstrating that women received
support or developed attitudes that helped them reach their goals or combat
obstacles in the way of their success. Table 4 shows the buffers experienced by
women, again categorized by decade. There were 12 experiences that fell into this
category, many of which corresponded to experiences described as facilitative for
women’s careers (Kelly, 1991). Like obstacles, buffers were also categorized
according to whether they occurred early, in the middle, or later in women’s lives.
Early buffers. Buffers occurring early in women’s lives, before they began
their careers, were having a female role model (n ⫽ 5), expressing an early
interest in the “hard” sciences or math (n ⫽ 3), being raised in a household with
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Table 4
Number of Buffers Reported During the Specified Decade
Buffer code
1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1990s
Early buffers
Female role model
1
1
2
1
Hard sciences or
math interest
1
1
1
High expectations
for women
2
3
1
Male role model
1
1
Spent time with
father
1
Mid-career buffers
Attended women’s
college
1
2
1
Intellectual relief
from child rearing
1
1
1
Intervention on
participant’s
behalf
1
1
Unaware of sexism
or women’s roles
2
1
1
Worked with or was
supported by
husband
3
1
1
Later buffers
Did not feel
discriminated
against
1
1
4
Reverse
discrimination
1
1
high expectations for women (n ⫽ 6), having a male role model (n ⫽ 2), and
spending time with her father (n ⫽ 1).
Although Bettye McDonald Caldwell’s parents were disappointed she was not
a boy, they also “had no misconceptions of a girl’s ability and expected a great
deal of their girls.” Ruth Munroe, growing up in the 1930s, recounted a similar
viewpoint about women’s abilities:
I think my parents expected that we could do anything, my brother and I, and they
didn’t make much differentiation between us. It wasn’t that he was a boy and he
would do something, and I wasn’t a boy and therefore I wouldn’t, they just sort of
thought we’d do . . . whatever we wanted to do with our lives. (SRCD interview,
1995)
Doris Roberts Entwisle grew up in the midst of an all-girl neighborhood in the
1920s, where as a child, she participated in what she described as “boyish”
activities with her father. These included playing bridge and doing mathematical
puzzles. She also attended a college preparatory school with high expectations of
women: “Nothing mattered in this high school except academic performance, and
the performance of females was as highly rewarded as that of males, which is kind
of unusual.”
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305
Virginia Crandall, surrounded by peers who were going to college or professional schools in the 1920s, did not perceive her career choices to be limited when
she decided to pursue her interest in medicine, and she also reported having a male
role model:
As I grew up, all of my peers in high school were planning to go off into one kind
of vocation or another, college or business school or something . . . it was assumed
that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I did not have to be a nurse, [my parents]
thought my plans to start into medicine were great . . . then there was a doctor in
town who was important, and was very good friends of my family, and he enjoyed
talking over stuff with me and I think he was another lead into the premed. (SRCD
interview, 1993)
Four other women shared the early positive experience of having personal or
professional role models of both genders; in two cases, participants recounted
early memories of their mothers. In the early 1920s, the mother of Stella Chess
(MD, 1939), the child psychiatrist associated with temperament research, refused
to resign from her job as schoolteacher, as was required, after becoming pregnant.
Her father, a lawyer, did not win the court case that ensued, but local newspapers
picked up the story and eventually the law was changed. Dorothy Eichorn
reflected on her mother’s expertise in her work as business manager of a grocery
store in the 1930s and the pride with which her father regarded her mother’s
accomplishments. Then she described the family attitude toward her sister and
her: “I think that I sort of grew up with the sense that girls could do anything and
we were allowed to do anything pretty much too.” She was also able to go to girls’
camp: “When we got old enough we went to girls’ camp, so there was a lot of
interest in natural kinds of sciences.” Finally, Ann Streissguth (PhD, 1964), whose
research opened up the field of fetal alcohol syndrome, expressed how lucky she
felt to have had wonderful mentors of both genders throughout her life.
Mid-career support. Five buffers were reported during the period when
participants were actively pursuing their career goals. Attending a women’s
college (n ⫽ 4), valuing the intellectual relief from child rearing provided by their
careers (n ⫽ 3), having someone intervene on their behalf when they were being
discriminated against (n ⫽ 2), being unaware of discrimination or women’s roles
(n ⫽ 4), and working with or being supported by their husband (n ⫽ 5) were all
identified as mid-career buffers.
Sandra Wood Scarr (PhD, 1965), a leading scholar and former president of
SRCD, attended women’s schools from seventh grade through her undergraduate
career at Vassar College:
I guess I never felt competitive with men because I did not ever compete with
men . . . I felt that there was every opportunity for me to be the best I could be, and
I was not squashed in any way. I think the negative effect is I did not get a very
good view of the real world because, of course, the real world does contain men
and women, and I do not think I had a very good idea about relationships with men
and what my achievements and aspirations would mean. (SRCD interview, 1996)
Eleanor J. Gibson (PhD, 1938), a pioneering researcher on children’s early
perception who graduated from Smith College in the early 1930s, reflected on her
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many female family members who went to Smith College, a women’s college,
with the exception of her granddaughter:
My granddaughter would not hear of going to a women’s college. I tried to tell her
that that saved my life, gave me a career, made all the difference between just
being a housewife forever and being a psychologist. But she said, “Oh, it does not
matter nowadays,” and perhaps it does not. But I still think that women’s colleges
do a lot in the way of helping women to achieve all the potential they possibly can,
you know, and they certainly did then, every bit. (SRCD interview, 1998)
In addition to being supported in their undergraduate education, five women
described how important it was that their husbands remained positive and encouraging of their research pursuits. Judy Rosenblith reflected on her life course,
which included being married at the beginning of her senior year in college: “The
fact that I married a man who wanted me to have a career, not just accepted the
idea that I would have one, has been very important.” When Lois Wladis Hoffman
quit her job in 1960 to care for her first child, both her husband Martin and her
boss, Ronald Lippitt, were unhappy. She described her husband’s views: “He
believed that an intelligent woman should actualize her potential and should
contribute intellectually to the world.” Lippitt made every attempt to retain her as
a program director of the Institute for Social Research, which he helped found,
volunteering to send a research assistant to their house. She finally agreed to edit
a series of books for the Russell Sage Foundation, work she could do at home.
Several couples, including Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (MD, 1939),
Halbert and Nancy Robinson (PhD, 1958), and others worked in tandem on
research. In 1964 Jean Matter-Mandler (PhD, 1956) and her husband George
Mandler completed a book, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt. At the time,
she was working very little outside of this project in order to raise their children.
George could sense his wife’s restlessness at home and supported her work on the
book. Although her husband was outwardly dedicated to her intellectual contributions, other researchers were not as likely to acknowledge her efforts. MatterMandler related a common frustrating occurrence after the volume was published:
She and her husband were together when someone came up and began speaking
to them about “his wonderful book,” although she was its first author.
Before his death, Virginia Crandall’s husband had supported her interest in
developmental psychology:
He would bring professional colleagues home, and I never felt put down or
insufficiently educated to enter the discussion. He would [hold] discuss[ions] with
me, not just when other people were around, and I think together we decided that
the achievement field really did not have a very good theoretical handle for
developmental work with children. (SRCD interview, 1993)
Crandall started by helping with clerical work on her husband’s research,
which she eventually took over after he died. By the time she obtained her second
grant renewal, she began to feel as though it was her project and her work.
Notably, Crandall was one of only two women who reported feeling uncertain of
her own research abilities.
Late career support. Because buffers facilitated women’s career development, not as many buffers were mentioned later in women’s lives. Not feeling
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
307
discrimination (n ⫽ 6) and experiencing reverse discrimination (n ⫽ 2) were both
categorized as late-career buffers. Reporting a lack of awareness of gender roles,
categorized as a mid-career buffer, was distinct from not feeling discrimination at
all, because the women who reported being unaware of gender roles early on did
not necessarily suggest their gender had not mattered in their lives. However, the
women represented below were coded as not feeling discrimination and did not
acknowledge its influence on their lives at any point.
Virginia Crandall did not perceive as much discrimination growing up in the
1920s, but attributed the increasing sexism of the 1950s to the popularity of
Freudian thought.
It was assumed I could do anything. I’ve often thought gender roles became more
inhibiting for girls. . .later than when I grew up. It was after, I think after Freudian
teachings got around more that girls were supposed to be satisfied with a lesser
role, a homemaker nurturing role and so on. (SRCD interview, 1993)
Harriet Rheingold (PhD, 1955), a pioneer in infant behavior, also did not report
feeling discrimination:
I do not think that there has been opposition between my status as a wife and a
mother, and my career. I’ve tried to say when I write about it, that these are
activities that are combined, they’re not in opposition; they each help the other. I
do not think that I have ever experienced prejudice because of my sex. (SRCD
interview, 1993)
These accounts reflect both a strength and a possible limitation of this study.
The women interviewed represent a select sample of successful women who
“made it” and achieved prominence in child development research, because
women who did not attain high levels of prominence were not interviewed by
SRCD. The experiences summarized here offer clues about what is required to
succeed in scholarly pursuits, but a description of the lives of women who took
another path would be invaluable to understand alternative career patterns.
It is possible that some women interviewed did not suffer discrimination to a
degree that it influenced their career choices. However, we emphasize the subjective nature of the data and suggest that discrimination may have been present
in women’s lives, even though it was not perceived or recalled by participants.
Four of the six women who did not report feeling the effects of discrimination did
so as a summary impression of their careers, which suggests participants may
have remembered their careers optimistically. This explanation was offered by
Eleanor Maccoby in the collective vignette, in which she described the phenomenon of denial of personal disadvantage. Crosby, Cordova, and Jaskar (1993)
summarized a number of studies investigating the tendency of individuals to
underestimate personal experiences of discrimination, while acknowledging that
other members of their own disadvantaged group (including Japanese Americans
during World War II, lesbians, and women in a suburban work force) were subject
to a considerable degree of discrimination. Finally, high-achieving women may
have rationalized their decision to have remained in situations riddled with
discrimination (i.e., academia and professional research institutes) by downplaying or underestimating the effect of such events on their life courses in order to
maintain an overall sense of integrity. The extent to which participants rational-
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ized their decisions was explored in Steele, Spencer, and Lynch’s (1993) work on
constraints on achievement. They investigated self-image maintenance after participants made an esteem-threatening decision. The data provided by interviewees
in this study do not allow confirmation or disconfirmation of these theories, but
they offer alternative explanations to the possibility that certain women interviewed did not, in reality, suffer from gender discrimination that affected their
careers.
Summary. Buffers served to support women in their quest for education and
recognition; this category included reporting feelings of unawareness about discrimination or a conviction that it did not affect their lives. Our participants also
encountered individuals, including parents, mentors, and spouses, who believed in
their abilities and encouraged and facilitated their intellectual pursuits. Even so,
obstacles outnumbered buffers in reported experiences related to gender. Both
buffers and struggles, which are described in the next section, represent the tools
with which women combated the negative effects of discrimination.
Struggles to Combat Discrimination
Compared with either obstacles or buffers, the number of women reporting
struggles, in which they reported actively trying to combat the effects of discrimination, was small. Five types of struggles were identified (three of which were
reported by only 1 woman). The struggles are displayed along with chronological
information in Table 5. Exploring her role as a woman in a professional organization (n 1), feeling as though she were struggling (n ⫽ 1), being involved in a
social movement (n ⫽ 1), reporting rebellious or active efforts against discrimination (n ⫽ 8), and rejecting female roles or the field of child development (n ⫽
3) were classified as struggles.
Joy Osofsky was the only interviewee to (briefly) mention that being involved
in the women’s and civil rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s helped her
focus on her goal of attending graduate school. Osofsky also felt as though she
were struggling, and Katherine Nelson remembered “some meetings of women
getting together to decide what their role in [SRCD] was”; however, she did not
elaborate.
Three participants reported that they rejected women’s roles or the field of
child development because of their own negative perception of the attributes and
Table 5
Number of Struggles Reported During the Specified Decade
Struggle code
1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1990s
Explored female roles
in organization
1
Felt as if in a struggle
1
Involved in a social
movement
1
Outwardly rebellious or
active
1
3
3
1
Rejected female roles
or child development
1
2
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
309
career opportunities associated with the female gender. Diana Baumrind (PhD,
1955), a leading theorist regarding parenting styles, was cognizant of her mother’s
stereotypical position in the family and wanted to avoid feminine roles entirely.
She perceived herself as “being dependent and overly empathic . . . and disliked
that ‘soft’ side.” Her answer to this identity dilemma was to imitate boys and
compete in activities along with them, which was effective until her male peers
reached puberty and became stronger and faster than she. As a doctoral student at
the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1950s, Baumrind “avoided all
developmental courses, relegating them to ‘women’s studies’”; she changed her
mind when she decided to have children herself and wanted to ensure there were
enough informed texts on the subject!
Judy Rosenblith described her undergraduate experience at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in the early 1950s: “I had very much rejected
child development [after] my UCLA mentor suggested that it was appropriate for
a woman . . . I did not want anything to do with what was appropriate for a
woman.” Although she did not report avoiding it, Dorothy Eichorn agreed,
commenting that child development was considered the “diaper division” by other
academics. Finally, Jean Berko Gleason (PhD, 1958), whose work on toddler
language greatly influenced the field, described developmental psychology as an
area into which women were always “allowed” and often turned to after unsuccessful attempts at entering other disciplines. These accounts corroborate explanations offered in the general history summarized earlier (Cahan, 1991), suggesting the relative ease with which women began scholarly careers in child
development, compared with other disciplines.
Five women reported behaviors categorized as rebellious, although eight
events of rebellion are represented, because Judy Rosenblith told of three occasions in her life that warranted this code. For example, when she was in fourth
grade, she refused to embroider a map of California and chose instead to construct
a jig-saw map, the activity the boys were doing. This caused quite a commotion,
and her parents had to go to the school and have her project arranged. In another
example demonstrating active efforts to combat an instance of organizational
discrimination, she reported, “And then I discovered in high school that Cal Tech
would not accept female applicants, and . . . I was very, very put out about that
refusal on their part, and carried on quite a correspondence with them about it.”
Pauline Sears (PhD, 1939), whose parents had both attended Stanford University, recounted how she maneuvered obtaining a 4-year degree without upsetting her father:
And so when I went to Stanford—well, previous to my going to Stanford, my two
older sisters were allowed 2 years of general college, and they both went to
Stanford. Then they had to leave and teach school, and you could teach without
much training at that time, educational training, and they both taught for a year,
and then they were supposed to get vocational training. Well, Hope, the oldest, got
nurses training and worked as a nurse. Ruth got married . . . and began having
children and so on, that was all right with my father; that was worthy. But then I
came along, and this rule was a hard and fast rule, and when I decided to major in
psychology I took a course in intelligence testing, the Stanford Binet, you know,
and so I told my father that I was trained now as a psychologist, and, of course I
was not, but he did not know that. . . . That was my vocation, you see, so I was
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allowed to stay on at Stanford and finish, which was my aim. (SRCD interview,
approximately 1990)
Even this deliberate effort to finish her bachelor’s degree did not involve bold
rebellion on Sears’s part. Rather, she obtained her goal by creating a situation in
which her father felt comfortable allowing it to happen, within the bounds of what
he determined was acceptable. In sum, like the women described in Scarborough
and Furumoto’s (1987) book, Sears and Rosenblith were not outright rebels.
Instead, they made steady gains and exerted reasonable, but not extreme, efforts
to work against discrimination.
Ambiguous Events
Six types of experiences reported by the SRCD interviewees were not clearly
identifiable as obstacles, buffers, or struggles in women’s lives. These events were
categorized as ambiguous or descriptive, with three events describing women’s
early home and parenting environments, and the other three occurring later in their
lives. Having educated parents (n ⫽ 1), having one’s parents fulfill traditional
roles at home (n ⫽ 3), having uneducated parents (n ⫽ 2), mentioning that child
development was a “women’s field” (n ⫽ 7), mentioning that they raised children
(n ⫽ 11), and understanding reasons for gender discrimination (n ⫽ 3) were all coded
as ambiguous events and are displayed in Table 6.
Three women reported that they understood reasons for gender discrimination; one when she was not admitted to graduate school because of her family
commitments and another when she discussed laws against nepotism. It is not
clear from these accounts whether this viewpoint influenced their career choices.
The remarks do reveal their acceptance of discrimination as part of how society
operated at the time, further shown in Alberta Siegel’s account of how she was
discouraged from anthropology:
I went to speak to the . . . chairman of the anthropology department and asked him if
I could do graduate work in anthropology. And he discouraged me; he said that there
were these few very well-known women anthropologists, but that in general anthropology was a very difficult field for women. And I now think that, that was correct. I
think he gave me good advice. I told that story to his son, who is also an anthropol-
Table 6
Number of Ambiguous Events Reported During the Specified Decade
Ambiguous event code 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1990s
Early
Educated parents
1
Traditional roles at home
1
1
1
Uneducated parents
1
1
Mid- to later
Child development was a
woman’s field
1
3
1
2
Raised children
(mentioned)
2
5
1
1
2
Understood reasons for
discrimination
1
1
1
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
311
ogist, and his son was just mortified, to hear that his father had deflected me . . . [He
was] a sexist chauvinist . . . But at the time, I think it was right. (SRCD interview,
1992)
Contrary to the experiences of many of the first generation of women in
psychology, half of whom did not ever marry (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987),
child rearing and professional endeavors were balanced more easily by the women
interviewed in this study. Most of our participants had families, but 11 women
explicitly discussed their roles as mothers in relation to their status as professional
women. Although marriage and motherhood made establishing a career in child
development more difficult, they were not mutually exclusive for the women in
our study. However, many women documented by Scarborough and Furumoto
(1987) in the early years were either forced to quit or chose to give up their work
after acquiring a husband and children.
There may have been positive influences for families as well. Some participants’ husbands and children were central in facilitating their careers; having a
family could clearly not be categorized only as a disadvantage. Joan Cantor
thought she devoted more time to her family than do many young women
currently, and she stated that she had no regrets about her choices. Rather, she
expressed a worry that mothers and fathers today do not spend time with their
children. It never occurred to Lilian Katz (PhD, 1968), a prominent early childhood educator, that she would work as a young mother. Conversely, the idea that
she would not work did not occur to Diana Baumrind. She took motherhood
seriously, although she described herself as “frequently overtaxed and exhausted.”
For her, motherhood meant responsible motherhood. Being a woman, however,
did not provide a rationale for not working. Yet these two women, with opposite
points of view, both played similar roles as highly successful academicians and
dedicated mothers.
Women who had controlling or sexist parents were easy to identify, but it was
more difficult to determine the influence of being raised in a traditional family
(see Marian Radke-Yarrow’s excerpt in the collective vignette in Table 2). It was
also not apparent whether women’s parents’ education levels had a systematic
effect on their careers, because women with both educated and uneducated parents
reported discriminatory attitudes in the family (Pauline Sears and Shirley Moore,
respectively). Furthermore, Ruth Munroe, whose parents were not highly educated, reported a very supportive attitude about women’s abilities in her home
environment. Regardless of their educational levels, it appeared that participants’
parents at least implicitly supported having their daughters educated, because all
the women interviewed attended undergraduate and graduate institutions.
In a section on the origins of the first generation of women in psychology,
Scarborough and Furumoto (1987) described the broad middle class from which
many of the first well-educated women came at the end of the 19th century. These
families valued education for its own sake. In an American society devoid of overt
class divisions, education was one method by which many people bettered
themselves and their social status. This attitude about the relation between
education and upward mobility remains in the United States today. There is no
evidence about whether this attitude was held by our participants’ families,
although it is possible that these families, like those of the first generation of
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
women in psychology, may have “increasingly recognized that education for
[their] daughters represented both an economic and an intellectual advantage”
(Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987, p. 137). However, the extent to which our
participants’ families in the early 1900s expected that they would want to make
use of their education outside the home is not systematically apparent.
Summarizing Participants’ Experiences
As in the history of other individuals encountering discrimination, perseverance, intelligence, and hard work were important for women to overcome obstacles, which represented the largest portion of reported experiences related to
gender. Buffers, the second most frequently reported category of experience, also
served to support women’s efforts to advance in education and obtain intellectual
prominence. Perhaps because so many resources were required to advance just
one step in their pursuits, women did not report a large number of outward
struggles, which represented active efforts to combat the effects of discrimination.
Instead, their career efforts were relatively singular and conducted within the
boundaries of socially acceptable behavior of the time; one woman who actively
worked against discrimination did so by writing letters to a university that denied
her admission because of her gender. The nonconfrontational means by which
most women in this study obtained their goals are consistent with what we know
of society’s expectations of women’s behavior, in and out of the work force
(Kelly, 1991).
Another explanation for both female participants’ general absence from activist,
rebellious, or militant activities as well as the methods by which they gained admittance to this group of scholars represented in this study, is that they were so heavily
invested in their scientific endeavors. Eleanor Maccoby focused on the importance of
science in a statement continuing her excerpt displayed in Table 2:
I feel . . . that the important thing about having a career in psychology is first
to decide whether you are a scientist. I mean you have to ask yourself the big
questions . . . [and just regard] all your ideas as hypotheses until you have had
a chance to get some data that are relevant . . . And I think those kinds of
questions are gender free. There’s no reason why either sex should have an
advantage in having that kind of thought processes [sic], it seems to me.
(SRCD interview, 1992)
Maccoby’s idea about what it means to be a scientist corresponds to a personal
quality appearing in Scarborough and Furumoto’s (1987) accounts of the first women
in psychology. The brief biography of Frances Rousmaniere, whose journal entries
reveal an avid intellectual curiosity and passion for learning (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987), most vividly implies this theme. It is possible that the methods used to
obtain prominence in academia were such because women in our sample were
wholeheartedly interested in and committed to their intellectual endeavors. They were
not trying to change the world for women. Instead, they were focused on changing the
world for humankind, through their intellectual contributions to the field of child
development. Once again, it is important to note that the inclusion of these women in
SRCD’s Oral History Project defines them as vital contributors to the field of child
WOMEN IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
313
development. Our participants were not included because they are women, but
because they were or are prominent theorists, researchers, and contributors to the field.
Conclusion
This analysis augments what we know about women’s general historical
experiences in psychology and child development with autobiographical information from a number of distinguished female scholars, who represent the
second and third generation of women in the field of psychology and child
development. The themes of obstacles, struggles, buffers, and ambiguity are
reflected in both aspects of the article. A systematic history of women’s entry
into various academic disciplines has not been undertaken (Cahan, 1991),
although certain aspects of this broad question have been investigated (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987; Xie & Shauman, 2003). This study encourages
further inquiry into the relation between the birth of psychology and child
development and the relative ease with which women gained access to these
areas with respect to other disciplines. Additional analyses of why women
made the choices they did and the methods they used to attain their goals
would be helpful for completing the historical picture of women in child
development and psychology.
Even if their struggles were singularly experienced, the impact of the
successes of these women has been tremendous. Today, it is much easier for
women to enter careers in academia, especially psychology and other behavioral sciences, where there are now actually more women than men. The
heartfelt stories and insights of our participants reflect the ability of human
beings to overcome obstacles. Advances made by both women and men in
child development illustrate that effort and self-efficacy lead to real accomplishments.
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Appendix
Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Oral History
Project Interview Protocol
General Intellectual History
1. Describe your family background along with any childhood and adolescent
experiences that may be of interest. Include the educational and occupational characteristics of your parents. Where were you born? Grew up? What was your schooling like?
Any military experience? Early work experience?
2. What early adult experiences were important to your intellectual development?
Collegiate experiences?
3. What are the origins of your interests in child development? What individuals were
important to your intellectual development? Who were your research mentors? Significant
colleagues?
4. What political and social events have influenced your research and writing?
Teaching?
5. Would you characterize the development of your ideas in the field of child development
as evolving in a rather straightforward fashion or in a way that involved sharp turns in
theoretical or research style? Why do you characterize your work in this way?
Personal Research Contributions
1. What were your primary interests in child development at the beginning of your
career?
2. What continuities in your work are most significant? What shifts occurred? What
events were responsible?
3. Please reflect on the strengths (and weaknesses?) of your research and theoretical
contributions, the impact of your work, and its current status.
4. What published or unpublished manuscripts best represent your thinking about
child development? Which of your studies seem most significant? Which contributions
were the most wrong-headed?
5. Please reflect on your experiences with the research funding apparatus over the
years. Comment on your participation in shaping research funding policy, implementation
(e.g., study sections, councils), securing support for your own work, and related matters.
Your Institutional Contributions
1. In which institutions have you worked? Dates? Capacities?
2. For persons connected with well-known research sites (e.g., NIMH, the various
universities, free-standing research institutes or foundations): Please describe your role
with that facility. Describe the changes in this unit that occurred during your time there,
what objectives were being pursued, what achievements and frustrations were encountered, and the role you believe was played by that unit in the history of child development
research.
3. Describe your experiences as a teacher of child development research, and/or
trainer of research workers. What courses have you taught? Please comment on the tension
between teaching and research in the field of child development.
(Appendix continues)
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CAMERON AND HAGEN
4. Describe your experiences in so-called “applied” child development research. In
applied work? Please comment on your role in putting theory into practice.
Your Experiences With SRCD
1. When did you join SRCD? What were your earliest contacts with the society and
with whom? Describe the first biennial meeting you attended.
2. Describe the history of your participation in the scientific meetings and
publications of the society. In other (nongovernance) aspects of the work of the
society?
3. Describe the history of your participation in SRCD governance. What were the
major problems and issues that confronted you during your time (as editor, as council or
committee member, as president or other officer)?
4. What do you believe are the most important changes to occur in SRCD and its
activities during your association with it?
The Field
1. Please comment on the history of the field during the years that you have
participated in it (major continuities and discontinuities, and events related to these). Have
your views concerning the importance of various issues changed over the years? How?
2. What are your hopes (and fears) for the future of the field?
Personal Notes
1. Please tell us something about your personal interests and your family, especially
the ways in which they may have had a bearing on your scientific interests and contributions. On your applied contributions?
**PLEASE INCLUDE AN UP-TO-DATE CV AND A PICTURE WITH YOUR
INVERVIEW TAPES**
Received March 22, 2004
Revision received October 4, 2004
Accepted January 24, 2005 y