Ties Across Time: A Woman's Life in Social Work - Softcover

Davis, Merle Updike

9780887393662: Ties Across Time: A Woman's Life in Social Work

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887393667 ISBN 13: 9780887393662

Publisher: Creative Arts Book Co, 2001

This book is a woman's story of her life and practice as a social worker in the 20th century, the first century of social work in the United States. The social worker is portrayed as a person who has broad and diverse experience in work as in life, one who has a head as well as a heart. The compexity of the identity of the social worker is matched by that of the author's identity as a 20th century woman. A post modernist search for affiliation and connection as well as autonomy is an underlying theme.

The book is also a story of a professional woman's internal struggle to mesh career aspirations with marriage and family expectations imposed upon her by society and by her upbringing. It is a story sure to resonate with the current generation of professinal women who continue to struggle with the very same issues.

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About the Author:

About The Author:

Merle Updike Davis grew up during the Depression on a farm near Warrenton, Virginia. After graduating from Mary Washington College in 1944, at the end of World War II, she worked in child welfare in Fauquier County, in Richmond and in Arlington, Virginia. She attended George Warren Brown School of Social Work and received her Masters of Social Work degree from Columbia University in 1953. She moved to California in the '50s and worked as a psychiatric social worker at Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco and as psychiatric social work supervisor in Berkeley's Mental Health Services. She had a private practice in Berkeley and Albany, California until she retired in 1996.

From Booklist:

Davis retired after nearly 50 years in social work just as the nation's social welfare programs underwent tremendous reform, creating doubt about the security of the safety net for the disadvantaged. Her memoir recounts a personal and professional journey of idealism and involvement in the lives of others. Davis' longing for social interaction and connection began in a childhood spent on a small farm in rural Virginia, a town where she first learned the strict social and racial distinctions of the South. Coming of age during the Depression, Davis witnessed firsthand the needs of individuals and families, economic deprivation, emotional depression, and even suicide. During the postwar period, she brought great energy and enthusiasm to her career as women struggled to balance work and home life. Davis concedes that she was never a theoretician, but she recalls the formative years of social work and the development of the profession. She also recounts the changes in the nation's social policy as well as changes in the very image of social workers and their clients. Vanessa Bush
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