I became aware of the diversity of women's attitudes toward the farm in the first
week of my fieldwork in Dodge County. As I traveled with three student assistants
to become more familiar with the county roads and crops, we paused by a field
with newly emerging green leaves, unsure whether we were facing a peanut or
soybean field. Fortuitously, a young farm woman drove up to the field in a pickup
truck. She came to pick up her preschool son who had been riding with his father
in the tractor while she went to a funeral. When asked to identify the crop, she
protested: "Don't ask me -- I just do the cooking!" Her comment reflected both
her distance from farm operations and her identity as a homemaker, not a farmer.
The next day, I met a woman on a part-time farm who talked about "our farm"
and "my hogs." She was clearly the primary animal caretaker, and her identifi-
cation with the operation conformed more closely to my stereotype of the active
farm woman.

Dodge County farm women thus show a range of involvement with and commit-
ment to the farm, and some simply chose to marry a man who happened to farm.
Some talk passionately of their love for farming, but others would sooner leave it.
The hostility that some women express toward farming was one of the surprises of
the study. Popular accounts of farm stress and movies of the crisis portray couples
united in their goals and commitment to save the farm, but in roughly a third of the
families interviewed, women's negativity toward the farm created a tension that
was palpable.

This chapter will explore the changes over the last three generations in women's
conceptions of marital roles and their sense of connection to farming as a way of

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