Having It All--Or Not

There's a refreshing blog I like to read, Clover Lane, written by a woman who made very different choices than I did.

She's a stay-at-home mother of six, a humorous, educated woman who's a good writer and has an eye for design, based on photos of her house and garden.  I like her.  Her investment-banker husband goes to work, and she manages the house and children, including a month-old baby born when she was 43.

We have a few things in common.  I have a retired-professor husband who goes to work.  But we have no children (he has three from a former marriage), and although I manage the house, I insist on help with cooking, gardening, and anything else that falls under "house management."  I did not change my name when I got married.  I gladly call myself a feminist.

The Clover Lane lady would not.  She's young enough to be my daughter, if I'd had a baby while I was in college, which was definitely off  the table.  My dorm pals and I would sit around drinking Miller talls and playing Hearts and conjuring up a vision of being successful artists or teachers or therapists.  We all wanted to be mothers, too, but we were vague about how we'd put it all together.  We fell back on the idea of having a nanny.

Me and my roommate, Marti, in our dorm room, c. 1971.  Marti had children; I did not.

 

It turned out to be harder than that. Of four dorm-pals,  two had children, two had none.  Three of us got married.  No one had a nanny. 

The Clover Lane lady, who is usually so philosophical and funny, mentioned in a post that she resents the "women's libbers" because we foisted off the expectation that women can have it all, which has oppressed subsequent generations of women. 

Did we really do that?

By the time I was 24, I could see that having children could not happen without my sacrificing time and energy that I didn't want to give up.  It was sad, because I love children, but that's the way it was.  Lop off that part of the Dorm Room Plan. 

I have no idea how she got the having-it-all message.  Magazine articles?  Pushy high school teachers?  People at parties asking what she does (besides being a mother of six).  Who knows?   I think she's very sensible to stay home with her children--which she can do thanks to her husband's salary--and  try to be the best mother she can be. 

And I'm a feminist.

The choices were hard then, I want to tell her,  and the choices are hard now.  Don't blame us.

 At least you have choices.












.