The Changing Challenges in the Lives of Three Generations of Professional Women

The core of this paper will be a sketch of a remarkable pioneering professional woman, my mother, Karen Horney. Her life stands out in bold relief. Little seems accidental. Already in her adolescent diary she comments: “You see, dear diary, Fate will have an easy time with me, I prescribe everything for him” (1980, p. 19). She did march to her own drummer. There is little of this loud drumbeat in my own life course or in that of my daughters. The strong lines of my mother's life, however, facilitate reflections on changing concerns in the lives of the next two generations, concerns that reflect the changing cultural fabric as well as our individual uniqueness.

Karen Horney was born in 1885 in Hamburg, Germany, into a typical middle-class home of the time, a home steeped in the conventional prejudices of class, religion, race, and the place of women in society. Her father, of Norwegian descent, was a sea captain of high rank for the Hamburg-America Line. He was a feared, quarrelsome despot whose long absences were welcomed as an interlude of peace, for his presence created unbearable tension. Karen's mother, 17 years younger than her husband and of striking appearance, was the daughter of a famous engineer-architect. She struggled to keep the home together. She and her children, Karen and a son four years older than Karen, supported each other in the recurrent crises.

Karen's escape and happiness was school. She was a passionate learner with an inquisitive mind, and had crushes on her teachers. The first gymnasium (high school) for girls opened in 1900, just in time for her to make immediate plans not only to enter and graduate from the gymnasium but also to devise a road map whereby she could become a doctor by first becoming a teacher. Please note that universities were only on the threshold of debating the question of admission of women into medical school;