C 04 - Summary and Conclusions

SXJMMABY ANX> CONCLUSIONS This chapter has endeavored to explore the role attitudes of some ministers’ wives toward their husbands* work. It has been noted that the average wife (if we may use the term) both feels and appears to be little, if any, more active directly in church work than any other active laywoman. However, by virtue of her role as minister’s wife what she does is different from what the other women do. On the other hand, the wives think of themselves as being vitally involved in their husbands’ work on the home front. They see their chief contribution as being supportive, one that includes hearing him out, sharing ideas with him, and providing the type of home atmosphere to which ROLE ATTITUDES TOWARD HUSBAND*S WORK 87 he may retreat as a refuge from a busy and hectic schedule. This encompasses the primary thrust of their role and they give evidence of accepting it with relative ease and comfort. The social psychologists would say that they have internalized their role and made it meaningful by a process of “ dynamic elaboration.** 23 This accounts for whatever comfort and ease they have in their role.

Though ministers’ wives are leading a life of activity within the church somewhat like that of other active laywomen, they are still constantly reminded of the fact that they are not simply other laywomen. The loneliness that they may experience helps to remind them of this fact. This loneliness is partly attributable to their feeling that it is unwise to establish close friendships within the church membership. It also has its roots in the fact that their husbands are gone from home much of the time. In addition, they, like their husbands, have a symbolic role which to a degree embodies the community conscience.

All of these elements combine to set apart and isolate them. Another factor involved in their loneliness is the extensiveness of the role that they occupy. They are at all times and in all places ministers* wives. However, in contrast to this loneliness, these wives express in numerous ways the great meaning and satisfaction they find in their role.

It is probably safe to say that no wife is without some conflict in the performance of her role. This is to be expected. Ruth Benedict has noted that as long as persons must play several roles either simultaneously or in sequence, they will, on occasion, have difficulty finding the right role at the right time. 2 * One area of conflict was noted in the wives* preference for the prestige and other concomitants of their role as 88 THE ROLE OF THE MINISTER^ WIFE ministers* wives, meanwhile preferring also the regular schedule of the “ nine to five “ man. It is evident that one of the most difficult problems that confronts them is family time. On the other hand, they referred to the fact that some of their deepest satisfactions are derived from working with their husbands, and working with people. Associated with this but stated less frequently are the satisfactions connected with their role as the wife of a minister.

Hence, there was conflict between the satisfactions of the role and the necessary sacrifices associated with its enactment.

Another area of conflict involved the ’discrepancy between the ascribed role in one field and the ascribed role in another. A case in point was that of the professional church worker who married a minister. One of her chief problems appeared to be a conflict between the ascribed role which she, as a church worker, had accepted and internalized, and the ascribed role of the minister’s wife.

While there is reason to believe that such conflicts may not occur too frequently, their intensity is multiplied, since they involve the total personality and demand a reorienting of one’s self -concept. The conflict of roles appeared to be intensified when the background and training of the wife more nearly paralleled that of her husband, as in the case of a religious worker’s marriage to a minister. The crux of the conflict seems to lie in what might be called a division of labor; that is, the line of demarcation between her role and her husband’s is overlapping and vague the greater the overlapping, the greater die possibilities for conflict.

Cultural anthropologists usually find that in primitive cultures, the roles of men and women are rather clearly defined. The man in one society may plant the yams, but ROLE ATTITUDES TOWARD HER HUSBAND?’S WORK 89 their cultivation is strictly assigned to the women’s role, Linton notes that when the sexes co-operate, as in the above example, the field of each is usually clearly defined. 25 Possibly the anthropologist’s observations about delimiting roles provides an insight into the minister’s wife’s frequent reference to tc staying in the background.”

It suggests that this may be her way of coping with the division of labor. The physician or lawyer has no problem with his wife encroaching upon his field; however, with the minister, the temptation and possibility for the wife to transgress his field is a present reality. The accumulated wisdom of the profession has undoubtedly indicated that less conflict is involved, and the machinery of the church operates more smoothly, when the roles are delimited by defining the role of his wife as a background one. The frequent references in the literature, interviews, and other contacts with ministers* wives that speak of working from behind the scenes probably reflect the wisdom of this approach.

Occasionally, a conflict emerges in the form of a rather thorough rejection of one’s role. The attempt to escape the performance of one’s role can be a frustrating and lonely experience, for, as Linton observes, little sympathy is evoked by the person seeking to reject his role. 26 The wife who rejects her role obligations simply because of a distaste for them has considerably more difficulty than one who does so to assume another role, such as that of a teacher. The focus in this chapter upon ministers’ wives and their husbands’ work has been an arbitrary division. They live and move in an atmosphere which at once involves their home, family, church, and community. Any attempt to focus on one of these alone is purely an arbitrary and 90 THE ROLE OF THE MINISTER’S WIFE sometimes difficult, if not impossible, task. Granting this, if one shifts the focus from the husbands’ work to the home, what is seen there? What is parsonage life like?

What is the nature of family relationships? Aid what are the wives* attitudes about this realm of their existence? The subsequent chapter will attempt to answer these and other questions.