A. This interview is done with my grandma, Helen Marie Shallow. It was conducted by me, Bridgette Shallow on March 13, 2019 over the phone. I did not edit my interview much at all. I only cut out the introduction part of the interview when we greeted each other and the ending, when we were saying our goodbyes. To set up this interview, I was in my dorm room at a time that I knew would be quiet because my roommate was in class. I did a few tests on garage band before the phone call so I knew how it worked and to know that audio from the phone call could be heard as well. One issue I ran into is that during the interview, I received a text message so you can hear a text tone in the middle of the interview.
B.Helen Marie Shallow was born on November 3rd, 1935. She was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has two siblings, an older brother named Clayton and a younger sister named Joan. She has always attended all girl schools from elementary school up to college. She attended Eden Hall in Philadelphia, PA. She then went to college at Marymount College, a Junior college in Arlington, Virginia. Helen Marie was a school teacher from the years of 1955-1958. She married James Joseph Shallow Jr. in 1958 when she was 22 years old. Helen Marie and James had 6 kids together, Eileen, Jim who is my father, Tom, Kevin, Peter and John. She was a busy stay at home mom for many years until all of her children were in school. At this point, Helen Marie decided to go back to work and worked as a Registrar at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She now is a grandmother to 16 grandchildren and is happily retired. Helen Marie lives in Hainesport, New Jersey with my grandfather.
C. In the 1950’s, while my grandma was in college, it was a period of conformity with traditional gender roles. This decade was filled with change and it was the early beginnings of women breaking free from the traditional gender roles and expectations that they had been held to for so long. The mass media continued reinforcing messages about traditional gender roles and the cold war ideal of domesticity, and consumer culture (Getchell 2016). My grandmother went to college, which was not typical for most women in this era. “Powerful post-World War II propaganda, such as persuasive advertising campaigns, encouraged women to seek husbands, settle down and have babies” (Hammond 2019). Most women would not go to college, but instead they would go and get married, and depend on their husbands for income while they would stay at home, take care of the house and care for their children. It was said “During the 1950s, women who enrolled in higher education often did so in order to improve their domestic skills and to find husbands” (Hammond 2019). Following World War II, the media wanted women to “give up their jobs and return quietly to domestic life. Most women, however, wished to keep their jobs, and thus women made up approximately one-third of the peacetime labor force” (Getchell 2016). My grandparents began having children in the late 1950s, this was when their generation was being called the “baby boomers”. The baby boomers were known as being the largest generation of Americans. Between 1946 and 1964, about 4.24 million babies were born each year (Kutz Elliot). This “boom” in the population was primarily due to lack of birth control.
D.
Bridgette:
Um so what college did you attend?
Helen Marie Shallow:
I attended Marymount College in Arlington, Virginia.
Bridgette:
Would you say a lot of your girlfriends attended college as well or what was the expectations for a woman who didn’t attend college?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Well the high school I went to just kind of assumed that you would go to college and it was, you know, a private girls school. I remember my father saying “Well what are they prepared to do when they leave here?” And the nun said well, “They’re prepared to go to college most importantly” and the thing that was the way it was, but it wasn’t that way with every school. A lot of them, when I graduated in 1953, people or girls went to business school or something like that secretarial school.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
So. But anyway that’s, that’s the way it was.
Bridgette:
Mhm, Um was it difficult to be a woman in the workforce when you first started working?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Not really because I first started working and I started teaching. And it was all women teachers. And so there were no men so I really didn’t interact with them so I didn’t have a problem.
Bridgette:
Yeah. Did you notice any significant changes in gender roles throughout your lifetime?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Well I noticed that, you mean in my lifetime?
Bridgette:
Yeah like have you noticed any significant changes?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Yeah women have, you know, really come a long way and they’re, you know, able to do things that we never thought we could do. When I was in school it was teachers or nurses that was it.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
You know, and now they’re engineers and women have come a long way.
Bridgette:
Yeah definitely.
Helen Marie Shallow:
Yeah, that definitely has changed.
Bridgette:
Can you think of any opportunities women have now that they didn’t have when you were growing up?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Oh lots of them. Really, you know, they have their choice of their careers. And what they’d like to be in the workforce. There’s definitely been a big change with that. So, yeah there’s definitely a big change. That’s how many years? Um sixty some I guess I’ve been out of high school and college. But um, it’s good we more or less at the point when I finished school we got married very young. And we were mothers. We wanted families and a lot of us didn’t work after our families came. And I was one of them, You know, I didn’t work.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
Once my children started coming I stayed home with them until they all went to school. Then I decided I wanted to do something so.
Bridgette:
Yeah, that’s actually one of my questions, did you feel pressured to get married and have children at a young age?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Not pressure but it was just what everybody did back then.
Bridgette:
Just like the normal thing to do?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Yeah you know I was twenty two. And most of my friends were married about that age. And, I’m not sorry but I mean it was a different world back.
Bridgette:
Yeah definitely.
Helen Marie Shallow:
Women didn’t worry about careers like they do now so.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
You know it’s been a good life for me, but today, in today’s world it’s different.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
We know that yeah.
Bridgette:
What were some expectations of you as a woman in the past? and do you feel like, was there any expectations you saw like a lot of women have?
Helen Marie Shallow:
What expectations did I have?
Bridgette:
Yeah, was it like, most women were expected to like be at home like make sure dinners on the
table, and stuff like that?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Right, Yeah that was part of it. You know we always had our dinner together and that’s just the way it was. It was fine. But again when you’re not, when the woman isn’t working it’s easy to do.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
And it was never expected that I would go to work. I mean I didn’t have to go to work but I decided that, there was a time when I decided I’d like to do something. That was when I went back to work.
Bridgette:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Helen Marie Shallow:
Yeah.
Bridgette:
Would you say there was any like gender norms you experienced in your childhood?
Helen Marie Shallow:
What?
Bridgette:
Like was there any difference seen from like girls and boys?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Well, I have one brother, and a sister. My brother, he was very motivated himself actually. You know, to go on with his learning and, you know, whereas with me that wasn’t the most important thing in life. So I’m happy with my decision.
Bridgette:
Did you feel that your parents like at all like push your brother more to be more successful than you and your sister at all?
Helen Marie Shallow:
No, they really didn’t.
Bridgette:
That’s good.
Helen Marie Shallow:
He was, I think, he was self motivated.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
He loved school, he loved learning, he loved studying and so. He just decided, you know after college he was going to law school and I remember my father saying, “Aren’t you going to get a job first?” and he said, “No, I want to go right to law school.” So they just let us do what we thought was best for us. What we wanted to do. But it was his decision, my brother.
Bridgette:
Were there any specific activities only boys or only girls would participate in?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Well I went to an all girls school through college. I don’t know, we had activities and sports and things like that but we didn’t know boys to tell you the truth. (laughs)
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
So I don’t know what they did.
Bridgette:
Yeah, what sports did you guys have there?
Helen Marie Shallow:
Well we had hockey and tennis. Um, I don’t think we had soccer back then. But we had tennis, field hockey, and basketball. So those were just the three things.
Bridgette:
Did a lot of girls they participate in those?
Helen Marie Shallow:
They did, yeah. Actually my high school was a boarding school. And I was a day student but, the after school hours they would have them participate in sports. It was very important to keep them busy. And I would stay, and participate in them too if I wanted to and have dinner there. And I only lived three blocks away so, you know, I could call my mother to pick me up.
Bridgette:
Yeah.
Helen Marie Shallow:
And take me home, and they were good about that. They definitely encouraged it. Especially with the boarding school because they, the boarding school, the girls never left. Maybe once when they were seniors they let them go once a month into Philadelphia but that was it. It was a different life no doubt.
Bridgette:
Yeah, Well thank you very much for answering my questions.
Helen Marie Shallow:
Oh, you’re welcome Bridgette. And If there’s anything else, you know, I can help you with I’d be happy to.
Bridgette:
Thank you so much.
Works Cited
Getchell, Michelle. “Women in the 1950s.” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, 2016, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/women-in-the-1950s.
Hammond, Kristyn. “American Women in the 50s.” The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey, 10 Jan. 2019, www.theclassroom.com/american-women-50s-9170.html.