Critical Thinking 22-3!

How was what happened to men during the Great Depression different from what happened to women? Children?

The Great Depression yielded a different effect on men then on women and on children. Though in the times of the Great Depression, many families tried to stay together and become united during the hard times, they still felt a huge amount of pressure and tension from the economic hardships and families would begin to come undone under the strain. On one hand there was the men who felt a great amount of depression while trying to cope with unemployment while they were so used to being the ones to go out and bring home the money and the food and support there families. Men would wander the streets searching for work, but this proved a difficult feat and many gave up altogether and just left there families. These men would not really go on to find much better wandering the streets and showing up at homeless shelters. Then there was the women who to were forced to work extremely hard. The focused on trying to keep there families from falling apart and help them survive. There was also the working women who were still trying to support with jobs. These women though became the targets of much resentment from people who believed that women did not have the right to work in a time were it was so crucial for men to find work and that the women were stealing the jobs that should have been given to the man. A major difference between the hardships of men and women in this time period was that mens struggles were much more publicly known the the ones women were having. People assumed that because they saw more men out on the streets that must mean that more men were suffering then women but that was not true, women were suffering and starving to death but were just more ashamed to show it so they ended up freezing and starving to death in there own homes were they received less public recognition. Children were also suffering with a lack of money and health care they were facing serious health problems. Many boys left home in search of work. Even though they were in some danger and had no idea what to expect they were differnt then men in away because they were sometimes able to see the more adventurous side of the whole thing explaining that, "There was no feeling in the world like sitting in a side-door Pullman ans watching the world go by..."( George Phillips P.682)