ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of individual, household and farm structure characteristics and attitudes toward farming on farm women's satisfaction. It illustrates how the form crisis may affect socialization to the farming lifestyle through its effects on farm women's sense of the quality of life associated with farming as a vocation. Satisfaction with farming has been associated with commitment or attachment to farming. The causal model is developed to explain the way in which individual and farm characteristics, as well as farm task participation and farming optimism account for farm life satisfaction. While farm women place a high value on farming as a way of life, they are fairly dissatisfied with the opportunities that farming offers as a way to make a living. Economic and farm structural factors are traditionally used to account for differences in farmers' satisfaction or subjective well-being to the neglect of lifestyles, family and household variables.
