Gloria Steinem is turning seventy-five . She was a forerunner in the women’s movement, a feminist I never really got onboard with.
And as I look back at our lives following the sixties and the seventies, are we really better off, are we really? If we are, at what expense? Our children perhaps, whose lives are left to day care providers because the majority of their mothers work? I’ve often heard working women talk of taking their children to daycare on their days off so they can have time to catch up on work, or have time to themselves. I cringe every single time I hear a woman say this. Like their children are a hindrance, they would rather shuffle them to the sitter than spend time with them. I’ve also heard women say that their children get on their nerves and they could never stay home with them. That’s a horrible way to feel. I feel sorry for them, but more so for their families. It’s sad what they miss, and what they can never recapture because they aren’t there for their children.
Are marriages better since the women’s movement? Oh no, women won’t put up with the crap men hand them these days, they divorce them and move on, most of them with children, where they try to have a single life and be mom, and who loses in this scenario, the children, of course. It’s good that they do stand up to the men, of course I agree with that, but if they made better life choices in the first place they wouldn’t be dealing with the problems they have with the men they chose to marry.
I was there when they burned the bras, I was a young woman during the women’s movement, I lived it. Of course I think it would be great if we could really be equal. But it can’t, and we never will. Women, in my opinion, have absolutely no business working in heavy industrial jobs. They don’t have the muscle, the stamina that men do to do these jobs. But they try, they are out there in their hard hats, trying to keep up as best they can, trying to show that they can do the same work as the men to earn that equal pay. And women in law enforcement, and fighting in the military, don’t even get me started on that. Oh, I sound hopelessly old-fashioned, don’t I? You all know that I’m a pretty liberal thinker, but I’m an old(er) woman now, I see life differently than I did even a few years ago.
And when these women’s day jobs are finished and they return home, their men will “help” and occasionally a man will really step up to the plate and do his share, but from what I’ve observed it’s the exception, not the rule. The woman is the one who is responsible for most of the housework and raising the children. I’m sure a lot of younger women would argue with me, but if they take off the rose colored glasses and really look at their lives, I imagine a lot of them are the ones that are doing the majority of the work at home, as well as working a full-time job.
Are women more fulfilled because they are working outside the home? Is it really that important to have a bigger house, a better car, better clothes? That’s not what is important, it’s the family unit that matters, but society has evolved to the point that the woman must work to maintain that lifestyle. Also, this generation doesn’t know any better, it’s what they are conditioned to do, and it’s normal to them, but it isn’t really normal and are all these “things” that important, are they really?
Children are exposed so much at an early age, there is no innocence. It’s an immoral world that these little souls are being raised in. Is it worth it, what this generation is doing to their children, is it really?
I’m the world’s worst at putting things off, or as I so aptly put it, “Scarlett will do it tomorrow…” And since I don’t “work,” it’s even easier to postpone to tomorrow what I should do today.
My mother has been gone for three years now. I don’t have a lot of regrets about the past, but there are a few, things that have been on my mind lately, and last night as I was watching Dancing With the Stars, and remembering how much she enjoyed ballroom dancing, that little nagging voice in my head was asking me….
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