JESSIE
TAFT: PYSCHOLOGIST, SOCIOLOGIST, SOCIAL WORK EDUCATOR 1882-1960
by Mary Jo Deegan
Jessie
Taft was a brilliant symbolic interactionist who studied
women, their view of the world, and the application
of their values in various situations. A feminist,
a scholar with limited academic ties to sociology,
and a noted social worker, Taft worked in a professional
world distinct from that of mainstream, academic men
in sociology. Her incisive work has been ignored by
sociologists.
Taft was born on June 24, 1882, when women were agitating
for the right to higher education. Her parents, Amanda
May Farwell and Charles Chester Taft moved from Vermont
to rural lowa where she was born and raised. Her father
ran a prosperous wholesale business selling fruit,
making this "old" American family, financially
comfortable, but not affluent. Jessie was the eldest
of three daughters, and her mother was a traditional
homemaker who suffered from progressive deafness.
This disability led to increasing isolation from her
children. Virginia Robinson, Taft's biographer, euphemistically
explained this distance between mother and daughter:
"Her mother was too competent a cook herself
to want the children bothering her in the kitchen."
Robinson reveals little conflict or passion between
Taft and her parents, or between Taft and Robinson,
although these women lived together for more than
forty years. Such a lifelong friendship, including
adoption of two children—Everett and Martha Taft—must
have generated deep ties. Passionate, work related,
long-term relationships were characteristic of early
women professionals, particularly sociologists. The
few glimpses that Taft reveals about herself in her
published writings, especially in her biography of
Otto Rank, reveal her intensity, generosity, and involvement
with others.
Jessie
Taft, left, and Virginia Robinson, pictured
circa 1910, the approximate time of their first
acquaintance.
In addition to her father, Taft was profoundly affected
by two men, George H. Mead and Otto Rank. (1982),
But as great as the imprint left by men, Taft's life
was surrounded by women: their ideas, issues, friendships,
life-styles, and institutions. Her life with Robinson,
her friendship with Ethel Sturgess Dummer, her feminist
epistemology, and her female clients and colleagues
are all indicators of her woman-centered life.
Characteristically, Robinson summarizes Taft's adolescence
in a few words: "Loving food, she took on weight
too fast and was painfully sensitive to being overweight
and outsize. In retrospect, adolescence flattened
out into a long desert waste marked by evenings of
boredom spent on the porch in the intense heat of
an Iowa summer."
During Taft's late adolescence her scholarly interests
were fostered by a female physician, who influenced
her undergraduate training at Drake University in
Des Moines, Iowa, where she earned a bachelor's degree
in 1904. Jessie's father experienced the ambivalent
feelings toward "educated women" characteristic
of his era, but he nonetheless actively supported
her choices. With this mixed background of traditional
Midwestern roots and emancipatory support, Taft pursued
additional academic training and a professional career.
Taft,
after receiving her Ph. D. from the University
of Chicago in June, 1913
It
is possible that this professional work helped to
heal some private conflicts revealed as anonymous
"case studies" in her writings. For example,
because we know that Taft was both overweight and
befriended by a female physician, Taft's description
of "a neurotic girl" with these characteristics
may have been autobiographical. The "case study"
analyzes the pain suffered by the child who "was
clumsy, pigeon-toed, and inclined to be afraid to
use her body. Her parents laughed at her attempts
to walk and run and at her frequent falls. They exaggerated
her timidity and encouraged her not to try any unusual
feats.” She was called "Fatty" by other
children, and responded by overdeveloping her intellectual
interests. Taft concludes "this case" by
noting that "middle age finds this girl just
beginning, through analysis of her own behavior, to
get a legitimate self-confidence intellectually and
socially and the free use of her own body, which wasn't
particularly inferior after all." Clearly this
case history echoes the life of Taft herself.
A more documented peek into her life is provided in
another article, published in 1926, when she was thirty-eight
years old. Here she discussed the joy of being a foster
parent, recovering her emotional ties to children.
I
can remember a world thirty years ago when I, a child
in that world, found nothing attractive in the traditional
picture of a woman's part in life. There was no thrill,
no challenge, no promise of recognition and reward. The
thought of having children, or bringing them up, or creating
a family, far from presenting an alluring possibility
of adventure and achievement, a field in which expert
skill and knowledge might find expression, loomed before
me as a fate to be avoided if possible, the crushing end
of all individual development.
Summer
in New Hampshire, 1923: Everett and Martha Taft,
Jessie Taft, and Virginia Robinson
Healing
the divisions between her female values and experiences
and her male intellectual interests was a lifetime
process. Clearly these conflicts arose from her biographical
situation as a child in Iowa.
Whatever the stress of these early years, by 1905
Taft had moved to Chicago and earned a bachelor of
philosophy degree from the University of Chicago.
Although Taft was enrolled as an undergraduate, all
her coursework was done at the graduate level At this
time the university was an intellectual center for
the Midwest. Despite this vibrant life, Taft's separation
from her family and responsibilities evoked a sense
of guilt, and she soon returned to Des Moines. For
the next four years Taft taught Latin and algebra
at West High School in Des Moines. This work and her
family situation were too limiting, however, and Taft
was drawn once more to fulfilling her broader social
claims. Thus, in the summer of 1908, she went back
to the University of Chicago.
This
summer became a turning point in her life. She studied
with W. I. Thomas, who was developing a number of
radical ideas on women's dress, standards of behavior,
right to vote, and occupations She also met Virginia
Robinson: together they explored ideas, friendship,
and professional commitments. Both women returned
to their respective teaching positions at the end
of the summer, but longed to do more invigorating
and substantial work. When the University of Chicago
offered Taft a fellowship in 1909, she eagerly accepted
it.
Taft's
home in Flourtown, Pennsylvania
The
years from 1909 to 1913 are crucial for understanding
Taft's career in sociology. During this time she selected
George H. Mead, one of the founders of symbolic interactionism,
as her doctoral chair. She also found her first professional
employment, established her deep professional and
personal identification with never-married female
sociologists, and entered the women's network in sociology
that was located largely outside the academy. Taft
entered the world of professional female social scientists
through her University of Chicago connections, especially
through Marion Talbot. The latter helped to place
Katherine Bement Davis in a position at the Bedford
Hills Reformatory for Women in New York. Davis, in
turn, hired Taft and Robinson to conduct interviews
on the relation between crime and "feeble-mindedness."
Thus, in 1912, the young scholars began their work
with Davis that led them away from academic sociology
and ultimately to "social work."
Jessie
Taft, June 1959
Although
Taft and Robinson criticized the statistical process
they used and their categorizing of people, they had
found an exciting and promising career. Taft returned
to Chicago and, in 1913, completed her doctorate
on
"The
Woman
Movement from the Standpoint of Social Consciousness."
She wanted to become a professor, but the academic
barriers to women were nearly insurmountable. In addition,
she was partially supported by an applied sociology
network with goals and training similar to hers, but
located primarily in the Midwest. Her first jobs,
however, were located in an Eastern network of female
social workers with different training, ideals, goals,
and practices.
Taft's
early professional years were marked by discouragement
and interruption. Her first position, after her magna
cum laude graduation from the University of Chicago,
was as assistant superintendent of the New York State
Reformatory for Women. ''[But] nothing in her education
or experience had given her any preparation for institutional
work nor for understanding the court-committed inmates
of a reformatory, and no process of instruction to
the requirements of the job could be provided.”
When Davis left her position as superintendent in
1915, Taft lost a vital tie to the women's applied
sociology network.
Jessie
Taft and Virginia Robinson in Vermont in the summer
of 1959
Taft's
view of the reformatory's work and that of the new
superintendent conflicted. Taft soon left Bedford
Hills without a recommendation. When Taft sought help
from Mary Richmond, an eminent Eastern social worker,
Taft's ''qualm apparently did not impress Miss Richmond
who told her she would need training in a good casework
agency under a competent supervisor.'' Unable to find
work, this talented philosopher considered returning
to her home or ''living off her father."
Fortunately
the director of the Mental Hygiene Committee of the
State Charities Aid Association of New York resigned,
and Taft filled the position. She again resigned two
years later when a change in leadership occurred.
She wrote Robinson of her struggles with despair:
"I feel so cowardly and good for nothing. But
I brace up soon. It isn't like this all the time.”
By 1918 she had been searching for meaningful employment
for fourteen years.
Taft's
continuing commitments to sociology can be seen in
her work at the American Sociological Society meetings
in 1921 and 1925. Both the sessions in which she presented
her work were organized by Dummer, showing again the
importance of the female network in Taft's sociological
career. Women's extreme difficulty in finding academic
employment in sociology in this era is reflected in
Taft's life. Her marginal faculty appointments began
in 1919 when she was hired as a part-time psychology
instructor in extension courses at the University
of Pennsylvania. She continued in this peripheral
position for ten years. Taft literally had to "beg"
for a class of regular students, and in 1929 she was
finally allowed to teach advanced personality courses
to vocational students.
Despite
her erratic employment in a field for which she was
untrained, Taft soon became a leader in social work,
first in Philadelphia and then nationally. In many
ways—too numerous and complex to explore here—Taft
shifted her theory, practice, and network after her
charismatic encounter with Otto Rank in 1926. Taft
became the director of the School of Social Work at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1934, and she filled
this position until her retirement in 1950. She tried
to write her autobiography in the early 1950s, but
she became too frustrated to complete it. She switched
to writing the biography of Rank. This work was both
taxing and rewarding: documenting Rank's leadership
in social work and his central role in Taft's life
after 1926. Taft died rather suddenly in 1961, eleven
years after her retirement. Robinson characterized
this period as generally happy and fulfilling.
Abridged from Women in Sociology (Greenwood Press,
New York, 1991). Photos courtesy of the University
of Pennsylvania Press.
