The sins of our feminist mothers
After yesterday’s post Masculinity and Femininity that generated significant comments, I thought I ought to stir the pot a bit more. In discussions about the masculine and feminine, we are tempted to view the sexes as either complementary (the Biblical view… two sides of the coin, so to speak) or equal/interchangeable (postmodern view). Lost in yesterday’s discussion was the real societal consequence of a completely egalitarian view of sex. I submit to you the following article for consideration of the real consequences of throwing away the breadwinner/homemaker “KKK style” household.
———————————–
The sins of our feminist mothers
By Virginia Haussegger
July 23 2002
A few years ago, in my mid-30s, had I heard Malcolm Turnbull pontificate about the need to encourage Australians to marry younger and have more children (“The crisis is fertility, not ageing”, on this page last Tuesday), I would have thumped him, kneed him in the groin, and bawled him out.
How dare he – a rich father of two, with perfect wife and perfect life – presume for a moment to tell women, thriving at the peak of our careers, that we should stop, marry, and procreate. The sheer audacity of it.
Yet another male conspiracy, a conservative attempt to dump women out of the workplace and back into the home. A neat male arrangement: a good woman to run the household, and a workplace less cluttered with female competition.
A win-win for patriarchy. And precisely the kind of society I was schooled against.
As we worked our way through high school and university in the ’70s and early ’80s, girls like me listened to our mothers, our trailblazing feminist teachers, and the outspoken women who demanded a better deal for all women. They paved the way for us to have rich careers.
They anointed us and encouraged us to take it all. We had the right to be editors, paediatricians, engineers, premiers, executive producers, High Court judges, CEOs etc. We were brought up to believe that the world was ours. We could be and do whatever we pleased.
Feminism’s hard-fought battles had borne fruit. And it was ours for the taking.
Or so we thought – until the lie of super “you-can-have-it-all” feminism hits home, in a very personal and emotional way.
We are the ones, now in our late 30s and early 40s, who are suddenly sitting before a sheepish doctor listening to the words: “Well, I’m sorry, but you may have left your run too late. Women at your age find it very difficult to get pregnant naturally, and unfortunately the success rate of IVF for a 39-year-old is around one in five – and dropping. In another 12 months you’ll only have a 6 per cent chance of having a baby. So given all the effort and expense, do you really want to go through with this? Why don’t you go home and think it through? But don’t leave it too long – your clock is ticking.” Then he adds for comic value, “And don’t forget, the battery is running low!”
For those of us who listened to our feminist foremothers’ encouragement; waved the purple scarves at their rallies; read about and applauded the likes of Anne Summers, Kate Jennings, Wendy McCarthy, Jocelyn Scutt, Morag Fraser, Joan Kirner, Elizabeth Proust etc (all strong examples of successful working women); for those of us who took all that on board and forged ahead, crashed through barriers and carved out good, successful and even some brilliant careers; we’re now left – many of us at least – as premature “empty nesters”.
We’re alone, childless, many of us partnerless, or drifting along in “permanent temporariness”, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman so aptly put it in a recent Age article by Anne Manne to describe the somewhat ambiguous, uncommitted type of relationship that seems to dominate among childless, professional couples in their 30s and 40s.
The point is that while encouraging women in the ’70s and ’80s to reach for the sky, none of our purple-clad, feminist mothers thought to tell us the truth about the biological clock. Our biological clock. The one that would eventually reach exploding point inside us.
Maybe they didn’t think to tell us, because they never heard the clock’s screaming chime. They were all married and knocked-up by their mid-20s. They so desperately didn’t want the same for us.
And none of our mothers thought to warn us that we would need to stop, take time out and learn to nurture our partnerships and relationships. Or if they did, we were running too fast to hear it.
For those of us that did marry, marriage was perhaps akin to an accessory. And in our high-disposable-income lives, accessories pass their use-by date, and are thoughtlessly tossed aside. Frankly, the dominant message was to not let our man, or any man for that matter, get in the way of career and our own personal progress.
The end result: here we are, supposedly “having it all” as we edge 40; excellent education; good qualifications; great jobs; fast-moving careers; good incomes; and many of us own the trendy little inner-city pad we live in. It’s a nice caffe-latte kind of life, really.
But the truth is – for me at least – the career is no longer a challenge, the lifestyle trappings are joyless (the latest Collette Dinnigan frock looks pretty silly on a near-40-year-old), and the point of it all seems, well, pointless.
I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase.
It was wrong. It was crap. And Malcolm Turnbull has a point. God forbid!
Virginia Haussegger is ABC TV news presenter in the ACT. She has been a television journalist for 15 years, hosting the 7.30 Report in various states and reporting for the Channel Seven’s Witness and Channel Nine’s A Current Affair.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/07/22/1026898972150.html
Related posts:
KKK Style — that’s funny. I often find the music you’re listening to be very much opposite of the things you post, Chris, which actually makes me very happy — I know you know you’re doing it. You’re a well-rounded dude, my man!
Anyway, I’ll go ahead and be the first to take issue with this because, well, that’s going to be my role this week.
First of all — adopt if you want a child. They’re out there. We’re running out of natural resources, but our greatest natural resource — human life — is out there for us to nurture.
Secondly — why didn’t she read any books? If she’s so well educated why didn’t she realize that life happens, that clocks tick, that we grow old, that there are mid-life crises, that, at some point, your mind might change?
Thirdly — and this, I think, can be said about anyone in any group — her version of feminism was taught to her by the same book that taught her about her biological clock. Her version of feminism is the nightly news in the 70s version. Feminists aren’t out to stop child birth, they aren’t all purple-clad scarf wearers — they are the ones who realize that women in America did not have the right to vote until 1920. They are the ones who are fighting for the rights of all humans — men included — while including women in that list as humans. As with any label we choose to apply to ourselves — Feminist, Christian, Muslim, Republican, Democrat — there are extreme versions that cause problems and, unfortunately, those extreme versions are the ones who are remembered. And, usually, those extreme versions stray from the very truth that created these labels in the first place.
It seems selfish, this anger over not having your own children, when there are so, so, so many children who would love to be loved. I realize adoption is a long and emotional process that not everyone qualifies for, but it’s out there, it can happen, and it’s not too late for anyone.
My $.02.
Also, one more thing — this isn’t real for everyone. I know plenty of older, childless couples who were happy helping to raise their nieces and nephews, who volunteer in their communities, who raise awareness of issues that affect real people, and who go home at night happy with the choices they made. Those “real consequences” you mention, Chris, are, like everything else, not stereotypical.
I actually meant to say this — Those “real consequences” *are* stereotypes. They are not typical.
Back to history…
I may really have to stop checking this blog, Chris! Show this to a few of my single, Christian, female grad students, and you may make them cry! I do think that academic life or “the career” *can* be a vocation for women. And I don’t think telling us to marry younger and have children sooner (as if we’re against that! We normally aren’t!) is going to help. Just going off to get married and have kids is not a possibility for a lot of women, and I’d much rather have something worthwhile to do in the meantime.
Sharon Gartland, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s National Coordinator for “Women in the Academy & Professions”, was the most helpful person I ever have heard speak on Christianity, women, and academia. She could give you some hair-raising statistics, but she is in her position because women in academia really do need support.
And I’m not quite sure I accept the breadwinner/homemaker model as being Biblical! It’s typical of a lot of American Christian home models, I suppose. But the Proverbs 31 women is certainly out winning some bread:
“She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night. . . . She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hand to the needy . . . . She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes. . . . Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate” (Proverbs 31:16-18, 20, 24, 31).
Right on, sister!