Achieving Their Goals and Adopting New Norms: Polish Immigrant Women and American Institutions in Early Twentieth-Century and Interwar Chicago

Abstract

This paper examines paradoxes and ambiguities in the interactions of Polish immigrant women with American institutions in early twentieth-century and interwar Chicago. I argue that these interactions were far more multi-faceted than described by William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Although American institutions did intervene within the Polish immigrant family, proposing “American” solutions to issues pervading immigrant family life, Polish women often requested these interventions in order to achieve individual goals or solutions they deemed best for their families and marriages. However, as this paper examines, assistance from American institutions did at times require adherence to disciplining and normative narratives and behaviors and adoption of certain new family, gender, and sexuality norms. The case study in this paper is the Northwestern University Settlement, established within the largest Polish community in Chicago in 1891, which cooperated extensively with the city's municipal courts, police, and various voluntary associations. This paper analyzes three types of case histories—those of mistreated wives, “wayward” daughters, and out-of-wedlock mothers—with a particular focus on gendered and family-related norms as well as the relations between Polonia mothers and daughters as showcased in their interactions with American private and public institutions.