Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section093/Valentine Hunter

Biography

Early Life

Valentine Hunter was born on February 14th, in Raleigh, North Carolina. From a young age, her family didn’t have much. She also was not motivated in school and dropped out before the end of sixth grade. This was not uncommon at the time, as many kids dropped out to help their families in factories and sometimes on farms. Valentine started working in the knitting mill, making $5 to $6 a week.

Later Life

Valentine married Delbert in July of 1922, and they had 6 children together. About half of their children had health issues, but they didn’t have the money to pay for doctors, so they had to try and fight through it. Delbert did what he could to support his family. However, he was never able to stick with a job long enough. He worked for a few different contractors, did carpentering, and finally joined the WPA under the New Deal plan. He never made more than $60 a month and struggled to provide food for his family. Valentine used a lot of money from her mother, who paid for food, clothes, rent, and utilities.

Career

Valentine was a housewife, but not a very good one. She refused to cook, keep up with the house, or take care of her children. Most days she allowed her children to run around the neighborhood, go smoke, and choose whether they went to school or not. Part of this was because she was having children every 1-2 years. Valentine was struggling; she was tired and fighting depression. Instead of taking care of the children herself, she allowed her mother to do all the work.

Family Struggles

Valentine and Delbert had issues with one another, but divorce was never something that was in question. She was loyal to him, and Delbert was not the type of person that would leave his wife for someone else. It was a stressful time to be living in. All Delbert wanted was to get a house of their own, be able to pay for food, and stop feeling ashamed of his family. But Valentine was content with the life they had and would much rather continue to live off her mother’s money. This caused a lot of turmoil between the two of them, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it. No date of death is recorded for Valentine.

Social Issue

Stigma of Housewives

Young Housewife, oil painting on canvas by Alexey Tyranov, currently housed at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia (1840s)

Women were often expected to stay at home, and the ones that wanted to work were stigmatized. They did a lot around the house including cleaning, cooking, and raising their children. Yet very little value was given to these working women. What they did was very important and necessary for their families, but they were increasingly seen as old-fashioned and an economic burden to society. Most women were unable to raise their families and keep a career, causing them to be doubly punished. It’s hard to find a balance between not romanticizing and not stigmatizing housewives. Work is work, being a housewife should be viewed as a job they do to support their family.

Housing Crisis

Bonus Army marchers confront the police.

The housing crisis during the Great Depression heightened very quickly. With so many people losing their jobs, many ended up being evicted from their homes. Thousands throughout the country, each testifying to the housing crisis that accompanied the employment crisis of the early 1930s. Many people ended up on the streets and would stay anywhere they could find. Some even squeezed in with relatives, and others squatted, or they would take shelter in vacant buildings. Shack towns and homeless encampments were built and named “Hooverville”.

Divorce/Marriage

With the economy struggling, the last thing people wanted to think about was going through with a divorce or getting married. Evidence shows that marriage propensities and GDP are positively correlated throughout time and at different levels of geographic aggregation. This suggests that the two factors are correlated; when the labor market is down, so are marriage rates. It was economically smarter to stay with your partner during this time due to financial issues. The few marriages that did form during these tough times were more likely to survive compared to ones when the economy was doing good. At the end of the day, the Great Depression didn’t have a huge impact on marriage rates, however, it did affect the quality of couples. While marriage rates did fall at the onset of the Depression they recovered quickly when the economy rebounded.

Child Labor

"Addie Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pormal Cotton Mill. Vt." by Lewis Hine, 1912.

Another concerning social issue was child labor and education. Factors predicting an increase in child labor also predicted reduced school attendance and an increased chance of grade repetition. The transition from primary to secondary school was a major breaking point for many children. which affected both education and health. Factors predicting an increase in child labor also predict reduced school attendance and an increased chance of grade repetition. Household factors such as parental education, fathers’ occupation, and wealth were reasons for dropping out of school and going to work. Besides missing out on the opportunity for an education, children were also put in unsafe working conditions, overworked, and underpaid. In this way, child labor had the opposite effect of what it was supposed to. Early exposure to child labor significantly reduces earnings. So not only is child labor not okay but there is no evidence to support it helps earn more money. Child labor also was found to be associated with numerous adverse health outcomes including malnutrition, poor growth, higher incidence of infectious and system-specific diseases, behavioral and emotional disorders, and decreased coping efficacy.

References

Beegle, Kathleen, Rajeev Dahejia, and Roberta Gatti. “Why Should We Care about Child Labor? - JSTOR.” Accessed October 10, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20648923.

Bennhold, Katrin. “The Stigma of Being a Housewife.” The New York Times. The New York Times, July 20, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/world/europe/21iht-LETTER.html.

Gregory, James. “Hoovervilles and homelessness.” Accessed October 10, 2022. https://depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville.shtml.

Hill, Matthew. “Love in the Time of the Depression: The Effect of Economic Conditions on Marriage in the Great Depression.” UNC Chapel Hill Libraries. Accessed October 10, 2022. https://www-cambridge-org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/love-in-the-time-of-the-depression-the-effect-of-economic-conditions-on-marriage-in-the-great-depression/1914DB8F7E71B9FD0C35210B5AB8EC8B.

Huisman, Janine. “Keeping Children in School: Effects of Household and Context.” Accessed October 10, 2022. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244015609666.

Ibrahim, Abdalla, Salma M Abdalla, Mohammed Jafer, Jihad Abdelgadir, and Nanne de Vries. “Child Labor and Health: A Systematic Literature Review of the Impacts of Child Labor on Child's Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.” Journal of public health (Oxford, England). Oxford University Press, March 1, 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6459361/#:~:text=Child%20labor%20was%20found%20to,disorders%2C%20and%20decreased%20coping%20efficacy.

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