116 Psychology in the Schools, January, 1976, Vol. 13, No . 1.

so that the critical threshold in interaction, impersonality and control will not be passed. He also proposes smaller units within larger schools so that impersonality will not run rampant.

Also proposed is the introduction of youth into the regular work organizations so as to provide advanced training. Coleman fully realizes the difficulty of accom- plishing this because companies are in the private sector subject to market compe- tition. Even with work organizations in the public sector such as schools, intro- duction of youth into meaningful activities will be frustrated by teachers’ unions and the various professional specialties who will see such a development as under- mining their rights, roles and functions.

Coleman proposes the establishment of “youth communities” run by young people and oriented toward community service activities. Freshmen or sophomores would be eligible and the stress would be on service first and school learning second. An obvious extension of this concept would be the manning of nursing homes by youth, as mentioned earlier. I n regard t o Coleman’s ideas on introducing youth into stuctured roles within today’s work settings, we must not lose sight of the bureaucratic and stifling routine of many jobs held by adults. Disillusionment with the work structure may increase unless the introduction to the world of work is carefully managed.

In summary we can say that this is a most provocative book. It paints an intriguing picture of how adolescent and youth could grow into a more responsible adulthood. There is much food for thought here. It leaves psychologists, whether they be diagnostician, child advocate, consultant, therapist or behavior modifier, far behind. The school psychologist whose main contribution is listing a number of cookbook recommendations in his report will be a t a loss to be of help here. Coleman is talking of individuals who can plan and carry out programs and who will work with adolescents and youth in implementing these proposals. It is hoped that we in the helping professions can meet this challenge.

G. R. G.

MERRIAM, E. (ed.) Growing U p Female in America: Ten Lives. New York: Dell, 1973, 384 pp., $1.50 (paper). Much has been written lately especially in the last decade, concerning woman’s

role in American society. Cries are heard daily for equal pay for women, day care for the children of working mothers, and a woman’s right to have an abortion if she so desires; but is this general struggle a t all new? And how has the nature of our American society, the great melting pot of many and diverse cultures, con- tributed to the traditional role in which women are cast?

I n Growing U p Female in America, the author presents excerpts from the lives of ten women, both famous and obscure, dating from Elizabeth Southgate in 1783 to Mountain Wolf Woman who died in 1960. Their stories are told candidly in their own letters, diaries, journals, and autobiographies, with the most refreshing and revealing tales coming from the amateur-the unpublished manuscript of an eighteen-year-old wife and mother crossing the prairies in a wagon, or the journal of a young woman living in a cave during the siege of Vicksburg-rather than from professionals. All of these women, however, have one thing in common: they were

Book Reviews 117

growing up in a society which relegated women to the back seat or kitchen; en- deavored to keep them in such an environment with its intellectual stagnation and lack of opportunity for self-expression; and then proceeded to stereotype women as being of secondary intellect and lacking the ambition and drive to make an original contribution to society. In her struggle for self-assertion, Elizabeth Ger- trude Stein in her college years writhes under the strict Jewish dogma enforced by an unyielding father. She says, “I could not tell him that I wanted the same thing for which he had come to America. I wanted to live and act according to the faith I had, just as he wished it for himself. I wanted to be free to live as I believed, in every way. I wanted, first, the right to find out what I believed, what my faith was.” (p. 243) Under much the same kind of restriction due to female role typing, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw discovered that she must struggle if she were to gain the pulpit and become a Methodist preacher. It was prejudice again, but of a slightly different nature, that Susie King Taylor had to fight as a very young girl just to learn to read and write. She was female, black, and living in Savannah, Georgia, during the Civil War.

Growing U p Female in America is an eye-opener to values and beliefs in- grained in American culture and instilled in us when very young. They are present in our everyday lives, yet so commonplace as to be often unnoticed by us. For example, even in this day and age, there are many young girls who go to college to catch a husband. To become a wife and mother is still the ultimate goal for many, and i t is indeed a job worthy of praise for those who do i t well and are suc- cessful and happy. But more and more women are speaking out about the disil- lusionment of marriage as a career, and as far back as the 1790s the voice of Eliza Southgate echoes, “A single life is considered too generally as a reproach ; but let me ask you, which is the most despicable-she who marries a man she scarcely thinks well of-to avoid the reputation of an old maid-or she, who with more delicacy, than marry one she could not highly esteem, preferred to live single all her life?” (p. 35-36) Values are changing, and for a woman to lead a single life is no longer generally considered deprecating or pitiable.

A propagandistic document of women’s trials and tribulations growing up in America this book is not. It is more of an attempt to fill a gap left in history. Women have not necessarily been misrepresented or misunderstood, but with the exception of radicals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton or “Mother” Mary Jones, they have not been heard. Growing U p Female in America is a record of daily events in the lives of a large range of women. Maria Mitchell, though a brilliant astronomer, feels that women have an innate aptitude for intricate work, and rationalizes her talent by equating it with women’s natural work of plying a needle and thread in a most anti-Feminist way. Ms. Merriam includes the thoughts of a young wife and mother in Boston; a black Confederate soldier’s wife in the South; an early union organizer; a Jewess struggling for a career in a Gentile world; a young girl growing up in the wilderness of Michigan; and a Winnebago Indian. All these things and much more have been ingredients in American culture, and in this spirit Ms. Merriam presents an interesting and many-faceted sample of American girl- hood and the stumbling blocks of a maturing female in this variegated culture of ours.

WENDY SMITH University of South Carolina