Yesterday I read an essay by Kate Bolick which was entitled "All the Single Ladies." It had originally been published in The Atlantic, and it caught my eye because even though I have been married for 42 years, my daughter is "a single lady" at age 38. This has been a bit of a sore spot in an otherwise strong (at least I think) mother-daughter relationship. Her single status has caused me angst and frustration, though she seems to be quite content and tells me that she enjoys her single life.
Ms Bolick is a single lady about the age of my daughter who is not quite as content about her single status, always assuming it would be temporary until she found the right man. But Bolick's curiosity got the better of her it seems, and she sought to do some research on single women and why there seems to be so many of them these days. Her exhaustive article references many books, personal conversations, statistics, and personal experiences that provided me with the tools I needed to understand my daughter's point of view.
It appears that the age in which I grew up was part of only a relatively short period when the nuclear family and marriage were considered to be the cornerstone of American society (if not that of the civilized world). We watched television shows such as "Leave it to Beaver," "Father Knows Best," and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" where two parents and several fairly well-behaved and lovable children shared a household where, despite a few bumps in the road of life, everything worked out in the end. Even in "My Three Sons" and "Bachelor Father" in which a child /children were brought up without the traditional mother/father team, a mother-type figure was introduced to take her place. And "Bachelor Father" soon added a step-mom to round out the family.
Much has changed in our society since these days of sanitized television representations of the family. The women's movement changed it all. In many segments of our society, Bolick points out, men are now the minority. These area include the workforce and college, and where the gender majority shift changes, sexual politics change as well. Bolick goes into a lot of detail and explains it well, so please access her article if you wish. I'll add the link below.
I realized that my daughter is one of many women who may live a single life and do so quite happily and that my angst over her being "alone" and my frustration that there will be no grandchildren to buy cute little clothes for or take to the movies is a product of the times in which I grew up. In other words, it's my problem, not hers. In the 50's and 60's, it was assumed and expected that you would get married, have children, have grandchildren, retire comfortably, perhaps travel, and pleasantly die in your bed while sleeping. It wasn't quite a fairy tale, but it may well have been.
Looking back at the 50's, I notice that in all of these family television shows, Father didn't always know best. Mother basically solved the problems, letting father think he had done so. Mother was a walking painting of perfection in her shirtwaist dress, heels, and jewelry, while keeping the house perfectly spotless in her equally spotless apron. She was the magician who protected the family from the cruel realities of dirty toilets and bug infestations.
My mother was like that. She may have worn capri pants instead of a skirt and sneakers instead of heels, but she kept the wheels of the homestead turning. In truth, she dealt with a domineering husband, the isolation of not driving, a dependence on prescription medications, my father's alcoholism, and panic disorder. She pushed me and my sister to become strong independent women, probably because deep down she knew she could have been (She had served in the Army during WWII as a nurse) but gave it up to live the "American Dream" of marriage, home, and children. She spent years taking care of my father who suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis and for her hard work and dedication to husband and family, she was rewarded with a ten-year decline with Alzheimer's Disease before she died.
For me, full independence and the single life were still considered to be for those women who could "find" a husband. I was encouraged to get an education, but most of the girls in my all-girls college were husband hunting. They saw their job as the "woman behind the man." Most of them married; many worked. Those whose marriages didn't last felt and probably still feel like failures.
My daughter has escaped that. She lives in a world where marriage and children are choices, and a woman who chooses to live alone is not considered a spinster who has something wrong with her. While women still do not make dollar for dollar what men earn in the job market, women are moving into all aspects of the job market, so this too will change. The professional woman, the woman who is "boss" is not longer the anomaly. And slowly, women are moving further and further into the political arena where their voices will make the biggest impact.
So while I still worry that my daughter will be "alone" in her old age, I realize that most of us are. She has a career, is financially stable, and has a lovely group of friends who care about her. And while I miss not having those grandchildren I dreamed about for decades, I do have some demanding, yet adorable, cats, and there are plenty more out there looking for some love and attention.
The world changes. It doesn't belong to us alone.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/5/
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