Alice Oostdyk Interview, History 150 Spring 2017, Conducted by Jessica Oostdyk, March 7, 2017.

Overview

This interview was conducted in person. It was recorded on my laptop and was not edited at all. The interview took place in my grandmother’s living room where we sat on the couch with my laptop between us, recording the interview. There wasn’t much background noise, although the recording was slightly unclear and the start but the sound cleared up and the recording was useable.

Biography

The interviewee is Alice Oostdyk, who is my grandmother on my father’s side. She was born in the early 1940’s and grew up in New Jersey with her parents and two older brothers. Shortly after graduating high school she was married and started a family. After her three sons were slightly older she decided to continue her education and eventually got her master’s degree in social work. She was part of the generation of women who led the movement of second wave feminism, and experienced great change in the scope of gender relations over the course of her lifetime.

Research

The feminist movement that is predominately discussed in this interview is known as second wave feminism. Historically, the movements of feminism are referred to as waves, the first wave being the suffrage movement which took place at the turn of the 19^th century. The second wave took place predominately between the 1960’s and 1980’s. This movement discussed issues including women in the workplace, domestic violence, and reproductive rights. A major effort of this feminist movement was the attempt to have the Equal Rights Amendment passed, which ultimately did not pass due to the efforts of anti-feminists who thought this change would destroy families. Third wave feminism, which began in the 1990’s is still going on today. It’s goal is to expand the previous achievements of gender equality to all women, including those of different races, economic classes, religions and cultures. These efforts are necessary as the first and second waves were really about influential white women and did not include women of color.

References: APA format

Hewitt, N. A. (2010). No Permanent Waves. [electronic resource]: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, ©2010.

McPhillips, K. (2016). Contested Feminisms: Women’s Religious Leadership and the Politics of Contemporary Western Feminism. Journal For The Academic Study Of Religion, 29(2), 134-149.

Interview

JO: To start can you state your full name?

AO: Alice Catherine Oostdyk

JO: OK. Can you describe the family that you grew up in, like your siblings and what your parents did?

AO: I grew up with three siblings, two brothers, I was the youngest. My father was a funeral director and we lived above the funeral home, so the business was an important part of what was going on within the family. My mother was, from the day she was married, a stay-at-home. She was definitely a help to my father. She became an important part of the business, doing various things, and raising a family, the three of us. She remained, almost up until the time of her death, which she died at the age of 67 with a massive heart attack, but up until that time he played an important role in the business. Perhaps the last two years not so much because my older brother came in to be a part of that business. And she did feel pushed aside when he came in to the business; she expressed some of that to me.

JO: Do you feel like that was a typical role that she played for the time?

AO: I think it was a, yes, I definitely think that that was typical. I, at that point, really didn’t know many women who were working. Most of them were stay-at-home moms unless, from an economic standpoint, they needed to go out to work. I did have an aunt who went out of the house to work, but I think though that was after her children were older.

JO: So [your mother’s] main role was in the house but she helped out a little bit with the family business.

AO: Yes and because the business was in the house, she was always in the home. She did some secretarial work, she did some work on the hair of the cadavers, she would be at the door. She played a very critical part, a real help-me to my dad. It was real their business, together.

JO: Can you describe your education post-high school.

AO: I went to nursing school, I have a practical nursing license. I got married very young so, then after I raised the kids I went back to college. I got my bachelor’s degree in sociology and then I went on to New York University and got my master’s degree in social work.

JO: Do you feel like, at the time, that was a female dominated field?

AO: Yes. It was definitely a female dominated profession.

JO: Did most of your female friends at that time also have professional careers?

AO: They were beginning to. I would say when I came out of high school most of my friends married young and had children very soon after they were married, and most of them were stay-at-home moms.

JO: Overall can you compare the family you grew up in and those roles with your own family?

AO: Well first of all I would say that my picture of what my role should be was very close to what my mother’s was when I first got married. I really did not think about a career. Once I was married I had children immediately after and didn’t really think about what I was going to do. One day I was with a friend, and she said to me, “So Alice, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” and I like, the rest of my life? I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. And she really encouraged me to go on to school. And so I started by taking a course that was offered that I didn’t have to matriculate for, I could just go, I didn’t have to register, I could just go to this class, so I went and the name of the class was “Women in Contemporary Society”. Well, I came out of a very conservative background, and I really had not kept up in the 60’s with what was going on around me, I was focused on raising a family. So when I got into that class and did the readings and the research, it was just one of the biggest shocks that, I mean, it was totally unfamiliar stuff to me. And after being in that class for several weeks I really became excited with what I was reading and all the sudden my eyes were opened to a whole new world, and what was going on outside of my little cocoon of the house. It was quite an eye opener.

JO: Yeah that’s really cool.

AO: And I became a bit obnoxious with the whole thing. [laughter] Especially in family settings, you know, I would talk about it and it was pretty funny because the men would kind if egg me on. I remember being at a dinner with friends, they were at my house for dinner and I got started with one of the male members there and his wife was cheering me on because, you know, I had done this reading so forth and I was just aware of how the whole environment had changed. I was a little late in seeing it, this was in the 70’s, this was mid-70 when I had started college, and so it had been going on for a while. Betty Freidan, and, who was the other one that was very popular in the movement? I don’t remember their names right now but those were the names that were passed around within the setting. The Feminine Mystique, when that started circulating, I mean it really caught on with women, frustrated women. Remember there was, in the 60’s, I think there was only about six percent of women in professional schools, as opposed to now when medical school or law school probably has almost 50% females. That was unheard of. The women that graduated high school with me, they were either nurses, teachers, secretaries. There was not that much open to us. We didn’t even think about it. That was 1957 that I graduated from high school. Nursing was what I thought about and, like I said, my friends and the graduates, the women, were pretty much in the same situation.

JO: Do you feel like that changed pretty quickly?

AO: It changed but I think one of the things, and I’ll tell you I struggled with it and I think a lot of us did, particularly coming out of conservative homes, right. We were religiously conservative, politically conservative, you were caught in the middle. I think my generation of women were caught in the middle of it, and men too because they were affected by it so I shouldn’t limit it to women. But I was very much affected, along with many others with being caught in the middle. You know this is what I’d grown up with, this is who my mother was, and now there was this whole big world open and a lot of discussion that we had never talked about. Things like rape, domestic abuse, those were not things I knew anything about or was aware of. Then of course abortion came into, that was a biggie in terms of the feminist movement. I think as a very significant thing that happened, and I believe that was the early 70’s maybe the end of the 60’s, the pill came, you know the birth control pill. So now, women could go after careers, control the whole pregnancy thing, and think about education and actually getting out in the field and have the careers, so that was a turning point. And the climate was changing. You know, we had come through World War II, there was people moving out to the suburbs, and with that the attaining financially of a lot of things they had not had before, now in order to have that there needed to be two incomes. So that impacted women getting into the workplace.

JO: Were you ever involved in, not necessarily in feminism, but any social change movement? Did you ever sign a petition or anything like that?

AO: I don’t remember signing a petition, I do remember writing a paper, and that must have been while I was still an undergraduate, on the ERA, because the ERA was coming in the 70’s, the Equal Rights Amendment. There was a lot going on in the feminist movement. I wasn’t involved in the movement but I did write a major paper on the ERA. Interestingly enough I met somebody at a PTA meeting and when she heard I wrote that paper she wanted to read it and that developed into a relationship with my best friend, who was also a feminist.

JO: So she turned out to be one of your good friends?

AO: Oh yeah, she’s still my best friend, Mary. So as result of my friendship with her, see she stimulated a lot because she came from a similar background and she was exploring this whole issue of feminism. And then we started this group, and although it was not per say a feminist group, we were basically feminist and there was a lot of conversation and exploring and just being made much more aware of things like domestic violence and harassment in the workplace and there was a lot of discussion on the whole issue of abortion.

JO: When exactly was that whole abortion conversation going on?

AO: I think in the middle of this whole feminist movement, I would say the seventies.

JO: So you had already had kids and everything?

AO: Oh yeah, that was well after. I wasn’t even aware of it. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I have this vivid memory from when I was in nursing school, of seeing a woman who had just had an illegal abortion. She was dying, I mean the infection and the whole thing, and that left a real impression on me. So, that was in the 60’s but the whole abortion issue became more prevalent in the 70’s. At least I didn’t become real aware of the conversation until the 70’s.

JO: Do you remember being aware of the whole civil rights movement going on?

AO: That was interesting, like, on the fringes. I don’t remember having a lot f discussion about the civil rights movement. Now I know that was going on at the same time as feminism and that there was some discussion going on, especially from the males, that this is what we should be focusing on, you know, not this feminist stuff, I mean, you think you have it bad. So, not critically aware of it. I certainly remember the death of King and how tragic that was, but I think a lot of it just bypassed me, I was busy raising kids and maybe just not that astute about what was going on in the community until I got into the whole educational thing and then I became much more aware.

JO: Is there anything else you would include on that topic?

AO: In terms of the whole gender thing?

JO: Yeah, maybe how you feel about gender roles present today.

AO: I think that it’s a big improvement. I like that men are participating more within the family. The whole birthing thing, when I had children my husband said goodbye to me on the elevator. There was no presence of him at all. He wasn’t even allowed off the elevator on the maternity floor.

JO: I didn’t realize that.

AO: Yeah so that has dramatically changed and a lot of that is because of the women’s movement. One other thing I think I would comment on, again with the ERA, of course it never passed. It had momentum, but it had to pass by a certain date in the 80’s. There was a real backlash from conservatives, and led by women.

JO: So conservative women against it?

AO: Absolutely. And it was a powerful movement. Powerful to the point that it never passed. They had that much power. They really put fear into people, saying that passing that is going to break up the family, it’s going to change the whole culture, and I guess that stimulated a lot of fear within the constituency, so that it was never able to pass. I then I think the movement kind of, when that didn’t pass I think the movement…by this time women had gained a lot of what they were after. If you take a look at the divorce thing, women had no right to divorce in the 50’s and 60’s and prior to that. They changed, the feminist movement had an impact in changing the laws regarding property distribution and so forth, so it changed that. And of course, it changed the whole attitude about domestic violence, I mean no woman would report domestic violence back in the 50’s and 60’s because, I mean, you have no power, you couldn’t do anything. Today of course, that’s very different.

JO: Yeah, I feel like that’s an issue that people are very aware of now.

AO: Oh very aware and of course we continue to hear about harassment in the workplace, that certainly became much more of a focus. So they accomplished, when you think of it, in maybe two decades or less, they really accomplished what they were after. So, it was not such a critical issue in the culture and I think there is a feeling among my generation, that we had fought hard for what we had accomplished, to get these things, and our daughters kind of grew up into a culture that had already been changed. I don’t think there’s any way for you to experience a full emotional appreciation if you didn’t experience that change, if you didn’t go through it. It was just, this is the way it was now, it was a whole different culture that you were growing up in and thank God, thank God it was. So anything else?

JO: Any final thoughts?

AO: Just, I think it was an exciting time. It was an exciting time for me. It opened up a whole new, not just opportunities, but much more awareness of what was going on in terms of the whole women’s issue. So it was just a wonderful time. Thinking about this again and just, you know, to do this with you made me more aware or reminded me of what an impact that it had on my life. I was very fortunate that I had a husband who went with me, you know, and was willing to be educated about things he hadn’t thought about before, and he could see it. That was good, I think it was an exciting time as a woman, but a difficult time, because you were torn. You were torn in half; one world where you came from, with very conservative and some very wonderful values, to another world that was really in opposition to some of that. So, I’m thankful for the time that I lived in, for what my generation accomplished.

JO: Right, and now my generation is also thankful for your generation.

 

Conclusion

I feel as though this interview went very well. The conversation remained on topic and relevant to the themes I wanted to focus on. Prior to the interview, I was concerned that the questions wouldn’t provoke enough response or information but during and after the interview I was pleased with the results. Any divergence from the questions were positive and valuable. I’m content with the questions I asked as I feel their purpose was to guide the conversation rather than to require and explicit response.