We've come a long way, baby
I’m re-reading “Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong. I read it years ago, as I’ve read many of her books. It was first published in 1973. It’s an awesome character study, about a woman’s discovery of self (in the days when the concept was still radical), but as I was reading it the other day, I was struck with how incredibly dated it seemed to me. People were still calling psychologists and psychiatrists “analysts”. Sexual liberation was still a daring new thing. The protagonist is also in the middle of that old female issue: do I choose a career OR a family? If I choose a career, am I supposed to feel selfish for doing it? And if I choose a family, do I feel personally unfulfilled? There was also tremendous guilt laid out on her by her immediate family because she was 27 (27!) and still childless, even though she was married—they accused her of abandoning her job as a woman and of being thoroughly self-absorbed. And she did feel guilty for it, too, even though she didn’t even particularly want to have kids. She was a writer, and loved writing, needed to write, but then...what kind of woman was she, to pick words over babies? Over a man?
I thought about how much the world has changed since then (generally-speaking, that is). Most of us don’t worry too much about whether to choose ourselves or our families. We do both. We give fairly equal time. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember to alternate, but for the most part, we don’t feel the same crippling guilt that our mothers and grandmothers did for stealing away some time to do what they wanted. Stealing time...like they had to secretly pilfer time alone to do things that made them feel fulfilled. We go out with our friends, design software programs, play guitar, write novels, work 8-hour days at the office, create business plans, exercise, climb mountains...and we understand that we’re taking care of ourselves, which is the best possible thing we can do both for us and for the people we love. We also have much more support from husbands than our ancestors did. We’ve grown up in a time where men and women have been learning to be partners and aren’t strictly defined by gender-specific roles. And here’s my favorite part: those of us who have chosen not to have kids are no longer harangued. It’s accepted as a normal choice. Sure, we may be beleaguered by parents who want grandchildren, but society as a rule doesn’t give a damn whether we reproduce or die alone.
And then, in the middle of feeling the discrepancy between then and now, I realized that we wouldn’t be where we are now, without those women going first. They hacked their way through and made the friggin’ path—we followed their lead. All of the digging in the dirt, all of the sweating in the middle of the night that they did, helped make our senses of self stronger. This book is the chronicling of their story. I’m not saying that sexism is now obsolete—in some ways, it has gone underground and mutated—but I am saying we’re better off now than we've ever been before. I’m saying, hats off to the women who went before us.
I thought about how much the world has changed since then (generally-speaking, that is). Most of us don’t worry too much about whether to choose ourselves or our families. We do both. We give fairly equal time. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember to alternate, but for the most part, we don’t feel the same crippling guilt that our mothers and grandmothers did for stealing away some time to do what they wanted. Stealing time...like they had to secretly pilfer time alone to do things that made them feel fulfilled. We go out with our friends, design software programs, play guitar, write novels, work 8-hour days at the office, create business plans, exercise, climb mountains...and we understand that we’re taking care of ourselves, which is the best possible thing we can do both for us and for the people we love. We also have much more support from husbands than our ancestors did. We’ve grown up in a time where men and women have been learning to be partners and aren’t strictly defined by gender-specific roles. And here’s my favorite part: those of us who have chosen not to have kids are no longer harangued. It’s accepted as a normal choice. Sure, we may be beleaguered by parents who want grandchildren, but society as a rule doesn’t give a damn whether we reproduce or die alone.
And then, in the middle of feeling the discrepancy between then and now, I realized that we wouldn’t be where we are now, without those women going first. They hacked their way through and made the friggin’ path—we followed their lead. All of the digging in the dirt, all of the sweating in the middle of the night that they did, helped make our senses of self stronger. This book is the chronicling of their story. I’m not saying that sexism is now obsolete—in some ways, it has gone underground and mutated—but I am saying we’re better off now than we've ever been before. I’m saying, hats off to the women who went before us.
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