Ruth Dyk (March 25, 1901 – November 18, 2000) was an American suffragist, psychologist and author. As a young woman, she and her mother marched together in Boston for women's suffrage, and late in life she was featured in Ken Burns' documentary on the subject, Not for Ourselves Alone. Dyk also worked as a researcher at State University of New York, publishing findings that challenged contemporary notions that motherhood necessarily brought women happiness.
Early life and education
Dyk was born Ruth Belcher on March 25, 1901, in Portland, Maine.[1] Her parents were Arthur Fuller Belcher, a lawyer who died when Ruth was three,[2] and Annie Manson Belcher, who was one of the first women to attend Tufts Medical School, though the school forced her out when she married.[3] Ruth grew up in Newton Center, Massachusetts,[1] where Ruth and her mother marched together in Boston for women's suffrage.[3]
Dyk worked with delinquent girls as a psychiatric social worker in upstate New York.[3] She later became a researcher at the Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York in Brooklyn.[3] In 1950, she co-wrote Anxiety in Pregnancy and Childbirth (published by Paul B. Hoeber, an imprint of Harper & Bros.), reporting research findings that, contrary to the prevailing view that bearing children necessarily brought women happiness, pregnancy could exacerbate the difficulties of women who had mental illnesses or were “maladjusted”.[6]
Dyk also co-wrote Psychological Differentiation (Wiley, 1962), and Left Handed (Columbia University Press, 1980), an anthropological study of Navajo Indians continuing work begun by her husband.[3]
