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HARRIS COMMUNICATIONS PORTFOLIO © BOOK: BROKEN PATTERNS Description Press Release  Blurbs Articles and Reviews: Boston Sunday Globe HarrisCom home About HarrisCom Portfolio  Events Links Contact U PRESS RELEASE news from Wayne State University Press For Immediate Release:   July, 1995 Contact: Stacy Lieberman, Promotion Manager                            313-577-2109                                                                                                              New Book Links Women’s Career Choices to Lives of Their Mothers and Grandmothers A group of women in male-dominated professions chose their careers largely because they did not want to emulate their mothers who were homemakers in the 1950s, according to a new book on professional women. But many of those interviewed had grandmothers who held jobs outside the home in the early twentieth century. "These grandmothers entered adulthood at the time of an earlier feminist movement, when women won the vote and were entering certain professions at a greater rate than men," explains Anita Harris, an award-winning journalist and the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Wayne State University Press, $39.95 cloth, $17.95 paper). "Some of these grandmothers worked at menial jobs because they had to. Others became doctors and lawyers." In her book, Harris places a group of modern professional women in broad historical and generational context. Through extensive interviews, she discovered that many contemporary women looked to their grandmothers as role models instead of to their own mothers. The daughers of these early working women--the mothers of the owmen Harris interviewed--were strongly affected by a trend twoard domesticity after World War II that lated through the 1950s. In the 1970s, inspired in part by a renewed women’s movement and the opening of opportunities, the daughters of these 1950s homemakers entered careers like law, medicine and science, which had long been reserved mostly for men. Harris attributes the every-other-generation pattern in the families of the women she interviewed in part to a powerful push-pull dynamic between mothers and daughters. "Women strive to define themselves as different and separate from their mothers, yet also wish to retain a deep emotioanl connection with them," Harris explains. Another important factor involves changing societal attitudes, says Harris, who traces the roles of women from the Colonial Era to the present in Broken Patterns. "In times of rapid change or turmoil, men and women alike tend to cling to stereotypical images of gender roles, and long for the seeming safety of a golden age of a past that never really existed. But when those stereotypical roles become to constraining for women in one generation, their daughters try to break free in the next." In Broken Patterns, Harris traces the experience of working women from the Colonial Era to the present. She suggests a "spiral pattern" of change in which each generation strives to be different from the preceding one, yet finds ways to encorporate important values and traditions from the past. Today, Harris writes, despite many inroads, professional women are facing a hardening of atttiudes and an erosion of rights; it remains difficult to combine family and career. As earlier in the century, young women are asking whether it is possible to "do it all," and if they even want to. The challenge for this new generation, Harris says, is to draw on the experience of generations past to create new family and workplace forms for the future.   About the Author Anita Harris is an award-winning journalist who has reported for Newsday, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, and public radio. A recipient of the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, she has taught at Yale University, Harvard University and Simmons College. Harris has discussed Broken Patterns as a featured guest on National Public Radio’s talk of the Nation," and has been covered by the Boston Globe and Detroit News, among other publications. Broken Patterns  may be purchased at Wordsworth, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, or ordered through the Center for the Study of Aging, 518-462-1331, Amazon.com, Wayne State University Press (1-800-WSU-READ), or Borders Bookstores. 220 pages $29.95 cloth, ISBN O-8143-2550-5 $17.95 paper, ISBN 0-8143-2551-3 Publication Date: Summer, 1995 news from Wayne State University Press For Immediate Release:   July, 1995 Contact: Stacy Lieberman, Promotion Manager                            313-577-2109                                                                                                              New Book Links Women’s Career Choices to Lives of Their Mothers and Grandmothers A group of women in male-dominated professions chose their careers largely because they did not want to emulate their mothers who were homemakers in the 1950s, according to a new book on professional women. But many of those interviewed had grandmothers who held jobs outside the home in the early twentieth century. "These grandmothers entered adulthood at the time of an earlier feminist movement, when women won the vote and were entering certain professions at a greater rate than men," explains Anita Harris, an award-winning journalist and the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Wayne State University Press, $39.95 cloth, $17.95 paper). "Some of these grandmothers worked at menial jobs because they had to. Others became doctors and lawyers." In her book, Harris places a group of modern professional women in broad historical and generational context. Through extensive interviews, she discovered that many contemporary women looked to their grandmothers as role models instead of to their own mothers. The daughers of these early working women--the mothers of the owmen Harris interviewed--were strongly affected by a trend twoard domesticity after World War II that lated through the 1950s. In the 1970s, inspired in part by a renewed women’s movement and the opening of opportunities, the daughters of these 1950s homemakers entered careers like law, medicine and science, which had long been reserved mostly for men. Harris attributes the every-other-generation pattern in the families of the women she interviewed in part to a powerful push-pull dynamic between mothers and daughters. "Women strive to define themselves as different and separate from their mothers, yet also wish to retain a deep emotioanl connection with them," Harris explains. Another important factor involves changing societal attitudes, says Harris, who traces the roles of women from the Colonial Era to the present in Broken Patterns. "In times of rapid change or turmoil, men and women alike tend to cling to stereotypical images of gender roles, and long for the seeming safety of a golden age of a past that never really existed. But when those stereotypical roles become to constraining for women in one generation, their daughters try to break free in the next." In Broken Patterns, Harris traces the experience of working women from the Colonial Era to the present. She suggests a "spiral pattern" of change in which each generation strives to be different from the preceding one, yet finds ways to encorporate important values and traditions from the past. Today, Harris writes, despite many inroads, professional women are facing a hardening of atttiudes and an erosion of rights; it remains difficult to combine family and career. As earlier in the century, young women are asking whether it is possible to "do it all," and if they even want to. The challenge for this new generation, Harris says, is to draw on the experience of generations past to create new family and workplace forms for the future.   About the Author Anita Harris is an award-winning journalist who has reported for Newsday, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, and public radio. A recipient of the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, she has taught at Yale University, Harvard University and Simmons College. Harris has discussed Broken Patterns as a featured guest on National Public Radio’s talk of the Nation," and has been covered by the Boston Globe and Detroit News, among other publications. Broken Patterns  may be purchased at Wordsworth, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, or ordered through the Center for the Study of Aging, 518-462-1331, Amazon.com, Wayne State University Press (1-800-WSU-READ), or Borders Bookstores. 220 pages $29.95 cloth, ISBN O-8143-2550-5 $17.95 paper, ISBN 0-8143-2551-3 Publication Date: Summer, 1995