(no subject)
Well, another friend of mine is now engaged. While researching ideas for non-traditional engagement parties with her, I stumbled upon an interview with the woman who wrote the book I Do But I Don't: Walking Down the Aisle Without Losing Your Mind.
She says,
"I make this argument that the daughters of baby boomers are sandwiched between the feminist ideals with which their mothers have raised them and the reality that things have not changed as much as we like to think.
"In this light, mother/daughter relationships can be very confusing. This was true for me. Mothers who were raised in the 1950s with little sense of being able to have a career or do much more than be a wife and mother, put their feminist hopes into their daughters: 'Go out and have a different life. Have a career. Don't squander your ambitions, your talent, your brain on an exclusively domestic, private life.' A lot of women in that generation, my mother certainly, when their daughters got into their late 20's or 30's suddenly thought: 'Whoa! I didn't mean that you should only work and not get married or have babies. It's much more important than I ever let on and now, to make up for decades of not pressuring you in that department, I'm going to unleash the full weight of having kept my mouth shut on you.' There's an intense fear that some message failed to get across that this is an important part of life, and there's a genuine concern for their daughters' happiness, comfort, security, and fulfillment."
After reading this, all I thought was THANK YOU!
This is exactly the problem I have with my own mother. She grew up so torn between the 50s/early 60s ideal of what a good woman/wife should be and the femminist-forward thinking of the 70s...and ended up raising me with a similar bundle of conflicting ideals. I grew up knowing that my mother was an extrememly intelligent woman who went to law school and became a lawyer, then gave all of it up to become a stay-at-home mom...and remained a "housewife" even after I went off to college and began my own life. It's not that she never had any ambition to be anything else - she desperately aspired to be a stage actress but her father and my father were both against it. And now, contrary to her own warnings, she - in the strictest terms - is wasting her talent, her intelligence and her creativity by not living up to her potential. At the same time, however, she spent my entire life telling me how important it is to raise your own kids instead of having a nanny and how once I have children of my own I'll understand that I won't want to work outside of the home. To this I respond, WTF?!
I should be my own woman - be happy and creative and successful and financially independant - but, WAIT, I should also look for a wealthy husband so I can marry well and have kids and not have to work?? By these standards, a woman grows up with a completely mixed set of principles and goals that compete against each other and end up causing said woman to spend her life anxiously attempting to balance both sides until she inevitably and ultimately chooses one out of resignation and lives the rest of her life feeling as though part of her is unfulfilled!
This is, of course, a generalization. I know that there are women out there who have been able to reconcile these contradictory ideals and can balance
This is a totally unacceptable contradiction. But please don't misunderstand - this is not a tirade against my mother. This is a long-overdue explosion of my frustration with the dichotomy of what I like to call the Feminist Fuckup.
I'll expand more upon this as time goes on, I promise.
She says,
"I make this argument that the daughters of baby boomers are sandwiched between the feminist ideals with which their mothers have raised them and the reality that things have not changed as much as we like to think.
"In this light, mother/daughter relationships can be very confusing. This was true for me. Mothers who were raised in the 1950s with little sense of being able to have a career or do much more than be a wife and mother, put their feminist hopes into their daughters: 'Go out and have a different life. Have a career. Don't squander your ambitions, your talent, your brain on an exclusively domestic, private life.' A lot of women in that generation, my mother certainly, when their daughters got into their late 20's or 30's suddenly thought: 'Whoa! I didn't mean that you should only work and not get married or have babies. It's much more important than I ever let on and now, to make up for decades of not pressuring you in that department, I'm going to unleash the full weight of having kept my mouth shut on you.' There's an intense fear that some message failed to get across that this is an important part of life, and there's a genuine concern for their daughters' happiness, comfort, security, and fulfillment."
After reading this, all I thought was THANK YOU!
This is exactly the problem I have with my own mother. She grew up so torn between the 50s/early 60s ideal of what a good woman/wife should be and the femminist-forward thinking of the 70s...and ended up raising me with a similar bundle of conflicting ideals. I grew up knowing that my mother was an extrememly intelligent woman who went to law school and became a lawyer, then gave all of it up to become a stay-at-home mom...and remained a "housewife" even after I went off to college and began my own life. It's not that she never had any ambition to be anything else - she desperately aspired to be a stage actress but her father and my father were both against it. And now, contrary to her own warnings, she - in the strictest terms - is wasting her talent, her intelligence and her creativity by not living up to her potential. At the same time, however, she spent my entire life telling me how important it is to raise your own kids instead of having a nanny and how once I have children of my own I'll understand that I won't want to work outside of the home. To this I respond, WTF?!
I should be my own woman - be happy and creative and successful and financially independant - but, WAIT, I should also look for a wealthy husband so I can marry well and have kids and not have to work?? By these standards, a woman grows up with a completely mixed set of principles and goals that compete against each other and end up causing said woman to spend her life anxiously attempting to balance both sides until she inevitably and ultimately chooses one out of resignation and lives the rest of her life feeling as though part of her is unfulfilled!
This is, of course, a generalization. I know that there are women out there who have been able to reconcile these contradictory ideals and can balance
This is a totally unacceptable contradiction. But please don't misunderstand - this is not a tirade against my mother. This is a long-overdue explosion of my frustration with the dichotomy of what I like to call the Feminist Fuckup.
I'll expand more upon this as time goes on, I promise.