Commercialized Prostitution in New York CityKneeland, George J. (George Jackson)
History
Commercialized Prostitution in New York City
Kneeland, George J. (George Jackson)
Prostitution -- New York (State) -- New York
_Occupation of Mother_:--Probably of more importance than the size of the
family is the economic position of the mother, particularly during the
years of the daughter's adolescence. It is a vital loss if a girl's mother
is away from home all day, leaving her after school hours to associates of
whom the mother knows nothing and who may be most questionable in their
influence on her developing character. In 145 instances, or in 22.4
percent of the total number of cases studied, the mother worked outside
the home. Table VII gives a list of the occupations of working mothers,
with the number in each group. It will be seen that the women who went
out for day's work are much the largest group. They went out to wash, to
clean, to scrub offices and for other unskilled labor. The laundresses
were employed partly in steam laundries and partly in private families and
came home at night. Of the 145 mothers who worked, there were 94 who were
widows; one mother was divorced; the husband and father in one case was an
inmate of a sanitarium for tuberculosis; in one case the father was in an
insane asylum; in 8 cases the father had deserted his family; in 40 cases
the husband and father was alive and working. The necessity for earning a
livelihood explains simply the leaving of children alone in the group of
widows. In the 40 cases where the husband was working, no special
necessity for the mother's occupation is shown by our data. The 40
husbands and fathers whose wives went out to work, were engaged in
thirty-one different occupations, no one group numbering more than four
men. These were the day laborers. Three were colored cooks; three were
teamsters; two were carpenters; others include a stationary engineer, a
walking delegate, an insurance agent, a market man, an elevator man, etc.
Neither did the size of the family afford a special excuse, as in these
forty families there was an average of four children. One family contained
ten children; two families each had seven and eight respectively, while
the greatest number in any one group was ten families with three children
each. It may be that the father was inefficient or irregular in his
occupation or the family standards of living were higher. It would be
necessary to know all of these details in each family to offer any opinion
as to reasons and we have not these data.
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