WWII and Italian Americans, Part 2

Until the outbreak of World War II Italian American women led sheltered lives. The old Mediterranean culture of southern Italy which was sustained by their parents dictated that daughters must be protected from the corruptions and temptations of the outside world. Fathers who winked at their sons' sexual exploits were the overbearing guardians of their daughters' virtue. The social conditions on the home front created by the War dislodged the prevailing customs and conventions of the Italian American community. Absent fathers and the compelling need for women to join the work force made the cloistering of young Italian American women in the home difficult if not impossible to maintain.

My mother was among the many women who left high school to go to work. Family exigencies made this a necessity as much as the patriotic call for able female workers to take over the jobs vacated by the men who went to war. Her mother had been paralyzed by a stroke and my mother's father took care of his wife himself, which of course resulted in a significant loss of income. Such were the expectations of the time -- a husband who would put the care of an ailing wife before his job was condemned, and the marriage vow "in sickness and in health" was taken to mean exactly what it said.

When my mother grew up in Hartford in the early forties, the insurance industry and manufacturing were the dominant forces in Connecticut's economy. Preferring office work to the assembly line at Pratt & Whitney across the Connecticut River in East Hartford, she took a clerical position at Aetna Insurance Company in Hartford where she remained, intermittently, for almost 30 years. Suddenly, at the tender age of 17, she was the breadwinner for a family with a bedridden mother and an aging father (he had been widowed twice by then) and two younger siblings. I can only marvel at the inner strength and emotional resources of my mother, and all women like her who had led sheltered lives and were abruptly thrust into positions of responsibility and forced to mature by the harsh realities of the work place after years of being coddled at home by doting parents. The self sacrifice of these women was remarkable. The self discipline demanded by their daily lives was truly extraordinary. Yet they went through this transition and undertook the task at hand as stoically as the young Italian American men who fought the battles of the War, the nurses who ministered to them, and the female service members who supported them.

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