Gerringer insists that she would rather have worked in the mills than to have stayed home while her children were growing up. Although Gerringer talks about how she and her husband often had difficulty making ends meet during other parts of the interview, here, she says that she worked because she wanted to, and not out of economic necessity. Her comments here indicate great pride in the fact that, with the help of her husband in household chores, she was able to successfully balance work and family without having to hire anybody to help with the children or the housework. Her comments offer one way that families in working communities were able to balance the responsibilities of work and family.