Wife, Farmer, Mother, Traveler: Barbara Cochrane in the historical context of the ‘50s and ‘60s. by Kim Cochrane; Class: Women of the West Dr. Sandra Shackel; 6 December 2007
Kimberly Interviewed and wrote this for a class she took at Boise State University. This has been reprinted with a few changes for privacy and shared here with her permission. Kim was inspired by all of the traveling-so much so, that since graduating BSU in 2007, she has taught and lived in: Moscow Russia, South Korea (Busan and Ulsan), and in Sundsvall, Sweden. She has traveled to other European and Asian Countries as well. Debbie
Wife, Farmer, Mother, Traveler:
Barbara Cochrane in the historical context of the ‘50s and ‘60s.
By: Kim Cochrane Women of the West Dr. Sandra Shackel 6 December 2007
Because historians have a tendency to make conclusions concerning certain decades in the twentieth century, individual interviews and specific regional history bring out specifics that may be glossed over in the general historical picture. The 1950s provides a compelling example of how generalizations provide a blanket, which though useful, remain vague. Many articles from the 1990s recognize the complexity of the fifties but refer to the mythical “larger discourse” of the feminine mystique which directed women’s actions and made women feel as though they
1 should stay home and be good mothers, wives, and homemakers. While the 1950 sexpectations
of the feminine mystique hold historic viability, like the women’s movement in the 1960s, it targeted mainly white, middle class, suburban women. The personal interview of Barbara Cochrane brought to light the complexities of female identity in the fifties. While in some ways she may be said to conform to these ideals, Barbara did not feel that the issues addressed by the 1960s women’s movement pertained to her and neither did the expectations embodied in the feminine mystique. Though she majored in home economics, married young at twenty years old, and stayed home with the children, she saw herself as an equal to her husband, Frank. She never conformed to the feminine mystique because the ideal did not fit her perception of the world. While she had five children by 1963, she also held many responsibilities on the small farm she
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and Frank ran in Middleton. Born in1932 and raised on a farm near Springfield, Idaho, my
grandmother, Barbara Cochrane, then Barbara Line, has lead a life that is in some ways typical
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1 For example see Melba Cuddy-Keane, “Conflicting Feminisms and the Problem of Male Space: Joyce Cary and the Fifties,” Cultural Critique, no. 28 (Autumn, 1994), 104; Jessamyn Neuhaus, “The Way to a Man’s Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s,” Journal of Social History 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999), 529.
2 While not the topic of this paper, it is also significant to add that Barbara went to work for the United States Post Office in 1972, which allowed Frank to retire from teaching.
3 For a basic timeline of Barbara’s life including birth, marriage, and children s
ee the end of the paper.
but in many ways atypical of her origins and the expectations of the 1950s era.
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Barbara grew up near Aberdeen, Idaho on a farm and graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1950. At the age of six, while other children rode to school in cars, Barbara rode an old, retired ditch rider’s horse three miles from the farm to school in Springfield. The horse would not mind her and stopped, as it had done for years, at each farmer’s house along her way to school. “I was the only one that rode the horse.”4 The story she told resonated with the frustration she must have felt as a child with a horse set in his old ways. Fortunately, when winter came she rode to school in the family car, an old Chevy. Barbara’s experience as a child riding a horse which did not mind her, is only one of the ways in which her life story does not neatly conform to the realities of other women’s lives of her generation.
While this anecdote from her childhood does not fit the norm, like many women of her generation that attended college, she majored in home economics. Unlike the assumptions which have been pinned on women who attended college in the fifties, she does not see this major as debilitating or limiting. At times, scholars of women’s experiences of the 1950s have assumed that home economics limited women, but Patricia Thompson argues differently. “While stereotypical perceptions of home economics would dictate that students in home economics courses would be high on expressive and low on instrumental characteristics, this does not appear to be the case.”5 Thompson found that contrary to popular belief, home economics is a useful, interdisciplinary degree, and that those who have studied it are better able to manage a home, finances, and, in my grandmother’s case, children and a farm. Also, while the general perception of home economics assumes it consists of merely cooking and sewing, the University of Idaho required my grandmother to take chemistry, math, and other, practical harder sciences,
4 Barbara Cochrane and Frank Cochrane, interviewed by Kim Cochrane in Melba, Idaho, 3 November 2007.
5 Patricia Thompson, “Beyond Gender: Equity Issues for Home Economics Education,” Theory into Practice (Autumn 1986), 281.
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which is similar to the requirements of other majors. Scholar Patricia Thompson stated that during second wave feminism, “Home economics became a convenient scapegoat for the ills that had befallen women in their traditional roles.”6 Because of this, many women have rejected their reasons for choosing the field, but Barbara affirmed that she saw majoring in home economics as
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and community functions of the Presbyterian Church in Moscow. At one of these functions, she met Frank Cochrane, an agricultural education major, two years her senior. Due to similar hopes, dreams, and values, they decided to get married after Frank graduated in 1952 and before the military drafted him into the Korean War effort. Because the military had earlier granted Frank an educational deferment, the couple knew that he would be drafted soon after his graduation. Despite the fact, they made the decision to get married in June 1952. By August, Frank had begun his military training, and he landed in Korea in February 1953. In March, Barbara discovered she was pregnant with Diane, their first child. At this time, Barbara lived with her parents in Aberdeen. When asked how she felt about going through her first pregnancy without Frank by her side, Barbara stated, “You just dealt with it.”8 While this experience seems shocking to a contemporary audience, it seems to have occurred quite often to the generations of WWII and the Korean War. After the military granted Frank another educational deferment, for his master’s degree, Frank and Barbara began their almost six years of temporary residences in small towns throughout the Northwest.
6 Patricia Thompson, 276.
7 Cochrane, 3 November 2007. Also, it seems significant to note that the rejection of home economics and domestic crafts has almost come full circle in that women’s crafts are currently becoming more recognized and appreciated in the field of “fine arts” thanks in part to artists like Judy Chicago and Mariam Shapiro who challenged the overall art world rejection of what were referred to as “low arts.”
8 Cochrane, 3 November 2007.
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While my grandparents explained to me that they moved about every two years for practical occupational reasons,9 this movement showed their predisposition for adventure and change. They later explained that when they met at the Presbyterian Church in Moscow, they were attracted to each other, in part, because they both were interested in traveling to foreign countries. In 1959, they finally decided to settle down in one place because they had children in school. They chose Middleton, Idaho, where they took over the Cochrane family farm. Frank and Barbara made the decision to run the farm for ten years to see what they could accomplish, if they enjoyed it, and if the business was profitable. Frank taught school in Boise, and Barbara took care of the children and five initial pigs. The couple made their own feed and monitored the pigs to make sure they were healthy. My grandmother served as doctor, midwife, and took the pigs to market to be sold. While pregnant, Barbara continued her work on the farm. She observed that my father, their fourth child, with whom she was pregnant in 1960, was “probably the youngest ‘bailer’ in the family, as I helped [Frank] bail hay early that summer, before [Milt was] born! I drove tractor, and I recall the coveralls just barely zipping up the front!”10 While Barbara positively identified as a farmer in the 1960s because she played a major role in the viability of
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the farm, not all women have such a positive identification with the land and their identity. difference between the women who negatively identified with the land and those like Barbara who positively identified as a farmer seems to be their relationship with their husband or other workers on the farm. Barbara felt she was on a fairly equal plane with her husband. She
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9 My grandfather was a high school teacher, and he did not want to get caught up in local politics. It also seems quite possible that they moved because they did not want to be stuck in one place.
10 Barbara Cochrane, personal electronic mail to Cochrane family, 22 July 2007.11 Nancy Grey Osterud, “Land, Identity, and Agency in the Oral Autobiographies of Farm Women,” chapter in Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures edited by Wava G. Haney and Jane B. Knowles (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988), 74.
performed essential work for the success of the farm, and the couple recognized that this in no way undermined Frank’s masculinity.
Because of her world view as an equal to Frank, though Barbara was aware of the women’s movement in the 1960s because it was on the television and in the news, it did not apply to her situation. My grandparents talked about the women’s movement, but they came to the conclusion, as many during the 1960s, that it did not apply. In fact, Barbara said that they considered the women’s movement kind of like the hippy movement “which probably sounds bad”12 but her perspective is one of a rural generation. By 1960 she was thirty, had her fourth child, Milton, and was focused on taking care of the farm and her family. When Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique was published in 1963 she was pregnant with her fifth and last child. Frank was working at the school in Boise, and she did not feel the same pressures of the suburban housewife because she was not one. Barbara’s experience seems typical of farm wives. While Friedan asked “what ifs” because she was not happy with her life choices, my grandmother recognized her own agency and claimed the choices she made.
Not to invalidate Friedan’s perspective, but as her work has been critiqued by scholars of multi-cultural feminism, her work also does not seem to apply to my grandmother, who at that time was a farmer. She took charge of the farm and my grandfather took an active role in raising their five children. Their situation varied from that described by Friedan and many suburban wives. My grandmother emphasized that the other farm women she knew through school and church all saw themselves as equals, and they saw themselves acknowledged as equals. In my grandmother’s case, because Frank taught school during the day, she was in charge of “the most important part”13 she would take the pigs into town to be sold. Recent scholarship has shown that
12 Barbara Cochrane, telephone interview by Kim Cochrane, 4 December 2007. 13 Cochrane, 4 December 2007
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the perspective of Betty Friedan did not always apply. “Many farm women resisted the full-time homemaker status. They saw themselves in partnership with their husbands.”14 While historian Sandra Shackel discusses how women mostly resisted the full-time homemaker status by procuring outside work away from the farm, this resistance also applies to Barbara who accepted her role as a homemaker and also identified as a farmer. She did not allow that status to define or limit her.
The disparity between the pressures that suburban and urban women felt compared to the pressures and expectations that women farmers felt in the 1950s and 1960s is partly explained by historian Stephanie Carpenter. She argues that women field workers and farmers continued to work in the fields during the postwar period when many women were expected to leave their
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create a compelling argument by emphasizing the essential role that women, especially wives played in the success of family farms. “Research on women in agriculture often highlights the important role farmwives play in the survival and economic well-being of farm enterprises by helping a farmer husband on the farm.”16 Barbara knew that without her, the farm could not
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14 Sandra Shackel, “Ranch and Farm Women in the Contemporary American West,” chapter in Western Women’s Lives: Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century edited by Sandra Shackel (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 189.
15 Stephanie Carpenter, “ ‘Women Who Work in the Field’: The Changing Role of Farm and Nonfarm Women on the Farm,” Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (Spring 2000), 467.
16 Rachel A. Rosenfeld, and Leann M. Tigges, “Marital Status and Independent Farming: The Importance of Family Labor Flexibility to Farm Outcomes,” chapter in Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures edited by Wava G. Haney and Jane B. Knowles (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988), 171.
17 Cochrane, 3 November 2007.
The difference between farm women and suburban and urban women can be explained in various ways, say scholars Rachel Rosenfeld and Leann Tigges
function properly, and Frank validated her role rather than diminishing it.
After seven years farming in Middleton and teaching in Boise, my grandfather came across a publication advertising Teaching in East Africa. A two year program offered by the
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United States Agency on International Development (USAID) and Columbia University in which teachers were invited to apply to train teachers in Kenya, Uganda, or Tanzania. The program encouraged families to apply, as they would travel and live in East Africa together. This opportunity came when my grandparents were reaching middle age and contemplating spending the rest of their lives running a farm and teaching. The prospect of change and foreign travel was exciting to the couple, so my grandfather applied. Because USAID supported the entire family living in East Africa for two years, when they accepted Frank’s initial application, Columbia University invited both my grandparents to Seattle, Washington for an interview.
When they prepared to fly to Seattle, Frank told my grandmother that she better have some opinions about politics and the world because she would be interviewed as well. The University interviewed Barbara about how she would school her children and how she would survive and help her family to survive in East Africa. Barbara’s experience on the farm in childhood as well as mid-life aided her responses because her life experience forced her to grapple with many of these questions already, so she also thought they were odd questions. One of the questions the committee posed to Barbara was the question of what she would feed her family for breakfast. Perplexed by such a common sense issue, Barbara told them that she would
This response came out of years of making due with what the family had or what could be bought and prepared without much monetary expense. It also came from working and living on a farm which provided sustenance as well as income. When Frank worked to finish his master’s degree at the University of Idaho, the family lived basically on cottage cheese because it was affordable and ready at hand from the school farm. This philosophy carried over well into the interview with USAID and Columbia University and my grandparents were accepted to the program. The
18 Cochrane, 3 November 2007.
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couple made the decision to accept the offer together. The prospect of foreign travel always had excited them, and they had discussed the issue many times before. So when the opportunity
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the last few decades, they have traveled the globe on archeological excursions and Elder Hostel tours. While many of my grandmother’s experiences overlap with other women of the Northwest, marrying young and having five children, her foreign travel stories set her apart from others who grew up outside small towns like Springfield, Idaho. Because of her fulfilling life experience she does not regret leaving her home economics degree unfinished, and she does not feel short-changed by life. She states that the women’s movement of the 1960s did not effect her because she already lived an experience of equality and balance with Frank. While much of her work involved non-wage earning chores, in 1972 she began working for wages, so Frank could retire from teaching. This move and the move to travel signifies that the world view of my grandparents varies from many of their generation who worked past retirement. It also differentiates them from those couples who felt pressured by the feminine mystique and the expectation that men remain the sole breadwinner. Overall, the “larger discourse” presented as a general, a historical blanket for women of the 1950s does not fit snuggly around Barbara Cochrane’s story.
19 Because of the mix up around telegrams and wiring messages, Frank and Barbara had barely a month to get prepared to leave the county with the USAID program. In the end they were one of sixty families to be trained in New York City by the Teacher’s College of Columbia University and sent over one of three countries in East Africa: Kenya, Uganda, or Tanzania. They continuously remark that the two year experience in Kenya was less of a culture shock than the six week training in New York City. Their years on farms and in rural areas as well as their willingness to make due prepared them for the years they spent in Kenya.
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Barbara Cochrane
Born: March 6, 1932 in Blackfoot, Idaho (Oldest of four children) Graduated from Aberdeen High School 1950
Attended University of Idaho 1950-1952
Spouse:
Married Frank Cochrane 1952 in Aberdeen, Idaho
Children:
Diane Cochrane Getrum, Vicki Cochrane Steigner, Amy Cochrane Sweeney, Milton Cochrane,
Kiva Cochrane Purkett
Bibliography
Carpenter, Stephanie. “ ‘Women Who Work in the Field’: The Changing Role of Farm and Nonfarm Women on the Farm.” Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 465-474.
Cochrane, Barbara. Personal electronic mail with Cochrane family. 22 July 2007.
---. Personal interview via telephone with Kim Cochrane. 4 December 2007.
Cochrane, Barbara, and Frank Cochrane. Interviewed by Kim Cochrane. In Melba, Idaho. 3 November 2007.
Cuddy-Keane, Melba. “Conflicting Feminisms and the Problem of Male Space: Joyce Cary and the Fifties.” Cultural Critique, no. 28 (Autumn, 1994): 103-128.
Neuhaus, Jessamyn. “The Way to a Man’s Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s.” Journal of Social History 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 529-555.
Osterud, Nancy Grey. “Land, Identity, and Agency in the Oral Autobiographies of Farm Women.” In Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures.” Edited by Wava G. Haney and Jane B. Knowles. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988.
Rosenfeld, Rachel, and Leanne M. Tigges. “Marital Status and Independent Farming: The Importance of Family Labor Flexibility to Farm Outcomes.” In Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures. Edited by Wava G. Haney and Jane B. Knowles. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988.
Shackel, Sandra. “Ranch and Farm Women in the Contemporary American West.” In Western Women’s Lives: Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Sandra Shackel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
Thompson, Patricia. “Beyond Gender: Equity Issues for Home Economics Education.” Theory into Practice (Autumn 1986): 276-283.
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