The Wayslide Gang: Part Four (A Piece of the Rainstorm)

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And so it goes for the remainder of the " Willard Expedition. He appears, then just as quickly disappears, leaving us to fill in the blanks or connect the dots. And what dots there are to connect! With that notation Willard exits from the journals forever. What a pity because, as this brief outline suggests, The Adventures of Private Alexander Hamilton Willard would have been an epic in itself, if only he could be brought back to life to tell it in detail from his own point of view.

Part Pilgrim's Progress , complete with valuable lessons learned on the road, and part Perils of Pauline , full of close calls and comic mishaps, it would also add immeasurable depth to the larger story of the Corps of Discovery. If fully fleshed out, Willard 's tale—of a lowly and sometimes hapless private who suffered lashings, injuries, illnesses, and accidents, yet persevered to earn his commanders' trust and his nation's thanks—would humanize the expedition in a way that the existing accounts never will.

Lacking that, the mere outline of Willard 's journey and of everyone else's brought forth in this book at the very least demands that we resist the temptation to think of "the men" of the Lewis and Clark expedition only in passing or predominantly as a single entity. So far as is possible at this late date , they should be remembered in the way their captains thought of them and in the way they knew each other: In realizing their individuality, the key to their success—their unity—appears even more remarkable. By admitting their fallibility their heroic achievement becomes that much more inspiring.

Alexander Willard lived to the ripe old age of eighty-seven—long enough to serve his country several times more as a government blacksmith for the Sauk, Fox, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians, and in the War of ; long enough to marry and raise twelve children one given the name Lewis, another Clark ; long enough to be alive during the invention of photography and have his picture taken, his back proud and erect, his eyes confidently fixed straight ahead; long enough to play his part in yet another national transcontinental endeavor, the covered wagon migrations to the gold fields of California, where he died in There is a faint suspicion that he did, in fact, keep a journal during his expedition with Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery.

Certainly he must have told and retold his adventures to his children and grandchildren in the many years that followed. How I wish that journal could be found in someone's attic or that one of Willard 's descendants had transcribed his reminiscences. But even if such accounts were miraculously discovered, I doubt they would settle a question which, in the absence of conclusive facts to the contrary, I've decided to believe about Alexander Willard. I believe he was asleep during night guard duty back on Camp New Island in And I think I know how Sergeant Ordway discovered him and then knew immediately that Willard was both lying down and sleeping.

This work would not have been possible without the help of many people and organizations who have so generously put their records at my disposal. I am particularly indebted to the Missouri Historical Society; the St. Charles Historical Society and the Oregon Historical Society for the many favors shown me by the staffs of these wonderful deposits of manuscripts and documents. The Newberry Library of Chicago has graciously allowed me to extract data from the recently discovered and as yet unpublished Private Joseph Whitehouse Journal. This is a new version and continuation of his published journal.

All these sources have been used to compile the "Personnel Diary" which follows. I am happy to acknowledge the great aid given me by Miss Anna M. Cartlidge of Baltimore for new data on the Floyd - Pryor families. Edna McElhiney Olson of St. Charles, Missouri, I am indebted for the St. Charles and Millington family data. Frederick Weiser for the Weiser family material and to Mrs. To them I express my gratitude. Many others have sent encouragement and biographical details, but the list is so long that I cannot acknowledge them all here.

I ask that they accept my sincere appreciation for their interest and valuable help. I cannot close however, without mention of one more who has been of great assistance. Dorothy Shields Lollier of Carlsbad, California, has researched the Shields family and has brought to my attention most of the information regarding that most valuable man to the expedition — John Shields. Pregaldin of Clayton, Missouri, has generously supplied me with his research on those unsung members of the expedition, the French-Canadian engages.

His findings, in a most difficult field, throw a helpful glimmer of light on those heretofore obscure watermen. Hager for preparing the fine index. I am most fortunate in having all such outstanding experts on my team. Now I can only hope that my own research and arrangement of all this scattered material will be helpful to future students of the Expedition. The Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific and return by way of the Missouri River in was probably the best written and officially documented of all such governmental undertakings.

Certainly its captains and several of its members made copious mention in their journals of the daily travels and notable sights encountered along the way. We have complete records of the material and supplies carried, details of the boats and medicines taken, and full reports on the Indians and strange animals and plants discovered. But a complete roster of all the men who set out with the expedition was never made. Unfortunately, they omitted to mention much about themselves in their journals, for they were innocently unaware that they were creating history.

True, the captains do mention a member now and then, but that is about all. They were certainly convinced that no biographical data was necessary, for this was a military command. After the expedition successfully returned in , there was a long delay before the publication of their journals in The purpose of this study is an attempt to bring these men into being again and to rescue them from oblivion so far as is possible at this late date. Therefore, it is not the purpose here to discuss the reasons that brought the Lewis and Clark Expedition into being.

However, I think it pertinent to recall that an investigation of what lay beyond the Mississippi had for many years been in Thomas Jefferson 's mind. At least two of his previous plans to cross the continent — that of John Ledyard and Andrew Michaux — had come to naught. Jefferson knew of the recently published account of Alexander Mackenzie 's journal which contained a detailed plan of how Great Britain might set up posts at the mouth of the Columbia River, and at other suitable ports.

These were to control the ever increasing numbers of American ships that were then dominating the sea-otter trade to the Orient. These plans also included control of the fur trade and fisheries of that part of Western America. These international schemes were plain to Jefferson , and they had to be averted before they became permanently established. The United States had a claim to the Oregon country because Captain Robert Gray was the first to discover and enter the mouth of the Columbia River in This claim could be strengthened by an overland expedition to, and exploration of, the lands bordering the upper waters of the Columbia — and by descending that river to the sea.

In the winter of , Jefferson instructed his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, who was skilled at frontier living and who had recently served in several campaigns with the army, to study botany, zoology, medicine, and celestial navigation in preparation for leading an expedition to the Pacific. In a secret appeal to Congress on January 18, , the sum of "Twenty-five Hundred Dollars" was appropriated for "An intelligent officer with ten or twelve chosen men, fit for the enterprise and willing to undertake it, taken from our military posts, where they may be spared without inconvenience, might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean.

In early , the jealousies of England, France, and Spain were not to be aroused by a large military party snooping around in disputed domains. Furthermore, the influential fur trading companies did not look with favor on this constant probing into their lands. The inevitable settlement which followed was contrary to the source of their income. But before the year was finished, it became evident that such a small party as ten or twelve men could never overcome the Indians who zealously contested the passage to the upper Missouri River.

The British traders already in that country did not desire competition from traders coming up the Missouri from the south, and they did all in their power to prevent it. In the fall of , Captain Lewis was firmly convinced by Auguste Chouteau, Manuel Lisa and other experienced traders, who had for many years been familiar with the lower Missouri — that a stronger, and hence, larger party, would be necessary to command respect, and safe traverse of the Missouri waters. Captain Lewis kept Jefferson advised of these developments, and the latter adroitly managed the additional funds required.

Historians may never learn how this was done, but the fact remains that it was. To help matters, he had as we say today, "something special going for him" in Louisiana, which in those days was about all the lands west of the Mississippi to the western mountains wherever they were , changed hands from Spain to France to the United States in that year.

That transaction removed some of the sticky diplomatic difficulties, although Spain remained convinced that the Lewis and Clark party really intended to take over the Spanish establishments. Spain actually sent out from Santa Fe in an overland expedition to cut Lewis and Clark off. During the summer and fall of , Lewis and his coleader, William Clark , were recruiting and testing men as possible prospects for the rigorous adventures that lay ahead.

While the men were selected with great care, Captain Lewis was authorized to offer the following inducements to those enlisting: The bounty if not a soldier but in both cases, six months pay in advance. To discharge them from service if they wish it, immediately on their return from the expedition, giving them their arrears of pay, clothing, etc. To secure to them a portion of land equal to that given by the United States to the officers and soldiers who served in the Revolutionary War. Captain Lewis was also authorized to engage any other men, not soldiers, whom he thought useful in promoting the objects or success of the expedition.

They were to recruit "some good hunters; stout, healthy, unmarried men, accustomed to the woods, and capable of bearing bodily fatigues to a considerable degree. The hunters were to be engaged with the understanding that they were to bear the common labor of the party and not to engage in hunting exclusively. With William Clark 's agreement to join Captain Lewis in the expedition, Clark was furnished with these instructions, and Lewis advised him to be on the lookout for suitable men.

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Several young gentlemen's sons applied to Clark , but as he felt they were not accustomed to labor, he had to diplomatically offer them no encouragement. He did temporarily engage some men who later became known as "The nine young men from Kentucky. With this help and inducements, Captain Lewis wrote Clark on September 28, , that he felt "we shall be able to form our party without much difficulty; four or five French water-men I conceive will be essential, this we can do I presume very readily at St.

Thus when Captain Lewis came down the Ohio River and was joined by Clark at Louisville, some twelve temporary recruits also came along. At Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; in Kentucky, and at the frontier military posts of Fort Massac, Vincennes and Kaskaskia, other volunteers were recruited and transferred to Lewis and Clark 's command.

Louis, but sufficiently removed from its wine shops and women, and, most importantly, was not in Spanish territory. Here during the winter and spring, Captain Clark and Sergeant Ordway observed and drilled the men who had been chosen thus far. All of them had been selected for their special talents and experiences as backwoods men. All were of a resourceful nature, and a few, such as one Mr. Leakins, who were overly resourceful, were rejected as being too undisciplined to serve under a military command.

During the cold winter the men built huts, hunted deer, rabbits, racoons and turkeys for their sustenance. They had to build a sled in order to haul in enough firewood. Compatibility was established, and a pattern of camp life was begun which would prevail over the next two years. Whiskey peddlers soon found the camp, which caused some trouble. Discipline had to be enforced. Court-martial rules were set up for dealing with the red-blooded, rugged recruits who were frequently drunk. It is worthy of note that some of the men who later turned out to be the most valuable men of the party, were among those who had to be punished while at Camp Woods, as the following orders will show:.

The Commanding officer feels himself mortified and disappointed at the disorderly conduct of Reubin Fields in refusing to mount guard when in the due roteen of duty he was regularly warned; nor is he less surprised at the want of discretion in those who urged his opposition to the faithful discharge of his duty, particularly John Shields, whose sense of propryety he had every reason to believe would have induced him rather to have promoted good order, than to have excited disorder and faction among the party, particularly in the absence of Capt.

The Commanding officer is also sorry to find any man, who has been engaged by himself and Capt. Clark for the expedition on which they have entered, so destitute of understanding, as not to be able to draw the distinction between being placed under the command of another officer, whose will in such case would be their law, and that of obeying the orders of Capt.

Clark and himself communicated to them through Sergt. Ordway , who, as one of the party, has during their necessary absence been charged with the execution of their orders; acting from those orders expressly, and not from his own caprice, and who, is in all respects accountable to us for the faithful observance of the same. A moments reflection must convince every man of our party, that were we to neglect the more important and necessary arrangements in relation to the voyage we are now entering on, for the purpose merely of remaining at camp in order to communicate our orders in person to the individuals of the party on mere points of policy, they would have too much reason to complain; nay, even to fear the ultimate success of the enterprise in which we are all embarked.

The abuse of some of the party in respect with privilege heretofore granted them of going into the country, is not less displeasing; to such therefore as have made hunting or other business a pretext to cover their design of visiting a neighboring Whiskey shop, he cannot for the present extend this privilege; and does therefore most positively direct that Colter , Bolye , Wiser and Robinson do not receive permission to leave camp under any pretext whatever for ten days , after this order is read on the parade, unless otherwise directed hereafter by Capt. The Commanding officers highly approve of the conduct of Sergt.

The Carpenters, Blacksmiths, and in short the whole party except Floyd , who has been specially directed to perform other duties are to obey implicity the orders of Sergt. Ordway , who has received our instructions and is held accountable to us for their due execution. This order obviously produced the desired effect, for we find all the men mentioned to be members of the party when it started out, and John Shields , Reuben Field s, John Colter and Peter Weiser became members of the permanent party that went on to the Pacific.

Captain Clark , as he was always recognized by the party, though when his commission arrived was only as a second lieutenant in the Artillery, spent most of the time at Camp Woods. He pondered the provisions needed for the expedition, the loading of the three boats, and gave considerable attention to those men who would be selected as permanent members who were to cross the continent, and to those which would comprise the extra force needed to get the equipment and provisions beyond the Indians who dominated the lower Missouri.

Try as he would, the total number always came out to be around fifty men. In one of his notes he lists "Our party: Plus 1 Corporal and 6 soldiers in a canoe with provisions for the party as far as these provisions last. This is a point to remember when later the journalists all state the total number of the party consisted of only fortyfive men.

George Drouillard had been engaged to act as interpreter for the party. He was dispatched to Tennessee to recruit men, and he returned on December 16, , with eight men.

One was a blacksmith and another was a "Housejoiner. Louis "that he did not know how they will answer our experiment, but I am a little disappointed in finding them not possessed of more of the requisite qualifications. There is not a hunter among them. Drouillard nor myself have made no particular bargain with them. Captain Lewis spent most of the time in St. Louis, procuring maps and every bit of information he could gather regarding the land and natives resident up river. Additional medicines and provisions for the voyage were obtained. He was advised that the best men for propelling the boats were those French-Canadian water-men who lived at Kaskaskia and Cahokia.

These were villages on the Illinois side of the Mississippi near St. Louis where these boatmen resided when not off on some trading adventure up the Missouri or Mississippi rivers. Chouteau's help, the most capable and reliable men were engaged to man the boats as far as the Mandan Nation. Lewis wrote Clark that "Mr. Chouteau has procured seven engages to go as far as the Mandans but they will not agree to go further, and I found it impossible to reduce them to any other engagement than that usually made with these people.

Some of these engages may have been former employees of the North West Company of Canada. Likewise, Francois Rivet, Paul Primeau , Peter Roi and others could have originated from that source, for the same, or variants of the name, appear in the rosters of the North West Company for the years just prior to the formation of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. See for example, above citation, pages — John Francis McDermott [11] reprints an apt description of the engage:.

These men carried out the necessary work of the trade; cordelling, poling or rowing up the Missouri to operational headquarters, seeking out and trading with the Indian villages; trapping the beaver and other fur-bearers; hunting meat animals; maintaining the equipment, conveying the messages through the unknown country; cooking; keeping camp; tending horses; and performing a score of other regular and extra duties. Some of them were sons and grandsons of the men who had come up the Mississippi River from New Orleans with Laclede and Auguste Chouteau, and of this group some were native St.

The number of men now deemed necessary was a considerable advance over that understood by Congress. In view of this situation, there could possibly have been an understanding with President Jefferson that the "official" figure would be acceptable if the total number did not exceed forty-five, including the two captains. This could be one of the reasons that no complete roster was compiled by the captains at the outset of the expedition. At any rate, all those who kept journals — Lewis, Clark , Gass , Ordway , Floyd , and Whitehouse — dutifully record that the total number was about forty-five men.

They do not all agree on the number, but none exceeds forty-five. So for over a hundred and fifty years this number has been accepted. As the names of the entire roster had never been published, no one seemed to question it. Of course, the names of the thirty men who had gone on to the Pacific were known and recorded in the journals, but what of those twenty or so who had helped the party up to the Mandan villages, had wintered there, and had returned to St.

Louis in the early summer of ? They brought back the maps and reports that had been made thus far, as well as many crates of new animal, mineral and botanical specimens. They saw to it that all this material was dispatched to Jefferson in Washington, and several of them conducted those Indians who had been prevailed upon to visit the Great White Father, and had acted as interpreters between them and President Jefferson. All this was part and plan of the expedition from its original conception. To many students of the expedition, these men were important to the success of the enterprise.

It has since been felt that more should be known of the entire party— just who they were — and as much biographical information should be collected as is possible. As the journals were studied, it also became evident that more men returned from the expedition than the forty-five that were stated to have gone at its start. In the December , issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly , [12] I submitted a roster and made the suggestion that the number should be forty-seven including the captains. I presented a list of forty-five, plus additional names that merited consideration. At that time I felt it presumptuous for a mere student to fly into the face of the scholars and historians who had edited the journals.

Since , much new material has been published which substantiates, and even elaborates on that thinking. Osgood, were published by the Yale University Press. Each adds bits of additional information regarding the personnel. It now appears that Captain Clark was right when he noted a party of about fifty men. But even if we accept this new figure, we are still far from an easy solution as to the names of the men, for the captains, especially Clark , had a charming disregard for the accuracy of spelling.

When it came to proper names, almost any combination of letters seemed to suffice. Take the name of Corporal Richard Warfington for example. We find it rendered Warfington, Worthington , Worbington , Worthyton and even more exotic variations. George Drouillard was nearly always Drewyer. But those are the easy ones.

In another case we have Carr n, Carr , Cane or Cann , all apparently meant to represent one person. I need not here show what happened to the spelling of the French names. That will be found in the roster. As though this were not problem enough, we also have those who, following the success of the expedition, attempted to climb on the band-wagon and publicly claim that they had been members of the party.

There are many examples, of which it is sufficient to cite only one:. Benjamin Jones was a noted hunter, trapper and surveyor of early times in Missouri. His father was an Englishman who settled in Virginia at an early date. He had two sons, Lewis and Benjamin. The latter ran away from home when he was sixteen years of age, and came to St. Louis, where he joined the Indians and engaged in trapping, until Lewis and Clark started on their expedition, when he joined their party in the capacity of a scout.

Before the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean, he and one or two others were sent back to St. They fell into an Indian ambuscade, lost their horses, and had to perform the journey on foot, which occupied six months but they arrived safely and delivered the dispatches. Now the first part of this notice could be true, for this Benjamin Jones was on the Missouri in —, and was a hunter with the government service on the Santa Fe trail in But we find no other documented mention of where Jones was ever a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The student can only sift these momentarily exciting bits of data, and present those which seem to contain honest paydirt. My roster which follows, has been compiled from the researchers who were on the scene some sixty-five years ago, such as Reuben G. Wheeler, [15] James K. Hosmer [16] and others. They all gave an account of the men, as far as they knew at the time. In addition we have the works of Bradbury, [17] Brackenridge, [18] Henry, [19] and others who lived in, and wrote of the days when some of these men were still living.

Army records and considerable genealogical research have also added details for a more complete picture. I have used them all as sources in compiling my roster. Probably not all historians and researchers will ever agree on exactly which men actually started out with Lewis and Clark. A few of the French engages seem to have disappeared from the records, so further data on them is completely lacking. Just when a solution seems to be reached, a new name will crop up. On page of that work we find in a tentative list of engages, a very legible " E.

Cann " written in someone's hand. It is interesting to note in the same reproduction of the original document that two of the engages' names are joined together in one: These are surely William Labiche and Etienne Malboeuf. On page Cann is written out in what appears to my perhaps prejudiced eye as " Carn ," though on page Dr. Osgood deciphers the word as "Cane. To my knowledge none of the journals, nor the vast literature of the fur trade which followed the expedition, even suggests this name.

On the other hand, one of the spellings in the original journals under date of August 13, , is Carr n. In the Field Notes , page 48, there is the word Carseux written over an entry. This is not singular, for on the entry for July 5, , we find the name of Howard — one of the members — written over it. John Bradbury [21] states that Alexander Carson was near the head of the Missouri in — In Alexander Carson was engaged by William Clark — as were also a few other former members of the expedition, to try to return the Mandan chief, Shahaka, back to his home on the upper Missouri.

In a letter in the collection of the Oregon Historical Society we learn: This Boney had been in Carson's employ for several years, trapping, and had always been treated with the utmost kindness and regard, by Carson, he had great confidence in the Indian. Whatever led to the crime, is more than anyone knows. Carson had been stopping at my house two or three weeks, this Boney, his wife, and son with him. When he thought he was able to travel, left my house accompanied by Boney, Boney's wife and son. The first night after leaving my house he camped at Ellick's Butte, the whole tribe camped there.

Boney arose in the night, stole out of Carson's tent his Carson's rifle, which he held in reserve and holding up the curtain of the tent so that the light of the fire might shine on Carson, compelled his son a lad of twelve or fourteen years to shoot him in the head with a shot-gun, blowing his brains all over the tent.

The body was thrown in a small stream, and the plunder distributed out amongst the tribe. I may mention here an Indian by the name of Click-kowin who was said to be a half Killamook, and was with the Killamooks a portion of his time, was accessory to the murder, and shared in the plunder. Boney, and his son, died soon after the murder was committed, and Click-kowin was shot after the murder, by Waaninkapah, the Chief of the Nefalitin tribe. Those Indians have never atoned for the crime, they were compelled to give up a portion of the plunder which was delivered over to William Cannin, a cousin of Carsons.

Boney's son confessed the crime and went with us and showed where all the plunder had been cached, as far as he knew of.

I quote this letter in full, except for some irrelevant matter at the opening, because Alexander Carson , along with Joseph Collins , Charles Hebert , Charles Caugee and " Rokey ," have no official record of any wages paid for service. Heretofore, historians have questioned that they were members of the expedition.

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As I have shown above, Lewis was authorized to hire, rather than enlist, extra men, which he apparently did and paid some of them off at Fort Mandan in the spring of Note the entry under date of August 22, , where we read:. This man had spent all his wages and requested to return with us. We agreed to give him passage down [to St. This would seem to be proof that a few of the men were not enlisted, but were hired for the trip up the Missouri only, and were paid wages out of funds in hand. The others were paid by Captain Amos Stoddard , Capt. Lewis 's agent in St.

For this reason they do not appear on the muster rolls and were not entitled to extra pay and land warrants as the enlisted men later were. This may also be a reason why the journalists list only forty-five men, for they might not have considered the hired, extra men as technically a part of the expedition.

In the revised Private Joseph Whitehouse Journal , as yet unpublished, there is found a partial list of the members who set out and adds "8 Canadians who were only to proceed with us to the Mandans. Alexander Carson could have been one of these extra men, for with the evidence I have shown, and the entry in the journals for August 18, , [24] where it is stated: Thwaites appears to have had some evidence, for on page he notes after the word Carr n " Carson— editor. The above evidence, while not conclusive, is the best we have at present.

However, I believe it is strong enough that Alexander Carson should be considered as one of the party until such time as we have positive contrary evidence. In connection with these "alleged members," it may be of interest to report a sidelight that is of record.

As shown, the previously mentioned Alexander Carson , in his last years, was living in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. A companion of his trapping days, William Canning, was living on a farm nearby. William Canning was a bona fide mountain man, and had been with Wilson P. Hunt's Astorian party of At Champoeg, Willamette Valley, was an old man by the name of Cannon [there goes that spelling again — author] who had been one of the party with Lewis and Clark , and from his own account, the only remaining one in the country.

Now Canning should have been aware that Francois Rivet, who was a member of the party as far as the Mandans , was living on a farm nearby. We can forgive him that he may not have known that Patrick Gass was living in West Virginia at the time. But he may just be bragging about himself. Mountain men had a bad habit of doing that. Wilkes of course did not mention the fact that Alexander Carson had, in , made a will in favor of Canning, and that after Carson had been murdered in , Canning had claimed from the Hudson's Bay Company, the balance of accounts that were due Carson.

There is ample documentary evidence to show that Carson and Canning were two different men. It is tempting to speculate that Captain Clark could have been referring to Canning when he rendered the name as Cann and Cane. But it is difficult to imagine that the clearly legible E. Cann could be taken to mean an initial for William.

We have already seen that Ellick is one of the spellings, along with Alec. In any event, neither Canning, Cannin, nor Cannon is ever mentioned in conection with Lewis and Clark until Wilkes quotes him in I have given all this Carson material as a typical example of the research done to arrive at the most complete and correct roster possible. In an attempt to gather further information, I appended additional data to my roster, and it was published in the DAR Magazine for November, I am happy to acknowledge that quite a bit of new information has been acquired, and is collected here for the first time.

In no case have I used "family tradition," but only include data that is fully documented.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am particularly pleased that some of the members who heretofore have had the notation after their names — "Nothing more known of him" — have been rescued from oblivion. By the time the winter of had passed into the spring of , Captain Clark had decided on which of the men would be taken along on the expedition. Many of them had been transferred from their former military units as of January 1, , onto the muster rolls of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Later, some of the French water-men had been enlisted, but others were hired as extra hands.

The provisions and Indian trade goods were divided so that some of each were placed in separate boxes in order that all would not be lost in case of accident. The air gun was mounted on the keel-boat and the arms checked and put in order. The powder was contained in cannisters of lead which could later be melted and molded into bullets when the cannisters were empty. A hundred other details had to be thought out and arranged, for once the expedition set out, no other supplies could be obtained in the frontier country into which they were going.

At long last, spring arrived, and the Missouri was showing signs of becoming navigable. Captain Lewis was in St. Louis winding up the many last minute details, including a conference with a delegation of Osage Indians. George Drouillard was with him most of the time. Charles, a french Village 7 Leags. Lewis could finish the business in which he was obliged to attend to at St. Louis and join me by Land from that place 24 miles; by this movement I calculated that if any alterations in the loading of the Vestles or other Changes necessary, that they might be made at St.

So at 4 o'clock on the afternoon of May 14, , the shake-down cruise began. They easily could have made St. Charles in one day, but Captain Clark took all of two, for there was no hurry, and much had to be learned about the men, the boats, and the loading. They soon found out that the keel-boat was too heavily loaded in the stern. On the nights of the 14th and 15th, they camped along the river, for this presented an opportunity to test the arrangement of the men into messes, or groups, where each prepared its own meals.

This pre-arrangement was continued until May 26th of the voyage when a few changes were made. On the 16th of May, the party arrived at St. Charles, where, during the following four days, the cargoes were reloaded. On the 19th, Drouillard came over from St. Captain Clark had warned the members:. That they should act with true respect for their own dignity, and not make it necessary for him to leave the comforts of the town for a more retired situation [31].

Nevertheless, William Werner , Hugh Hall and John Collins went absent-without-leave, and furthermore, Collins behaved in an unbecoming manner at the ball, and after his return to the keel-boat, had uttered disrespectful statements in regard to the orders of Captain Clark. Clark had been over to Portage des Sioux to talk and trade with the Indians at that place, and the three men had taken advantage of his absence.

This sort of behavior had to be stopped, so Captain Clark appointed a court-martial, headed by Sgt. The court sentenced each of the culprits to receive twenty-five lashes on their bare-backs, but because of the former good conduct of Werner and Hall, they recommended mercy from Captain Clark. The punishment was remitted for them, but John Collins received his punishment at sunset that evening.

On Sunday, May 20th, the men were given leave to enjoy themselves and to hear a sermon at the Catholic Church on Main Street. That afternoon at six-thirty, Captain Lewis arrived from St. Louis with a group of friends to help send the expedition off. He was accompanied by Capt.

Amos Stoddard who was to act as his agent while he was away , Lt. Clarence Mulford , Lt. Stephen Worrall and the Messrs. Captain Lewis made some additional purchases such as sugar, and castor-oil was obtained from Doctors Jeremiah and Seth Millington. These were two American doctors who had arrived in St. Charles in January and were now raising medicinal plants on their farms located above the town. The gentlemen of the village gave a banquet and a ball for the party. It was the last taste of civilization before their departure.

The next day, May 21, , the orders were given for departure, and despite the rain, a farewell parade was given. The band played all the way down the mile long main street fronting the Missouri River, and there was singing and fiddle playing. Charles under a salute and three cheers from the dignitaries and citizens. In honor of their warm hospitality, three cheers were returned and three guns were fired from the boats as a salute. Under the joint command of Captains Lewis and Clark , the expedition officially started up the Missouri.

Since that fateful day some one hundred and sixty years ago when the expedition faded off into the dim distance, the following facts have been gathered about the men who comprised it, and who set off on this historic voyage of exploration. Son of William and Lucy Meriwether Lewis. Well educated, blond— sunny hair; bowlegged, particular, precise, serious, reserved and inclined to melancholia and hypochondria. He served in the 1st Infantry, U.

The Contest: Everest #1

Army and in Gen. In he was appointed Pres. Jefferson 's private secretary. After the expedition, he was appointed the Governor of Louisiana Territory. Clerks in Washington protested some of his drafts — some of which were connected with the expedition — which caused him emotional strain. He decided to go to Washington to explain the drafts, and while enroute on the Natchez Trace, he died, either by murder or suicide, on October 11, A monument stands at his burial place on the Trace near Nashville, Tennessee.

Born, August 1, , near Charlottesville, Virginia, of Scottish ancestry. Son of John and Ann Rogers Clark. Six feet tall, red-haired, a popular leader of men. He was promised a captaincy by Lewis, and received the same pay and recognition as a captain, though when the commission was received, it was for a second lieutenant. When the expedition returned to St. Louis he promptly returned the commission on October 10, After the expedition he was appointed Indian Agent, and after Lewis' death, the Governor of Missouri.

Yet none has found such a pattern attainable. Only Pam's younger daughter, Katie, the original source of the evangelical conversions in her own marriage and her mother's, explicitly rejected such a vision. At fourteen, Katie joined the Christian revival, where, I believe, she found an effective refuge from the disruptions of parental divorce and adolescent drug culture that threatened her more rebellious siblings. Ironically, however, Katie's total involvement in a pentecostal ministry led her to practice the most alternative family arrangement of all. Katie, with her husband and young children, has lived "in community" in various joint households occasionally interracial households whose accordion structures and shared childrearing, ministry labors, and expenses have enabled her to achieve an exceptional degree of sociospatial integration of her family, work, and spiritual life.

At the outset of my fieldwork, none of Pam's or Dotty's daughters inhabited a modern family. However, over the next few years, discouraging experiences with the work available to them led three to retreat from the world of paid work and to attempt a modified version of the modern family strategy their mothers had practiced earlier. All demanded, and two received, substantially greater male involvement in child care and domestic work than had their mothers or mine in the prefeminist past. Only one, however, had reasonable prospects of succeeding in her "modern" gender strategy, and these she secured through unacknowledged benefits feminism helped her to enjoy.

Dotty's second daughter, Polly,. Legalized abortion and liberalized sexual norms for women allowed Polly to experiment sexually and defer marriage and childbearing until she was able to negotiate a marriage whose domestic labor arrangements represented a distinct improvement over that of the prefeminist modern family.

I have less to say, and less confidence in what I do have to say, about postmodern family strategies among the men in Pam's and Dotty's kin groups. Despite my concerted efforts to study gender relationally by defining my study in gender-inclusive terms, the men in the families I studied remained comparatively marginal to my research. In part, this is an unavoidable outcome for any one individual who attempts to study gender in a gendered world. Being a woman inhibited my access to, and likely my empathy with, as full a range of the men's family experiences as that which I enjoyed among their female kin.

Still, the relative marginality of men in my research is not due simply to methodological deficiencies. It also accurately reflects their more marginal participation in contemporary family life. Most of the men in Pam's and Dotty's networks narrated gender and kinship stories that were relatively inarticulate and undeveloped, I believe, because they had less experience, investment, and interest in the work of sustaining kin ties. While economic pressures have always encouraged expansionary kin work among working-class women, these have often weakened men's family ties.

Men's muted family voices in my study whisper of a masculinity crisis among blue-collar men. As working-class men's access to breadwinner status recedes, so too does confidence in their masculinity. Pam's and Dotty's male kin appeared uncertain as to whether a man who provides sole support to his family is a hero or a chump. Two of these men avoided domestic commitments entirely, while several embraced them wholeheartedly.

Two vacillated between romantic engagements and the unencumbered single life. Too many of the men I met expressed their masculinity in antisocial, self-destructive, and violent forms. Women strive, meanwhile, as they always have, to buttress and reform their male kin. Responding to the extraordinary diffusion of feminist ideology as well as to sheer overwork, working-class women, like middle-class women, have struggled to transfer some of their domestic burdens to men.

My fieldwork leads me to believe that they have achieved more success in the daily trenches than much of the research on the "politics of housework" yet indicates—more success, I suspect, than have most. Almost all of the men I observed or heard about routinely performed domestic tasks that my own blue-collar father and his friends never deigned to contemplate. Some did so with reluctance and resentment, but most did so willingly.

Although the division of household labor remains profoundly inequitable, I am convinced that a major gender norm has shifted here. If this chapter serves no other purpose, I hope it will shatter the image of the white working class as the last repository of old-fashioned "modern" American family life. The postmodern family arrangements I found among blue-collar people in the Silicon Valley are at least as diverse and innovative as those found within the middle class.

Pundits of postmodern family arrangements, like Delia Ephron, satirize the hostility and competition of the contemporary divorce-extended family. But working women like Pamela and Dotty have found ways to transform divorce from a rupture into a kinship resource, and they are not unique. A recent study of middle-class divorced couples and their parents in the suburbs of San Francisco found one-third sustaining kinship ties with former spouses and their relatives.

Certainly, the dismantling of welfare state protections and the re-privatizing policies of the Reagan-Bush era have given lower-income women renewed incentives to continue their traditions of active, expansionary kin work. The accordion households and kin ties crafted by Dotty Lewison, by Katie's Christian ministry, and by Pam and Shirley draw more on the "domestic network" traditions of poor, urban African-Americans described by Carole Stack and on the matrifocal strategies of poor and working-class whites than they do on family reform innovations by the white middle class.

The diversity and complexity of postmodern family patterns rivals that characteristic of premodern kinship forms. One glimpses the ironies of class and gender history here. For decades industrial unions struggled heroically for a socially recognized male breadwinner wage that would allow the working class to participate in the modern gender order.

These struggles, however, contributed to the cheapening of female labor that helped gradually to undermine the modern family regime. The former did so, however, only after the wives of working-class men had pioneered the twentieth-century revolution in women's paid work. Entering employment in mid-life during the catastrophic s, participating in defense industries in the s, and raising their family incomes to middle-class standards by returning to the labor force soon after childrearing in the s, wives of working-class men quietly modeled and normalized the postmodern family standard of employment for married mothers.

Whereas in the less a man earned, the more likely his wife was employed, by wives of middle-income men were the most likely to be in the labor force. African-American women and white working-class women have been the genuine postmodern family pioneers, even though they also suffer most from its most negative effects. Long denied the mixed benefits that the modern family order offered middle-class women, less privileged women quietly forged alternative models of femininity to that of full-time domesticity and mother-intensive childrearing.

Struggling creatively, often heroically, to sustain oppressed families and to escape the most oppressive ones, they drew on "traditional," premodern kinship resources and crafted untraditional ones, creating in the process the postmodern family. Rising divorce and cohabitation rates, working mothers, two-earner households, single and unwed parenthood, and matrilineal, extended, and fictive kin support networks appeared earlier and more extensively among poor and working-class people. If, as my research suggests, postindustrial transformations encouraged modern working-class families to reorganize and diversify themselves even more than middle-class families, it seems time to inter the very concept of " the working-class family.

Popular images of working-class family life, like the Archie Bunker family, rest upon the iconography of industrial blue-collar male breadwinners and the history of their lengthy struggle for a family wage. But the male family wage was a late and ephemeral achievement of only the most fortunate sections of the modern industrial working-class. It is doubtful that most working-class men ever secured its patriarchal domestic privileges. Postmodern conditions expose the gendered character of this social-class category, and they render it atavistic.

As feminists have argued, only by disregarding women's labor and learning was it ever plausible to designate a family unit as working class. The life circumstances and mobility patterns of the members of Pamela's kin set and of the Lewisons, for example, are so diverse and fluid that no single social-class category can adequately describe any of the family units among them. If the white working-class family stereotype is inaccurate, it is also consequential. Stereotypes are moral alas, more often, immoral stories people tell to organize the complexity of social experience.

Narrating the working-class people as profamily reactionaries suppresses the diversity and the innovative character of a great proportion of working-class kin relationships. Because it contains socially divisive and conservative political effects, the Archie Bunker stereotype may have helped to contain feminism by estranging middle-class women from working-class women.

Barbara Ehrenreich argues that caricatures that portray the working class as racist and reactionary are recent, self-serving inventions of professional, middle-class people eager "to seek legitimation for their own more conservative impulses. The inverse logic of class prejudice construed the constituency of that enormously popular social movement as exclusively middle-class. By convincing middle-class feminists of our isolation, perhaps the last laugh of that "Polish joke" was on us. Even Ehrenreich, who sensitively debunks the Bunker myth, labels "startling" the findings of a Gallup poll that "56 percent of American women considered themselves to be 'feminists,' and the degree of feminist identification was, if anything, slightly higher as one descended the socio-economic scale.

While my ethnographic research demonstrates the demise of " the working-class family," in no way does it document the emergence of the classless society once anticipated by postindustrial theorists. While high-wage blue-collar jobs decline, the window of postindustrial opportunity that admitted undereducated men and women, like Lou and Kristina Lewison and Don Franklin, to middle-class status is slamming shut. And it looks like more of the same in the s," declared a recent summary of occupational statistics from the Census Bureau and the Labor Department. By , however, those veterans' children, looking for a median-priced home as first-time would-be home owners, could expect their housing costs to be 44 percent of an average male's monthly earnings.

Postindustrial shifts have reduced blue-collar job opportunities for the undereducated sons of working-class fathers I interviewed. And technological developments like Computer-Aided Design have escalated the entry criteria and reduced the numbers of those middle-level occupations that recently employed uncredentialled young people like Kristina Lewison and Pam's oldest child, Lanny. Two earners in a household now are necessary just to keep from losing ground. It was the blue-collar working class that was 'disappearing,' at least from the middle range of comfort.

Postindustrial restructuring has had contradictory effects on the employment opportunities of former working-class women. Driven by declines in real family income, by desires for social achievement and independence, and by an awareness that committed male breadwinners are in scarce supply, such women have flocked to expanding jobs in service, clerical, and new industrial occupations.

These provide the means of family subsidy or self-support and self-respect gained by many women, like Pam and Dotty; but few of these women enjoy earnings or prospects equivalent to those of their former husbands or fathers. Recent economic restructuring has replaced white male workers with women and minority men, but at less well paid, more vulnerable jobs.

This massive reordering of work, class, and gender relationships during the past several decades is what has turned family life into a contested terrain. It seems ironic, therefore, to observe that at the very same time that women are becoming the new proletariat, the postmodern family, even more than the modern family it is replacing, is proving to be a woman-tended domain. To be sure, as Kathleen Gerson reports in the chapter that follows this one, there is some empirical basis for the enlightened father imagery celebrated by films like Kramer versus Kramer.

Indeed my fieldwork corroborates emerging evidence that the determined efforts by many working women and feminists to reintegrate men into family life have not been entirely without effect. There are data, for example, indicating that increasing numbers of men would sacrifice occupational gains in order to have more time with their families, just as there are data documenting actual increases in male involvement in child care.

We are experiencing, as Andrew Cherlin aptly puts. And few of the adults providing care to sick and elderly relatives are male. Rarely do the anxious public outcries over the destructive effects on families of working mothers, high divorce rates, institutionalized child care, or sexual liberalization scrutinize the family behaviors of men.

Women have amply demonstrated a continuing commitment to sustaining kin ties. If there is a family crisis, it is a male's crisis. The crisis cannot be resolved by reviving the modern family system. While nostalgia for an idealized world of "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Archie Bunker" families abounds, little evidence suggests that most Americans genuinely wish to return to the gender order these symbolize.

On the contrary, the vast majority, like the people in my study, are actively remaking family life. Indeed, a survey conducted by the New York Times found more than two-thirds of women—including a substantial majority even of those living in "traditional," that is to say "modern," households, as well as a majority of men—agree that "the United States continues to need a strong women's movement to push for changes that benefit women.

They cling, like Shirley Moskowitz, to images of themselves as "back from the old days," while venturing ambivalently, but courageously, into the new. Responding to new economic and social insecurities as well as to feminism, higher percentages of families in almost all income groups have adopted a multiple-earner strategy. Indeed, the postmodern success of the voluntary principle of the modern family system precludes this, assuring a fluid, recombinant familial culture. The routinization of divorce and remarriage generates a diversity of family patterns even greater than was characteristic of the premodern period, when death prevented family stability or household homogeneity.

Even cautious demographers judge. The ideological concept of "the family" imposes mythical homogeneity on the diverse means by which people organize their intimate relationships, and consequently distorts and devalues this rich variety of kinship stories. And, along with the class, racial, and heterosexual prejudices it promulgates, this sentimental, fictional plot authorizes gender hierarchy.

Because the postmodern family crisis ruptures this seamless modern family "script," it provides a democratic opportunity. Feminists', gay liberation activists', and many minority rights organizations' efforts to expand and redefine the notion of family are responses to this opportunity. These groups are seeking to extend social legitimacy and institutional support for the diverse patterns of intimacy that Americans have already forged.

If feminism threatens many people and seems out of fashion, struggles to reconstitute gender and kinship on a just and democratic basis are more popular than ever. I find an element of bad faith in the popular lament over the decline of the family. Nostalgia for "the family" deflects criticism from the social sources of most "personal troubles.

Indeed, the ability to provide financial security was the chief family concern of most of the people surveyed in the Yale study. If the postmodern family crisis represents a democratic opportunity, contemporary economic and political conditions enable only a minority to realize its tantalizing potential.

The discrepant data reported in the Yale study indicate how reluctant most Americans are to fully acknowledge the genuine ambivalence we feel about family and social change. Yet ambivalence, as Alan Wolfe suggests, is an underappreciated but responsible moral stance, and one well suited for democratic citizenship: Nor do I imagine that even a successful feminist family revolution could eliminate all family distress.

At best, it would foster a social order that could invert Tolstoy's aphorism by granting happy families the freedom to differ, and even to suffer. Truly postfeminist families, however, would suffer only the "common unhappiness" endemic to intimate human relationships; they would be liberated from the "hysterical misery" generated by social injustice.

Since , when the breadwinner-homemaker household accounted for almost two-thirds of all American households, widespread changes have occurred in the structure of American family life.

Conflict management

Rising rates of divorce, separation, and cohabitation outside of marriage have created a growing percentage of single-parent and single-adult households. The explosion in the percentage of employed women, and especially employed mothers, has produced a rising tide of dual-earner couples whose patterns of child rearing differ substantially from the s' norm of the stay-at-home mother. As Judy Stacey also shows in this volume, the breadwinner-homemaker model of family life has become only one of an array of alternatives that confront men and women as they build and often change their lives over the course of an expanded adulthood.

As changes in family structure have become apparent to intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens, a national debate has arisen over their nature and significance. The most widely embraced interpretation of family change is one of alarm and condemnation. Analysts and social critics across the political spectrum routinely blame "the breakdown of the family" for a host of modern social ills, extending from the drug epidemic and increases in violent crime to teenage pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, the decline of educational standards, and even the birth dearth.

The "stability within change" perspective provides an important rebuttal to the gloomy and accusatory picture presented by the "family breakdown" thesis. It upholds the validity of women's struggle for gender equality and freedom of choice regarding sexuality, marriage, and childbearing.

However, its relatively benign view tends to understate some of the costs of social change. In the context of persistent gender inequality, these costs have fallen most heavily on the women and children who can no longer count on a man's economic support and have not gained access to other economic bases. The growing percentage of women and children who live in poverty is, for example, an unfortunate consequence of the loosening of the bonds of permanent marriage and the erosion of male breadwinning. Posing the situation as one of family breakdown versus family stability and adaptive resilience oversimplifies the nature of the change process.

This chapter argues, instead, that both the current debate on the family and the difficulties most families now face result less from the fact of fundamental social change than from the inconsistent and contradictory nature of change. Social change in family structure remains inconsistent in two consequential ways. First, some social arrangements have changed significantly, but others have not.

Even though an increasing percentage of families depend on the earnings of wives and mothers, women continue to face discrimination at the workplace and still retain responsibility for the lion's share of household labor. Second, social change is inconsistent because social groups differ greatly in how and to what degree they have been exposed to change. Not only are the alternatives that women and men face structured differently, but within each gender group, the alternatives vary significantly. A growing group of women, for example, have gained access to highly rewarded professional and managerial careers, but most women remain segregated in relatively ill-rewarded, female-dominated occupations.

Similarly, the stagnation of real wages has eroded many men's ability to support wives and children on their paycheck alone, but most men still enjoy significant economic advantages. This variation in opportunities and constraints has, in turn, promoted contrasting orientations toward family change among differently situated groups of women and men.

This chapter draws on two studies of how differently situated groups of women and men are responding to the dilemmas posed by unequal social change. It analyzes the similarities and differences between women's and men's responses, how their family situations affect their personal and political strategies, and, finally, the short-term and long-term implications of men's and women's attempts to resolve these dilemmas and conflicts.

Women and men have developed a range of strategic responses to cope with the contrasting dilemmas they confront. We can compare the "coping strategies" of those who developed a "traditional orientation" with the strategies that grew out of two alternative orientations—an orientation that stresses the avoidance of parental commitments and, finally, an orientation based on seeking a balance between work and family commitments.

Since the conflicts and dilemmas inherent in each family pattern vary according to gender, women's and men's strategic responses are analyzed separately.

Women and men confront a different set of opportunities and constraints, but each group must respond to the dilemmas posed by unequal and uneven social change. Their contending resolutions to these family dilemmas shape the terms of political conflict as well as the contours of social change. Although most women, including most mothers, now participate in the paid labor force, this apparent similarity masks important differences in.

Not only do some mothers continue to stay home to rear children, but many employed women work part time or intermittently and continue to emphasize family over employment commitments. Women develop "domestic" or "nondomestic" orientations in response to specific sets of occupational and interpersonal experiences.

These contrasting orientations to family life are not only rooted in different social circumstances; they also represent opposing responses to the conflicts between motherhood and employment. All women face an altered social context, but they differ in how and to what extent they have been exposed to structural change. This uneven exposure to new opportunities and constraints has produced contrasting orientations toward employment and motherhood.

In my research on how women make family and work decisions, I found that regardless of class position or early childhood experiences and expectations, those women who were exposed to change in marital and work institutions were more likely to develop nondomestic orientations as adults, whereas those who were sheltered from these changes tended to develop a domestic orientation in adulthood.

About two-thirds of the respondents who held domestic orientations as children ultimately became work-committed. Similarly, over 60 percent of those who were ambivalent about childbearing or who held career aspirations as children became committed to domesticity in adulthood. Unanticipated encounters with changing structures of marriage and employment led some women to veer away from domesticity and others to veer toward it. Those who experienced instability in their relationships with men, who encountered often unanticipated chances for advancement at the workplace, who were disillusioned with the experience of motherhood, and who met severe economic squeezes in their households tended to develop strong work commitments.

These women found full-time mothering and homemaking relatively isolating, devalued, and unfulfilling compared to the rewards of paid jobs. Exposure to unanticipated opportunities outside the home combined with unexpected disappointment in domestic pursuits to encourage a nondomestic orientation even among those who had initially planned for a life of domesticity. In contrast, women who encountered blocked mobility at work and became disillusioned by dead-end jobs decided that motherhood provided a more satisfying alternative to stifling work conditions.

They were, furthermore, able to establish stable marital partnerships in which they could depend on economic support from husbands with secure careers. When the experience of blocked mobility at the workplace was combined. Over 60 percent of those who initially planned to have a work career ultimately opted for domesticity in response to constraints at the workplace and opportunities for domestic involvement. Amid the currents of social change, exposure to a traditional package of opportunities and constraints led these women to conclude that their best hope for a satisfying life depended on subordinating their employment goals to motherhood and family pursuits.

In sum, exposure to expanded opportunities outside the home for example, upward employment mobility and unanticipated insecurities within it for example, marital instability or economic squeezes in the household tends to promote a nondomestic orientation, even among women who once planned for full-time motherhood. Exposure to a more traditional package of opportunities and constraints such as constricted employment options and stable marriage tends, in contrast, to promote a domestic orientation even among those who felt ambivalent toward motherhood and domesticity as children.

Both orientations reflect contextually sensible, if unexpected and largely unconscious, responses to the structural conflicts between employment and motherhood. Uneven exposure to structural change, like the partial nature of change, promotes contrasting family orientations among women. Some women remain dependent on a traditional family structure that emphasizes sharp social differences between the sexes along with male economic support for women's mothering.

Others increasingly depend on social and economic supports outside the home—which can be guaranteed only if women are accorded the same rights, responsibilities, and privileges as men. Rising marital instability and stagnant male wages have eroded the structural supports for female domesticity, but persistent gender inequality at the workplace and in the home also make domesticity an inviting alternative to those who still face limited options in the paid labor force.

In the context of this ambiguous mix of expanded options and new insecurities, the choices of both domestically oriented and work-committed women remain problematic, however personally fulfilling they may be. Despite the forces leading other women out of the home, domestically oriented women confront ample reasons to avoid such a fate. Blocked occupational opportunities leave these women poorly positioned to enjoy the benefits of work outside the home. They have concluded that domestic pursuits offer significant advantages over workplace commitment.

A homemaker and mother of two declared:. I never plan to go back [to work]. I'm too spoiled now. I'm my own boss. I have independence; I have control; I have as much freedom as anyone is going to have in our society. No [paid] job can offer me those things. Since their "freedom" depends on someone else's paycheck, domestically oriented women are willing to accept responsibility for the care of home and children in exchange for male economic support. As this disillusioned ex-schoolteacher and full-time mother of two pointed out, they have little desire to change places with their breadwinning husbands:.

I have met guys who were housepersons, but I can't see any reason [for it]. It would turn it all crazy for me to come home around five thirty, and he'd have to have things ready for me. I think if I thought that [bringing in a paycheck] was my role for the rest of my life, I would hate it. I don't want to be [my husband]; then I would have to go and fight the world. I don't want the pressures that he has to bear—supporting a family, a mortgage, putting in all those hours at the office. Whether or not they work, domestically oriented women put their family commitments first.

When employed, they carefully define their work attachments as a discretionary choice that can be curtailed if necessary and that always comes second to their children's needs. A part-time clerk and mother of two defined paid work as a "job," not a career:. I would never want to get us in a situation where I would have to work, because then I would really hate it. I don't work to have a career.

Without a career, I can quit a job whenever I want. To have a career, you have to stick with it, and it takes a lot. I'd have to give up a lot of things my kids need, and it's not worth it to me. A job, I don't have to give up anything. Although relatively insulated from the pushes and pulls that lead other women toward strong labor force attachment, domestically oriented women are nevertheless affected by the social changes taking place around them.

The erosion of structural and ideological supports for a traditional arrangement has made their commitment to a family form based on a strict sexual division of labor problematic. The increased fragility of marriage, for example, poses an abiding, if unspoken, threat to domestic women's security. In the context of high divorce rates, homemaking women cannot assume that the relationships they depend on will last.

This ex-clerk and mother of a young daughter complained:. I think he was attracted to me because I was very independent, and now I'm very dependent. I don't know what I would do if things didn't work out between [us] and we had to separate and I had to go to work to support my child. I think I'd be going bananas. It's scary to me. Even when their marriages are secure, domestically oriented women face other incursions on their social position.

The rise of work-commit-. Domestically oriented women feel unfairly devalued by others, as these ex-clerical workers explained:. There are times when I have some trouble with my identity; that has to do with being a mother. Because of society, sometimes the recognition or lack of it bothers me.

People put no value on a housewife. If you have a job, you're interesting. If you don't, you're really not very interesting, and sometimes I think people turn you off. This ex-nurse added that even when economic pressures are weak, the social pressures to seek employment make domesticity a difficult choice:.

I have been feeling a lot of pressure. Sometimes it's hard to know what you feel, because I really don't feel like I want to [work], but I think I should feel like I want to. The erosion of the structural and ideological supports for domesticity has left domestically oriented women feeling embattled. They are now forced to defend a personal choice and family arrangement that was once considered sacrosanct.

Domestically oriented women tend to view employed mothers as either selfish and dangerous to children or overburdened and miserable, as these two homemakers suggested:. I have a neighbor with young children who works just because she wants to. I get sort of angry. I think I resent the unfairness to the child. I don't know how to answer the argument that men can have families and work, but women can't. Maybe it's not fair, but that's the way it is. Most of the time all I hear from them is griping, and they're tired, and they're frantic to get everything done. I hate hurrying like that.

They viewed career-committed women as selfish, unattractive, and, at least in the case of childless women, unfulfilled:. Women can [take on men's jobs], but it's a blood-and-guts type of thing. Those who make it are witches because they found out what they had to do to get there. Find Prizefighter en mi Casa at your local library. Esme Codell - Hyperion Books for Children, pages. It has a noble pedigree, from Goodbye, Mr. Chips to Conrack to Miss Nelson is Missing. This is a lovely, moving book. Find Sahara Special at your local library. Readers will grin from beginning to end of this enchanting story.

A kid getting a novel published — too ridiculous to be believable, right? Just ask Gordon Korman, whose first novel, which he wrote as a seventh-grade English project, was published when he was It sold very well, and he had five more published before he graduated from high school. Publishers are looking for good school stories — who better to write one than a kid?

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The book is filled with wonderful photographs of the tree kangaroos, their lush forest habitat, and other exotic plants and animals. None of her friends, family or teachers encouraged her in her passionate interest in animals when she was growing up, thinking it was strange, and she struggled with the challenge of asthma.

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The real stars here are the paper airplanes themselves. From the Stunt plane to the Eagle, and the Space Shuttle replica to a Hammerhead, this book is fueled by science and fun. Patti Kelley Criswell , illustrated by: Ali Douglass - American Girl Publishing, 56 pages. This kit contains helpful directions for starting a book club and includes question cards, bookmarks and activity cards.

Suggestions for being a good listener and participant are also included to encourage children to talk about what they are reading. Find The Book Club Kit at your local library. Patty Kelley Criswell , illustrated by: Stacy Peterson - American Girl Publishing, 80 pages. In this book, girls learn the importance of friends and making a friendship work. These real-life stories, activities and quizzes can be read alone or with a friend. Making Them and Keeping Them at your local library. Gregory Tang , illustrated by: Harry Briggs - Scholastic, 32 pages.

Does the thought of memorizing your multiplication facts drive you crazy? Are you tired of those pesky speed drills in math class? If you want a fun way to learn how to multiply, you must read this clever picture book. Tang uses simple rhymes and puzzles to help students understand the concept of multiplication.

Find The Best of Times: Math Strategies That Multiply at your local library. Find Crazy Cars at your local library. This book outlines over a dozen famous frauds from the s to the present, including P. Fakes and Hoaxes Through the Years at your local library. Laura Schlitz , illustrated by: Robert Byrd - Candlewick Press, 85 pages. Even reluctant readers will enjoy the clear, direct text, short length, and dramatic content. We can even hope that this brilliant book, with its awards and attendant success, may lead to a renaissance of books for kids that make history come alive.

In 19 monologues and two dialogs in verse and prose, the lives of a cast of characters from a medieval village — nobles and peasants, but all children — are illuminated. Through them, along with margin notes and periodic background sections, a portrait of life in the Middle Ages is created. Voices from a Medieval Village at your local library. Shelley Tanaka , illustrated by: Ken Marschall - Hyperion Books for Children, 48 pages. You may want to discuss the concept of class differences with your kids.

Find On Board the Titanic: Visuals abound and the book concludes with some significant ways for kids to make a difference. This guide will educate and empower young readers, leaving them with the knowledge they need to understand this problem and a sense of hope to inspire them into action. A practical guide to conserving resources and protecting the environment, each brief chapter of 50 Simple Things provides information and tips designed to inspire ideas and action. The book also explains how everyday items — like a light switch or a toilet — are connected to the rest of the world.

Fun ideas for the whole family to discuss and implement! Like eco-Nancy Drews, the characters of the Gaia Girls series will appeal to girls ready to take on modern-day environmental challenges. Illustrated throughout, this chapter book is for more mature fourth-grade readers, as it does not pull any punches when taking on subjects like factory farming. Highly recommended for its compelling story and sensitivity to current issues. Enter the Earth at your local library.

Janeczko , illustrated by: Jenna LaReau - Candlewick Press, pages. This book has everything a budding spy or cryptographer wants to know about creating codes, ciphers, and the methods of concealment. An answer key provides a great opportunity to practice new skills from pictographs to Igpay Atinlay. This is an ear-to-ear-grinningly delightful school story. Parents need to know that there is nothing to be concerned about here and lots to cheer. Families can talk about silence and civil disobedience. Why does the silence seem so powerful? What do you think of the standoff between Dave and the principal?

Find No Talking at your local library. Fourteen-year-old orphan Widge works for a mean and unscrupulous master who goes by the name of Falconer. Ordered to steal the script for Hamlet, Widge is taken to London and forced to attend a performance of the play. Instead of concentrating on stealing the script, he becomes engrossed in the show.

Reluctantly, Widge admits his failure to Falconer and is told to return until his mission is accomplished. Nothing goes as planned and a very surprised Widge finds himself an accepted member of the backstage crew. Once a lonely outcast, he has friends and a place to call home for the first time in his life. Will he have the moral integrity to disobey his master or will he betray his new family?

Set in Elizabethan London, The Shakespeare Stealer introduces us to Shakespearean stagecraft, life on the streets of London and to the truth behind the youthful appearance of Queen Elizabeth I! Find The Shakespeare Stealer at your local library. Part of the Eyewitness Books series, Natural Disasters covers a wide variety of natural disasters, from earthquakes to epidemics. Written in plain language and illustrated with spectacular photos and diagrams, it contains a wealth of valuable information, including a historical timeline of major disasters, a glossary, and a list of Web and real-world resources natural history and science museums for additional research.

Find Natural Disasters at your local library. Quentin Blake - Viking Juvenile, pages. With his hallmark wit and humor, Dahl tells the tale of Matilda, a child prodigy who defends her sweet teacher against the terrible school principal, Mrs. Children will love learning about Matilda and her extraordinary powers. Find Matilda at your local library. Wendy Orr , illustrated by: Kerry Millard - Yearling Books, pages. Take a spunky heroine competently surviving on her own on a deserted island the ultimate kid fantasy.

Add in animal friends who seem to understand, the vaguest of villains hovering in the background and easily overcome, a smattering of scientific information effortlessly absorbed and a very satisfying conclusion. Then write it in breezy style, making the various pieces of the story fit together in a nicely coincidental, jigsaw-puzzle way.

All together it makes for one delightful story. Check out the sweetly imaginative, family-friendly film starring Jodie Foster. Natalie Babbitt - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 40 pages. The Tucks will never die, which turns out to be less of a blessing than one might think. A gentle but powerful reflection on mortality, and on what constitutes a meaningful life.

Check out the adaptation, in which the character Winnie is 15 instead of Find Tuck Everlasting at your local library. This was her first sighting of Dustfinger, one of many colorful characters that her father brought to life from the pages of the book Inkheart. In fact, Meggie does not know this yet, but this is how her own mother disappeared nine years before. Now, the evil Capricorn wants another character brought to life, and is determined to have Mo read aloud.

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