WHAT THE FEMINISTS DIDN'T TELL ME AND MY MOM DIDN'T KNOW

July 05, 2009



My mom was raised in the fifties by well-intentioned parents who didn't really intend on her becoming anything other than a housewife and mother. She was never offered college. She wasn't pushed to study. She wasn't told to have a career or to be able to take care of herself. And she did exactly as she was told. She became super mom. My sister and I grew up in a home with a true caretaker. There were always home-cooked meals, clean clothes in our drawers, on-time carpools and plenty of mom and me time. Even now, my friends reminisce fondly about how my house was always the house to be at because mom was always available to everyone with food and an ear to bend.

At the same time that my mom was modeling truly being a present and available parent in my life, she and my father were, of course, raising me to be an independent woman with my own career and bank account. My parents had two daughters growing up in the seventies and eighties. As parents, they were following the new feminist wave and encouraging their girls to live up to great potential. We were rightfully told that we could be anything we wanted to be. We were urged to travel, go out of state to exciting and stimulating universities and pursue our passions.

I feel very lucky to have had parents pushing me and giving me every opportunity in the world. I am part of a generation of women who kind of took for granted our feminine rights. We were too young to be engaged in the feminist struggle but just right to reap the benefits.

Or so it seemed.

Cut to life as a thirty-something with a husband, children and a household to run. Plus, an expensive college degree and a life mind set built on ambition and success. This is me. But it's also a description of many of my peers. I don't care what anyone says but it's impossible every day to give 100 percent of one's self to a husband, children, a household, job and, well, one's self. Thus, the term balancing which is basically a way of describing how many of us have to give less than what we would deem a successful amount to any one given area at any one time. And this, of course, makes us, at times, feel like we are failing.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I've been speaking with other moms (both working and non-working) who feel similarly caught between the kind of mother they want to be and the kind of stimulation they crave--and were raised to crave. It's quite a predicament.

As a professional writer, I am always at the mercy of an agent's call. With absolutely no notice, I am asked to come in for a meeting so I can hopefully get a job. I can't tell you the amount of times I've paid for a nanny so I can fight traffic and go in for a useless meeting (the wasted meet and greet) that leads to nothing or is actually canceled on my way there. Then, if there is a job, it might be near my house or completely out of the way. It might be mom-friendly or totally off my schedule. And then there are the jobs I never get called for because I don't have time to schmooze over cocktails at the Chateau Marmont. So, about two years ago, I decided to write for myself and take time off from the grind of being a working writer. It was absolutely the right decision for me. My anxiety immediately dissipated and I was more relaxed with my kids. It was not, however, a profitable decision. But now that my kids are getting a little older and having longer hours at school, my brain is going into crave mode. I am devouring books by the day and longing for intelligent conversations with adults. I knew things were getting bad when I found myself lingering at the Starbucks counter just to have some chitchat with a young screenwriter/barrista. Can you say time for change?

So after much thought, I have decided to go back to school and earn my teaching credential. Teaching has always been a passion of mine, just not one I ever followed. I've thought about why and keep coming back to the answer that it didn't seem big enough of a dream. Didn't the feminists want me to push the boundaries of women in the workplace? Wasn't I supposed to shatter glass ceilings?

Now that I am grown up and can speak from experience, I realize that to be the kind of mom I want to be, I will have to leave the glass shattering to someone else. And now that I have a daughter, I have some different life advice to offer on the subject of career. Of course I will tell my daughter that she can be anything she wants to be which I believe is true and due greatly to the work and struggles of the feminists that came before me. But I will also tell her that there are certain career paths that, in reality, are simply more suitable to life as a wife and mother (if she chooses to be the latter). I will tell her that being a wife and mother is the most important role in my life but that I do crave more. I will tell her that being a mother means that sometimes you have to alter your mind set on what the "more" will be. And that changing your mind set allows you opportunities you might never have otherwise explored.