Bernard, Jessie

Jessie Bernard (1903–96) was an American sociologist whose pioneering work inspired the feminist movement of the mid-1960s and challenged the false aura of romanticism in which she considered motherhood to be enshrined, pointing out what she called its “hidden underside.” In her seminal study The Future of Motherhood (1975), Bernard encouraged women “to fight those aspects of our society that make childbearing and child rearing stressful rather than fulfilling experiences.”

Bernard was born Jessie Shirley Ravitch on June 8, 1903, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the third of four children of Jewish Romanian immigrants David and Bessie Kanter Ravitch. She attended the University of Minnesota, where she earned a B.A. in Sociology in 1923 and an M.A. the following year with a thesis on Changes of Attitudes of Jews in the First and Second Generation. While at the University of Minnesota, Bernard also worked as a research assistant for sociologist and future American Sociological Association President Luther Lee Bernard, known as LLB, who became her husband in 1925. Several factors caused tensions in the marriage from the start: LLB was 21 years older than Bernard, and he was not Jewish, which caused Jessie's family to reject her. The marriage also hindered Bernard to develop her own career as she followed her husband to his different teaching positions. The couple finally settled down at Washington University in St. Louis in 1929. Jessie started to work on a Ph.D. there, which she obtained in 1935. In the late 1930s, she briefly separated from her husband and worked as a social science analyst for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. In 1940, however, Bernard gave up this job to start her teaching career at Lindenwood College for Women, St. Charles, MO, and eventually returned to her husband. In 1947, both LLB and Jessie were appointed at Pennsylvania State University. The couple had three children and remained together until LLB's death in 1951, when their third child was only six months old. Bernard retired from teaching in 1964, but that was hardly the end of her career. Of the 14 books that she authored, 10 were written after her retirement, and these are generally considered her most influential and classic works.