Midwestern Farm Widows: Adaptation Following Spousal Loss

Rural Mental Health and Depression Treatment in the United States

Health disparities are more likely to occur when women are faced with difficulty finding primary and specialty care providers, including those with training in mental health. This is the case in many rural and frontier areas in the United States, which could result in greater travel distances for individuals requiring mental health treatment (Brossart et al., 2013). Rural women are especially vulnerable to depression due to socioeconomic factors such as poverty (Haunstein & Peddada, 2007), unemployment, geographic isolation, limited educational and career opportunities, and decreased access to mental health care (National Rural Health Association [NRHA], 2013). Additionally, sociocultural factors that influence seeking treatment for depression include stigma about depression (Groh, 2013), lack of time, a lack of anonymity in small communities, and high value placed by others on self-reliance for emotional support (Berkowitz & Hedlund, 1979). Haunstein and Peddada (2007) found that many of the rural women who screened positive for depression were visiting a primary care provider for somatic symptoms, such as “headaches, backaches, muscle pain, sleep problems, feeling tired, and abdominal pain” (Van Hook, 1996). As a paralytic crisis was found to be the motivating factor for seeking mental health treatment in a study of rural Appalachian women (Brown, Andrews, & Niemczura, 2000), understanding psychological and emotional recovery after a challenging life event, such as spousal loss, is essential.

Spousal Loss and Bereavement

Bereavement after spousal loss is a process through which widows face the challenge of reconstructing their identities and striving for independence (Haase & Johnston, 2012; Holm & Severinsson, 2012). Spousal loss requires widows to manage dramatic changes in the behavioral, social, and economic paradigms while simultaneously enduring the emotional loss—making spousal loss one of the most potent stressors among challenging life events (Holm & Severinsson, 2012; Stroebe, Abakoumkin, & Stroebe, 2010). Through the process of adaptation and normalization, many challenges including loneliness, health concerns, and changed relationships with family and social networks arise. The process of spousal bereavement includes several stages characterized by overwhelming need for courage and strength to overcome an unbearable emotional state and universally requires significant time and effort (Naef, Ward, Mahrer-Imhof, & Grande, 2013). Several studies discussed health changes, specifically exacerbations of existing chronic conditions, development of new conditions, or other health service use during the bereavement process (DiGiacomo, Lewis, Nolan, Phillips, & Davidson, 2013; Galatzer-Levy & Bonanno, 2012; Naef et al., 2013), some of which may be a result of stress and somatic complaints related to depression.

Rural and Farm Widows

For the rural widow, the issues of bereavement are compounded by loneliness related to emotional and geographic isolation in many cases (Scheerer & Brandt, 2001). For farm widows, becoming the principal operator and primary decision-maker for a farm business differentiates their condition from that of other rural women. The necessity of making economic decisions occurs almost immediately after spousal loss in addition to continuing the daily operations of the farm, the burden of which increased substantially after spousal loss or during an illness preceding that loss (Scheerer & Brandt, 2001). There is often skepticism in the community about whether a widow will be able to continue to farm after losing her husband, with landowners offering shorter lease terms and experiencing difficulty obtaining financing to continue farm operations due to gender discrimination (Schneider, 2013), phenomena that contribute to the emic vulnerability of these women (Spiers, 2000). A blog written by one farm widow counsels women who are married to farmers to develop succession plans for the farm businesses, become as involved as possible in the business so that they might learn it, and draft wills with their spouses—in essence, to “be proactive, not reactive,” as one of the tag lines at the top of one such blog reads (Bennett, 2013).

Statistical data are available through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture. The past two Agricultural Censuses show that there has been a 4% decrease in the number of women principal farm operators, although women represented 14% of the total farmers in the country in both 2007 and 2012 (USDA, 2009, 2014). That figure has nearly tripled since 1978, when only 5% of farms were operated by women, and only 5% of those had sales over $100,000 in 2007 (Hoppe & Korb, 2013, p. iv). It is important to note that the average age of women farmers in the United State has increased over that 5-year period from 58.8 to 60.1, which is 1.4 years greater than the average age of all principal operators (USDA, 2014). In 2014, a sociological study undertaken with the primary aim to determine role identity (farm operator vs. farm partner) relative to “decision-making authority, farm tasks, and farm and individual characteristics,” which concluded that further research should be conducted, includes answering questions about how farm women’s identities change in diverse circumstances and settings throughout the course of their lives (Brasier, Sachs, Kiernan, Trauger, & Barbercheck, 2014). Prior to that, a previous large-scale in-depth sociological study of farm women included only wives of farmers, and not principal operators (Rosenfeld, 1985). Jellison’s (1993) historical work detailed the relationship between farm women and technology from 1913–1963, elucidating their resistance to adopt the full-time homemaker role proposed by a patriarchal society in rural America—through the beginnings of the feminist movement. Currently, 59% of farm women are employed in “off-farm work” (USDA, 2014), often making up shortfalls between farm income and family budgets in the current consumerist economy, a trend that started because of rising interest rates and falling crop prices during the farm crisis of the 1980s.

Design and Setting

Oral history methods provide an opportunity for narrator and interviewer to co-create a narrative that combines biography with subjective accounts of life experiences. Interviews were not transcribed in their entirety but remained as digital audio recordings in an effort to minimize filtering of the data through unnecessary treatments, and they were archived after use for the study.

This oral history study incorporated traditional methods for data collection and archiving, including individual recorded interviews designed to seek access to the socially constructed reflective thoughts about each farm widow’s life. Ontologically, oral history is based on a conception of research as a process, not an event, during the course of which both meaning and knowledge are co-created. Epistemologically, both narrator and interviewer co-create narratives without the hierarchy inherent in some forms of research that position the researcher as the individual with full authority over knowledge production (Frisch, 1990). It is due to this shared authority and co-creation of narrative that the women participants are referred to as “narrators,” as their narration is filling a void in the historical record. The extent to which the authority for knowledge production is to be shared must be determined at the onset of each study, and for this study, each narrator validated the recording of her interview.

Questions were open-ended, and the interviews were loosely structured in the tradition of oral history. Questions were developed to lead to the narrative about life changes accompanying spousal loss. Each interview lasted from 1 to 3 hours and was conducted in a quiet place of each narrator’s choosing.

Narrators for this study included farm widows who experienced spousal loss a minimum of 3 years before the time of the interview. Ages ranged from 53 years to over 100 years of age. Narrators did not show any signs of cognitive function loss, and all were able to give informed consent for participation in the interview. All farm widows lived on farms in the North Central Region of the United States at the time of spousal loss. Inclusion criteria were that each narrator was (a) over the age of 18, (b) widowed while living on a working farm in the North Central Region of the United States, (c) fluent in the English language, and (d) able to provide written consent for participation in the study and archiving of interview materials. Exclusion criteria included that a potential narrator was (a) under the age of 18, (b) male, (c) not widowed while living on a working farm, and (d) undergoing treatment for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, PTSD, or other mental or emotional illness. A sample size of nine narrators was sufficient to assure data saturation.

Recruitment

Narrators from this study were identified through lists of USDA farm subsidy payments, church rosters, organizations of women in agriculture such as American Agri-Women, funeral home announcements, obituaries in rural newspapers, and recommendations of farm widows who were narrators in the study. Snowball sampling is commonly used in oral history studies and was utilized for this study. Recruitment letters were sent to women farmers who appeared to meet inclusion criteria.

Data Sources

Interviews ranged in length from 1 to 3 hours, at the discretion of the narrator, as there is no set length of interview in oral history. As older narrators are more likely to remember events and experiences that have greater importance to them, it was important to begin the interviews with open-ended questions and follow up with more pointed inquiry for clarification or provision of additional detail (Frisch, 1990; Janesick, 2010; Kunz & Soltys, 2007).

Historical data reviewed included (a) Census data, (b) county and state records, (c) government reports, (d) newspapers, and (e) family documents. Cultural trends for each narrator’s geographic area, including social, political, and economic, were searched to determine external influences that may have influenced the experiences of each woman, as part of the preparation for the interview. These historical data were used for triangulation to build a coherent justification for identified themes.

Data Analysis

A reflexive statement was prepared prior to commencement of interviewing in an effort to articulate how her background shaped the direction of the study. The range of strategic, ethical, and personal issues of the researcher is critical in qualitative studies and is an acknowledgment of the subjectivity that she brings to each interview and its interpretation through analysis. Reflexivity provided a way to further integrate an ethic of care into the oral history process, through thinking about potential consequences for narrators who disclose more than they originally intended, and the researcher’s moral obligation to care for that individual through offering opportunities for checking an approval of transcripts and an opportunity to review research products as well as sealing all or portions of interviews or reporting data anonymously.

With rigor in oral history with postmodern philosophical underpinnings, it is accepted that each person has not only unique experiences but also unique interpretations of those experiences and the experiences of others. It is therefore necessary to articulate how trustworthiness of these research findings was established and maintained (Thomas & Magilvy, 2011, pp. 152-154). Credibility was established through reflexivity and validation of each interview through a review for accuracy by each narrator. Transferability was established through a detailed and accurate geographic and demographic description of the population interviewed for this study. Dependability was established through the descriptions provided above with regard to purpose, narrator selection, data collection procedures, data analysis and interpretation procedures, and the techniques incorporated to establish credibility. Confirmability was established through reflexivity and allowing narrators to select their contributions to the narrative, while asking for clarification of points or terminology not understood by the principal investigator (PI) at that time. Recording notes about the PI’s personal feelings, biases, and insights was incorporated also.

Theme 1: Competence

Women widowed and thrust into the position of becoming independent farm owner-operators who were interviewed for this study had no formal education beyond their high school diploma but felt that they needed to prove that they were “smart enough to run the farm,” and all discussed a steep learning curve as well as an extremely tight timeline for accessing and assimilating all of the knowledge they needed. While not holding a degree beyond a high school diploma is common among farm operators, with over 50% of all farmers (male and female) having completed some high school or a high school diploma (O’Donoghue et al., 2011), each woman conveyed sentiments of doubting her ability to learn all that was necessary as she assumed responsibility for farm operations. The women found that they were overwhelmed with the enormity of the information it was necessary to learn.

“I think, nowadays, if I had a son or a daughter that was going to farm, I think they need to go to school. You have to be in accountant. It’s more risky than it was even before because there are such swings. You have to be an agronomist and learn something about mechanics. You have to keep up on the latest machineries and the latest soil preparations. You have to be a veterinarian if you have livestock, too. There’s just a lot of things changing all the time.” (P8)

They had to learn to market their crops, almost immediately for those who became widowed around harvest time. They had to learn to operate machinery, care for sick livestock, and deliver calves, piglets, and lambs, and they had to learn about chemicals to fertilize and kill the pests that could ruin the crops. Some of the women had been given some guidance from their husbands prior to their deaths, perhaps taking it for granted.

“No, I did not pay attention when [my husband] tried to teach me. He told me everything. He would tell me, ‘You need to know this, here’s what we’re doing, here’s the layout.’ But I never paid attention. I’d just kind of, ‘Whatever, okay.’ [chuckles] But he would tell me. Yeah, he would tell me everything. If he wanted to buy new machinery, he’d say, ‘We need to upgrade with this. Are you okay with that or should we do this?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ Yes, but I had … everything was written down. We went back and we would look at all that stuff and so we’d know. He left us how he marketed his grain. He’d have these—he wrote everything, and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a good trick, we should stick with this and keep doing it.’ [chuckles] It’s worked so far, and so that’s a good thing. Yeah, so he kept everything written, in case. . . .” (P9)

And some received assistance posthumously:

“I couldn’t exactly remember how to divide things. You know, you take the seed size by the pounds that you want and divide it out, and couldn’t quite remember. I’m like, ‘Oh, how did I do that?’ And I looked at the bottom of the page where it says rates and he had written it ‘how you divide this into this to this.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, thank you Lord.’ So there were little things like that that would come up.” (P3)

One of the dominant subthemes that emerged through the interviews was that of others in each widow’s community doubting whether she would be able to be successful without her husband. Narratives included stories about doubting neighbors, conversations overheard at church or the grain elevator speculating about when a widow would quit, and family members who tried to persuade these women to give up. Perhaps the story that produced the most anxiety in retelling was that of the concerned loan officer during the 1980s, when many farmers were forced to quit, and when interest rates were extremely high, however the widow’s intelligence and confidence to farm come through.

“We had 45 milk cows. We had 2,200 chickens, laying hens. Then, of course, the apple season was over at that point—I mean, basically over at that point. Of course we had a certain amount of pretty good labor. I had to learn. The thing that probably made me able to survive was the fact we had always been equal partners. I knew as much about this farm as he did. I didn’t know as much about the apples. I knew how to sell apples, but I didn’t know the sprays. I did most of the banking and stuff like that—the finances. I knew that back then there we sold cattle a lot. I knew all the sales managers, and things like that. I was the one that usually went to the banker. It was tough—very, very tough. It’s not easy to be a woman back then. It’s easier now, I think. Women are more accepted than they were back then. My loan officer, oh my goodness, he was a nervous wreck [chuckles]. There was a lot of turmoil right at that time. There were farmers who were being—interest was almost 20%—18% to 20%.

“There were farmers that knew they had to quit. They were going to get cut off. They were going to get—quit. They’d probably go and sell some of the livestock or something, and buy new a pick up. I had to go through all the guaranteed loans and all that, because of course I was a woman, with all the kids. I think that was the main reason why I could survive, because I knew I had to.” (P1)

Proving that they had the ability to manage the work of farming and the business acumen to farm independently took much patience, energy, and grit. In the example above with financial concerns, it took many years before the widow was able to receive her operating loans through a bank. There were certainly difficult years for each widow, during which she and the family relied on proceeds from crop insurance to remain financially solvent, and there were many other illustrative examples of the women proving to one person at a time that she was intelligent enough to carry on the work of the farm independently.

Theme 2: Industriousness

There was a great variety in the types of farms on which the widows lived when their husbands died. While all of the widows spoke of the labor required to continue farm operations, there was a great difference between the opportunities to disconnect from farming for even a short respite. Those with crop farms were tethered to the land from the time that land was prepared for planting, through harvest, but for those who had livestock, there was little opportunity to leave the farm for even one entire day.

“We used to go up to [the city] a lot to the Holiday Inn. We’d spend time—we’d check in it, 1:00, which was check-in time, but we knew we had to be home to milk at five, we’d leave there about 4:30, come home and do the chores, and then we’d go back to the hotel, go out to eat, and swim, and sleep there. The next morning I’d come home and do chores and somebody would stay with the kids until check-out time the next day. We’d do that quite often especially in the winter time.” (P8)

For the women who inherited diversified farms, which was the case with the oldest of the narrators, the long hours required them to grow crops and be available to care for livestock as well. In one case, the widow farmed independently with four children, beginning in 1945, at the age of 29. In the 5 years following World War II, 10% of families were forced off of their farms (Jellison, 1993), and only 68% of those who remained had tractors to assist with the labor (United States Bureau of the Census, 1956). Below are the recollections of the years following the loss of her husband:

“We had everything. We did have a hired man to help, because we were milking like 24 cows at that time, and we had the stall barns, and we had the silo, and we had—we didn’t have a tractor when we were married. We still didn’t have one when he left me. But we had horses, so that was a lot of work. And pasture for the cows. They don’t have that anymore. Make hay. I have done it all. I have done it all. I have milked cows. I have helped bale hay. I have thrown bales. I have helped clean barns. I have fed chickens, picked eggs, cleaned chicken house, helped with pigs, cleaned pig barn, planted garden. I have done it all. I have done it all by myself. I had to do it all by myself. … We have had dinner at midnight more than once.” (P6)

Even for the women widowed after the year 2000 who had the benefit of many technological advances and modern conveniences, there were difficulties with learning to do the work and actually completing what needed to be finished. One of the widows recalled, “My neighbor would come and I’d say, ‘How do I do this?’ He would never do it for me, but he would come over and say, ‘Just does this,’ like it was easy. It was never easy.” (P4)

Proving not only to others but also to themselves that they were strong enough to do the necessary work by themselves was a difficulty with which many of the women struggled. The women told of being “tough,” “strong,” and “just having to get things done because there wasn’t any other choice.” The women told stories about not even being able to rest on the day of their husband’s funeral. In fact, two of them changed clothes after the funeral and got into their tractors to plant. Independence as a subtheme of competence was globally present in the narratives of these farm widows. Throughout the process of bereavement, all of the women turned to resources within their communities. Many found that assistance was offered by people living in their “neighborhoods,” which, in some cases, meant someone who lived several miles away. Some of the assistance that was offered came at times when the difficulty of the task at hand was insurmountable, but it was still difficult for some of the widows to accept.

“When he passed away, it was time to pick the beans and the corn. Of course, you ran all the corn through the dryer. So we made a deal with the neighbor who needed to use a combine, too. He picked our corn and then we ran it through the dryer and I kind of kept track of the dryer while I was taking care of my husband. And then he used our combine for his, but then the beans—there was like 12 combines that came and they picked our beans in half a day, so that was really nice. I have a picture somewhere. I can show you, but anyway, I asked the guys if they would you know, line up, and the paper came out and they took a picture. And it was all the combines lined up and all the people that came and harvested. So that was really a relief at that time when you’re trying to harvest and that’s when he was gone, just right in the fall.

“A good friend of ours manages the elevator, so he had come out and said, ‘Could we please do this?’ They didn’t just impose. He said, ‘Could we do this? We’d like to do this.’ And I knew [my husband] would have done the same for anyone else, so I was like, ‘Yeah, thanks.’ He would have done the same thing, so I decided it was ok.” (P7)

There were other stories that were similar, since all nine of the widows’ husbands passed away at the time of year that was most stressful: calving, planting, or harvest. The women articulated feelings of reluctance to accept “charity” from their community, but all did because they did not believe that they would be capable of accomplishing what was necessary without the connections they had through their husbands.

None of the women interviewed for this study actually lost their farm due to financial insolvency. Many have seen their farms increase in size and reputation during the time they had or have been the farm operators. One of the women remarked that she only had a mortgage on 80 of her 1,000 acres, after nearly 25 years of farming alone. One of the women expanded to rent and farm land on 5,000 acres beyond that planted when her husband operated the farm. All but one of the livestock farmers (dairy, hogs, or cattle) had ceased operation of their farms, after many years of labor, but their children were continuing to farm the land at the time of the interviews, and they were still dwelling in the main farm house on the property. Only the oldest of the widows interviewed had moved off of the farm and into an apartment in town.

Theme 3: Inner Strength

Woven through the narratives co-created with this group of women who were widowed while living on working farms were strong threads of inner strength. The women, through the excerpts included above and through the entirety of their narratives, conveyed an innate ability to work through the difficulty, learn what they needed to in order to provide for their families, and simply put, make the best of a crisis situation, which was, in most cases, unexpected. One of the women summarized her approach to life after being widowed:

“I was shocked. Naturally you’re shocked—but life goes on. You don’t have a choice when you have seven kids. That’s why people think I’m tough, because I’ve had to be tough. You just go on. You just march on. Everybody’s different. Some people can march on, others can’t. When you ask if I’ve been alone, I tell people that the first thing you’ve got to do—it’s hard to go to that first thing when you don’t have a husband, but I always went, because I always had a lot of friends.” (P4)

Some of the women who were interviewed did not just describe their abilities in terms of becoming stronger psychologically, with an increasing self-determination in adapting to the physical rigors of their roles as solo farm operators. One of the widows described her reaction to an avulsion on her upper arm caused by a jacket getting caught in a power take off:

“I know I got stronger when I had to do it all for myself. My accident with my arm with the baler, I could handle that pain. That was—I get to [the hospital] and I go in to the emergency room and they’ve said, ‘Well, we’ll have to do plastic surgery and do skin grafting.’ And I say, ‘No, we’ll just sew my skin back on.’ They said, ‘But we can’t do that.’ And I say, ‘Yes you can.’ They soaked it in iodine, which I told them to do. And they sewed it back on. I never got an infection or anything. And I went home that same night. Did all of the chores that next morning, too.” (P8)

In possibly the best example from these narratives of one of the widows calling on her inner strength to move toward her new normal, she articulated the difference in her mood after losing her husband and how she reframed her situation. Through a story engaging in the act of finding new meaning in her circumstances and looking for positives in the negative, she was able to achieve a new normal that was inspirational to other widows:

“I came into the house and went into the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I had changed. My face was grey, my eyes looked hollow, and my shoulders were slumped. I call it the concentration camp look. It’s like those pictures in the World War II books. I recognize it in other people who’ve lost a spouse. Not everybody, but some. I thought, ‘Am I always going to feel this way?’ I had a lot of good health in the months afterward. The first thing I did that was a little different, within a few weeks let’s say, I tried to go back to the things I’d done before.

“I was depressed, but I haven’t put a match in the gas can or something like that. After years elapsed, other women I knew lost their husbands, and I remember one saying to me, ‘I’m using you as my role model.’ I thought, ‘If you only knew.’ I would every day get up, get dressed nicely, put my makeup on because I felt that was a step forward. When I would go and be with people, I would try to be positive and smile, because I thought, ‘Nobody wants a storm cloud.’ I found when I did that, I felt better. But the one thing that definitely made me feel better was doing things for other people.

“There were times where I couldn’t sleep. I would go down stairs where sewing stuff is and I would cut out chemo-caps and pin them together because I thought, ‘If I can’t sleep that’s negative energy. I’m not going to let it stay negative. I’m going to turn it in to something positive so that somebody who is stricken will know that somebody they don’t even know was thinking about them.’ I felt better doing things for other women like me.” (P9)

Other farm widows shared stories about how they reframed their situation and activities in which they engaged that helped them to adapt after the loss of their spouse. One woman began to foster children, sometimes fostering five children, in addition to the three of her own who were still living at home. One woman discussed starting a support group in her rural neighborhood for four other farm widows and finding much strength in their shared connections. Together, these women paint a picture of inner strength built through adversity.

A thematic model was developed following analysis of the data collected for this study (see Figure).

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Figure.

Thematic model created following analysis of nine oral history interviews collected for the study. Subthemes are listed below overarching themes.