Career and Family
Marston was a career woman, a position that was controversial for the time in which she lived: "She indexed the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lectured on law, ethics, and psychology at American and New York Universities, served as an editor for Encyclopædia Britannica and McCall's magazine All this at a time when teachers who married were expected to hand in their chalk, and wives needed their husbands' permission to work as operators for Ma Bell." In 1933, Marston became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance (a position she held until she was 65 years old).
She had her first child at the age of thirty-five and continued to work even after having children, also revolutionary for the time. She eventually had two children (Pete and Olive Ann) and also supported the two children of Olive Byrne, (who lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship). These children, Byrne and Donn, were legally adopted by the Marstons. While Olive stayed home to raise the children, Elizabeth supported the family when William was out of work and after his death in 1947. This included financing the college and graduate education of all four children and supporting Olive until her death in the 1980s.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Famous quotes containing the words career and/or family:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another—generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)