Late night chats with mom's are dangerous
So...After a late night chat with my mom last night I don't understand why she had children at all. She's upset because Erin wants to get her masters instead of following through to the PhD. She wants to get married. So that is upsetting Mom because Mom got married and had kids instead of a career and now she's back in the workforce and is struggling to get ahead because she's a female in her forties and was out of the workforce to have children... I understand her reservations about Erin...But she kept saying "I don't want her to make the same mistake I did." To a over-sensitive 21 year old that's kinda harsh... I mean...The same mistake? She said that having children was a mistake... Geez. That hurts. Is that stupid to be hurt by that? Probably. But it bugs me. I just sat and listened. And now Dad is kinda pushing for me to get into a PhD program...Masters/PhD combined is not as common in psych as it is in engineering and I tried to explain that to no avail. But I am going to get my masters and go from there...But I don't understand... Do parents base their self worth on their children's success? Sometimes I think they do. Is the purpose of having children to have someone to undo all their mistakes by doing something different? And with any big decision, for example, whether to have children or not have children, don't positives and negatives come too? I mean, for those women like Mom who think they should have had a career. They are pissed because they didn't go an independent route and not get married and have kids so they could have this highly successful career. But it seems like just as many women who did go that route, the career-only route, end up lonely and empty with regret that they didn't at least get married or find someone marry-able. So...Either way, there are ups and downs. I know of many career-only and family-oriented women who are generally happy with their decisions. But I think that either way you go you find women who are unhappy with it. I guess it just kinda sucks that my Mom is one of those women who is unhappy with her decision to have a family. It's not that she doesn't love us...I'm sure she does. I'm just sorry she hates her decision so much. But I don't like the idea of having to succeed to make her happy...That's the mindset I had for a lonnnng time and still do, to a point. But I'm not going to go whatever route because that's what Mom and Dad want me to do. (If I did I'd be taking the LSAT in the fall.) Because then, in 20 years, I'll be unhappy with my decision and will be inadvertantly pressuring my daughter (or my dog if I go the no-kids route) to fix all my life mistakes. So...Yeah.