ABSTRACT
The new family policy affected women in many ways. A product of its times, the Old Age Insurance title of the Social Security Act incorporated the family ethic, regulated women's domestic and market labor, and encouraged the economic dependence of women on men. Demographic changes, increased financial insecurity, and the economic stress of caring for parents placed on the next generation all created political pressures for reforms on behalf of the aged. The 1939 amendments to the Social Security Act significantly reshaped the Old Age Insurance program. The 1939 amendments continued to provide retirement benefits to women workers but did not encourage or reward female employment any more than in the 1935 Act. More specifically, the rules and regulations of the 1939 amendments treated women differentially according to their marital and work statuses, rewarding women whose lives conformed to the terms of the family ethic and punishing those who did not, could not, or chose not to do so.
