A Woman's Inner Battle

02.23.2011

I’m currently reading Tom Brokaw’s book titled Boom! Voices of the Sixties in which he includes brief memoirs on different events and people. As a woman, my life is shaped by experiences that affect my gender and I don’t care what men think, they’ll never understand what it’s like knowing that the odds are against me in getting equal pay or equal opportunity because of my gender. But as aware as I like to consider myself to be, I’m realizing that I really don’t know what women went through so that I'd have the right to vote or the right to choose whether I want to work or not. This particular choice, it’s important to note, is not one that men have. I certainly take issue with the idea that I’d have so much more to give up but when it comes to working, women do have a choice even if it’s not the most financially sane one. (For example, there’s a couple I know of where the wife refuses to work and just pops out kid after kid to avoid the discussion or there’s another couple I know of where the husband was out of work and despite this, the wife refused to get a job because her job was raising the kids – even though her husband was at home too, unemployed, and taking money from his parents to put food on the table). That was a long tangent but my point is that women have the choice to work with kids or stay-at-home with kids. Men don’t naturally have that choice.

Mr. Brokaw wrote about women who were involved in some way with the women’s movement in the 1960s and although I didn’t agree with all the women’s choices or beliefs, what I appreciate is they didn’t let society’s view of what they should be or do hamper their goals in any way. It’s very easy for us women to push ourselves to the side because we’re taught from a young age to serve others and though I’m not advocating selfishness, I think it’s important to keep one’s goals in mind and not lose sight of that. I want to share some quotes that inspired me and made me feel proud to be a woman. It also made me appreciate all those women before me who paved the way for me. On behalf of all women today, Thank You.

She has little patience with women who worry about what they should “do.”

For her, it “isn’t an ethical question. It’s a question of how are they going to

move forward. There was a wave of sentiment that you were somehow

diminished if you didn’t work. My view has always been, work if you want to.

If your job repels you, move on to something else. Be good at what you want

to be.” – Carla Hills, lawyer, Beverly Hills, CA (p. 229).

She thinks that characterizing issues related to family as “women’s issues”

guarantees failure. “These are universal social issues that involve men, women,

and children. If you want to raise a family, it takes time and energy, and it

requires life adjustments – remember what every expectant parent hears: ‘It will

change your life!’ And it does. When ‘family’ is only a woman’s issue, then it

is women who will be expected to make the adjustment.” – Laura, Carla Hills’

daughter, mother of 2 and lawyer herself (p. 231).

“I used to think you could have it all,” she says. “Now I believe you can have it

all, but not all at the same time. There are costs to every decision. Mine weren’t

cost-free. I had only one child and two divorces. That’s a cost.” – Dr. Judith

Rodin, 1^st female president of an Ivy League university (U of Penn, 1994-2004;

pp. 221-222).

“I think my generation of women is constantly anxious about balancing

working

and motherhood. We don’t want to completely give up one for the other, and

we’re such compulsive mothers that we’re going eighteen hours a day between

the office and our kids – taking them to music lessons and soccer games, to

museums and swimming. The dads help a lot, but the moms want to be there

for their kids and for their jobs. It’s tough.” – Jennifer Brokaw, mother of two

and emergency-room physician. (p. 240)

An Individual, A Couple and Then a Family

04.30.2010

I’ve resolved in my head to stop somehow convincing myself that because I may not necessarily agree with a parent’s decision that I’m going to do exactly that too. There’s this weird psychology I conduct on myself. I see a or hear about a parent making a choice I don’t agree with, I get all worked up cause I play out the repercussions in my head and how unfair they are to the child, and I, in turn, tell myself, “See, here’s one more reason not to have a child cause you’re going to make wrong decisions just like this parent and it’s going to screw it all up for them.”

I don’t want to think like that anymore. Despite me not agreeing with a parent, the fact of the matter is A) they are doing the best that they can at that moment with the knowledge that they have and B) Lord knows there's gonna be a parent or two or three that’s going to disagree with my decisions. So, let that go.

But what I will focus on are those parents that I feel are doing it right. One of the things that scares me immensely is how much my relationship with Rob will change. I’ve seen first hand, several times, in fact, what a child does to a couple and how a disconnect begins and how the woman becomes so child-obsessed that she literally starts to ignore her husband forgetting that she is a half of a unit. I don’t want this to happen and after a lunch Rob had with a divorce attorney friend who confirmed that most divorces happen not because of money but because the woman forgets about her husband, this is much more a reality than I think our society cares to admit.

So I look to those who frequently take the time to be together without their children to remind each other that they are individuals first, a couple second, and a family third. And, even though I’ve doled out numbers, it might seem that I’m separating each but, in fact, I believe all three work together simultaneously; however, each element is part of the whole and deserves as much attention as possible. Without a balance within each element, a darkness will start to grow equivalent to what I call a cancer. I desperately want balance in my life and I want to focus on those individuals that I feel seek that balance in their lives too. Thank you to those couples that believe that as much as I do. You’re an inspiration to me and you are proof that it is possible to still have a life and children too.