Synopsis

 

Love across cultures is tested when Antonio, a penniless university student, and Evelyn, a strong-willed Peace Corps volunteer, succumb to their attraction to one another at the end of her two-year commitment in Peru and Evelyn gets pregnant. Deeply in love, the twenty-three-year-olds marry in Cusco—and decide to begin their married life in Northern California.

Evelyn, like most wives of the ’60s and ’70s, expects her husband to support their family. And Antonio tries to take his place as head of the household, but he must first learn English, complete college, and find an adequate job. To make ends meet, Evelyn secures full-time positions, leaving their infant son in the care of others, and they both go on to attend college—she for two years, he for six. Then Antonio is offered a full-time professorship at the university he attended in Peru, and he takes it—leaving Evelyn a single parent. Parenthood, financial stress, the pull of both countries, and long visits from Antonio’s mother threaten to destroy the bonds that brought them together.

Clear-eyed and frank, Love in Any Language illustrates the trials and joys in the blending of two cultures.

 

 

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Guest Post

 

Have Gender Roles Changed in the Past 60 Years?

By Dr. Evelyn LaTorre

 

In 1966, when I married, women in the US were subject to a long list of financial and personal disadvantages. They could be denied a credit card, placement on a jury, or employment if pregnant. The National Organization for Women (NOW) organized a march in 1970 to protest these inequalities. I didn’t notice the march or the discrimination at first because in the early 1970s I was busy trying to balance full-time mothering with full-time work and feeling pulled between the two.

Back then, women who worked while raising children was unusual. My job as a school social worker took me away during the day from my newborn and four-year-old. I wanted to be a full-time mother, but I also enjoyed my work. What I didn’t enjoy was my mother’s disapproval.

“A good husband supports his family,” my mother said. “You should be staying home caring for your children.”

Her words, insinuating that maybe I neglected my two boys, filled me with guilt. I didn’t respond to her admonishment because the mother part of me agreed with her. But the part of me that desired a career, didn’t. Besides, I secured good childcare for them and had three months off in the summer. My husband often took care of our sons and helped clean the house.

Mom shouldn’t have been so critical of my situation. After staying home to raise us five older children, she began working full-time right after having child number six in 1960. By then, I think she yearned to use her mind and communications skills in the job she’d landed as a clerk for the local police department.

Still, my stomach tied in knots when I acknowledged that I didn’t have the option to be a stay-at-home mother. My husband, Antonio, took four years to complete his B.A. degree in physics, then said he’d need another two to earn a master’s degree to be employable. I already had those degrees and assumed he was right about physicists needing advanced degrees. So, I agreed that he could be a full-time student while I continued to work.

Mom’s example wasn’t what we saw on TV in the 1960s. Mothers like June Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver, Harriet Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet, and Donna Reed of The Donna Reed Show, fed their TV husbands’ egos along with their dinners, while keeping spotless homes and wearing dresses, pearls, and heels. Similar to present day, the commercials on TV and radio extolled the virtues of specialized cleaning products to keep bathrooms and kitchens sparkling. I’ve never aspired to have spotless bathrooms and kitchens.

Only Lucy of I Love Lucy attempted to work outside her home. She always failed, though with humor. In the 1960s, my three younger sisters and I sensed the difference between Lucy, our mom, and those other TV mothers and wives. Her salary would go to put us through college. And we didn’t wear pearls and heels, we wore blue jeans and saddle shoes to clean the house, help make dinner, and care for our baby brother.

So, in 1971, I was caught in a quandary. My parents had sacrificed so I could have a college education, but for what? Mom discouraged me from using my master’s degree in social welfare because I had young children. And I believed the dilemma was my fault. I’d had two children before my husband could support them. I could hear my mother thinking, You made your bed, now lie in it.
Similarly educated women with children in the 70s didn’t hold full-time jobs. Their husbands supported them like the women on TV. Of course, there have been small populations of married women in every decade who work for a few years to put their husbands through medical, law, or other professional schools. They’d reap their rewards later with a move to an upper income level. Then there had been the husbandless moms on my AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) caseload when I’d worked for the county welfare department.

However, neither Antonio nor I had been raised to live for money or prestigious positions. Our lower middle-class parents taught us that education was longer lasting and more satisfying than material wealth. We weren’t intentionally upwardly mobile, and I wasn’t a single mother. So I didn’t fall into either the striver or the welfare mother category.

Like it or not, I was part of a new wave of able women, mothers with young children who held down jobs to support our families. I had mixed feelings about full-time work vs. full-time mothering. My heart ached with a desire to spend my days with my two young boys, but breadwinner was the role I had filled since marrying. I’d opted for higher education to make me a capable earner, so would continue working for as long as I had to. Work provided me intellectual challenges, feelings of competence, and a bigger say in our family’s spending.

In the first decades that I worked, I saw few models of married women with young children who held down jobs to support their families. In retrospect, women like me were setting an example. Articles in magazines reported that working full-time, while raising children, required a superhuman effort. A woman reporter had said that combining an engrossing occupation and a happy marriage was impossible. She bet that only one woman in a thousand could do it. I wondered if she were a full-time reporter with children.

I had read a book that contradicted the ‘Children Equals No Career’ motto when I was a senior at College of the Holy Names. My sociology professor had assigned us to read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. The popular 1963 book illustrated many cases of unhappy college-educated women who filled their days with homemaking duties. Cleaning, cooking, childcare, and tending to their husbands left these wives and mothers without identities outside their well-kept homes. Though women had comprised 50 percent of the professional workforce in 1930, Ms. Friedan wrote, in 1960 the percentage had dropped to only 35 percent. This, although the number of women college graduates had tripled. I’d witnessed the accuracy of that statistic.

One-third of the women who’d entered Holy Names with me as freshmen in 1960, married before or right after our graduation in 1964. A few classmates admitted to attending college to get an ‘M.R.S.’ degree. A Rhodes Scholar awardee a couple grades ahead of me was given the choice of marriage to her fiancé or graduate school abroad. She elected to marry and declined the prestigious honor and the opportunity to grow her mind. Her decision disappointed her professors—and me. I would have opted for education at Oxford University in England in a minute.
Ms. Friedan’s conclusion, while controversial in 1963, was that many women with educations were happier using their minds to fulfill their intellectual and creative needs than they were living through the lives of their husbands and children. I agreed and still do. I never wanted my tombstone to read, “She kept her husband happy in a tidy home.”

A variety of legislation, designed to level the playing field for women, began with the 1963 Equal Pay Act, and continued up through the 2013’s lowering of the ban against women in military combat. Today, more women than men earn undergraduate and graduate college degrees. Occupations that excluded women in previous decades are now open to them. The result has been an increase of women in the labor force from 32% in 1950 to 57% in 2018. But these hard fought-for improvements have come with little growth for women in the higher paying positions of authority and management. They are crowded into lower-paying jobs in education and health care.

Nevertheless, gains for women can be seen in the record number of women in a wider variety of occupations and in government. The number of females running businesses on the Fortune 500 just hit a record of 41. In 1980, the first woman, not following her husband or father in the job, was elected to the Senate. Today there are 21 female senators and a female vice president.
I succeeded in raising two children and having a successful career in part because of financial assistance in the form of college scholarships, affordable childcare, and food stamps. Having parents nearby, a helpful husband, advanced degrees, and understanding employers were also important factors.

 

 

About the Author

 

EVELYN KOHL LaTORRE grew up in rural Southeastern Montana, surrounded by sheep and cattle ranches, before coming to California with her family at age 16. She holds a doctorate in multicultural education from the University of San Francisco, and a master’s degree in social welfare from UC Berkeley. She worked as a bilingual school psychologist and school administrator in public education for 32 years. Evelyn loves to explore other lands and cultures. To date, she and her husband have lived in and traveled to close to 100 countries.

Evelyn’s first published book, “Between Inca Walls” about falling in love while serving in the Peace Corps, has won much praise and numerous prizes. Evelyn is often a featured podcast guest, lecturer and guest blogger. Her work has appeared in World View Magazine, The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, the California Writers Club Literary Review, the Tri-City Voice, Dispatches, Conscious Connection and Clever Magazine.

 

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