I often feel caught between the generations. I have many friends, now in their late 50s and 60s, who grew up as and still identify as ardent feminists. I also have two daughters and many younger friends who are strong and powerful but are much less likely to define themselves by the agenda of second wave feminists. In these differences in identity, I find certain tensions and judgments that interfere with intergenerational unity around “women’s issues”.
My age cohort (I recently turned 64) is perplexed, and sometime angry, about what is going on with younger women on a variety of issues relating to gender relations. Some of this confusion or judgment is based on cultural matters that on some level seem trivial but they touch a nerve with second wave feminists. Other matters go to the core of what second wave feminists held as core values.
Here are three examples of the tensions I have observed and the perspectives that underlie them:
(1) What’s with the return to big, fancy weddings, engagement parties and showers? When my generation got married, we struggled with what it meant for our individual freedom and identity. We wanted to be accepted as more than wives and mothers and did not want the fact of getting married to be the peak experience of our lives. We fell in love and chose to marry but played down all the rituals. Our weddings were simple and we rejected much of the public hoopla. So when our daughters and young friends revitalized many of these activities we wondered, don’t they get that there is more to a woman’s life than marriage?
What older women have trouble understanding is that the symbolism inherent in marriage does not have the same significance for this generation. Becoming a family is embraced with more joy and less ambivalence than it was for us. After all, there is more equality between men and women, people marry later, and women do not feel that they are giving up their identity to marry. Marriage is a great opportunity to celebrate!
(2) Why are so many well-educated, successful women dropping out or opting out from important work? (See The Opt Out Revolution, Session 2, Turn the Page). Nothing upsets second wave feminists more that this phenomenon. We worry that elite universities, professional schools and employers will return to the practice of not accepting women fully because they will believe that women will do less with the opportunities and training than men do. It feels like a new Betty Friedan (See Session 2 of Turn the Page for the first chapter of Feminine Mystique) will have to emerge in a few years to chronicle the new malaise of the highly educated mom at home and start a “new” women’s movement. Although the ability to stay at home is available only to those of some class privilege, it is precisely this group that has been afforded the most new opportunities.
Younger women who opt out feel that they are doing so because they live at a time when they have more choices. They express that they can succeed at work if they choose to do so but prefer to be home when they have children. Their work experiences prior to having children reflect the unfinished work revolution that was started in the Second Wave. Sure, they can succeed if they work as long and hard as men. But this involves much greater hours than were common 20 or 30 years ago. Child care is still inadequate and they are likely to be married to male colleagues who work very long hours. My generation thought that the work place would change more fundamentally to address the lives of working parents, but our efforts were clearly incomplete. There is very little belief that the workplace can change more fundamentally in the current generation and as result, not enough momentum and political will needed to change it.
(3) Why do younger men and women take reproductive choice for granted and see it as not very important on their list of concerns? We grew up at the dawn of the pill and before Rowe vs. Wade. We knew women who lost complete control over their lives due to unwanted pregnancies. We remember our friends who stood on corners to be picked up by strangers for illegal abortions. We saw choice as the most fundamental of women’s freedom. We wonder why younger men and women do not show more alarm over the threats present today. Just yesterday, a new anti-abortion provision was proposed in Congress that would set us way back on choice.
Younger men and women are much more ambivalent about abortion. They can’t imagine that the basic right to abortion will ever be taken away. It has always been available to them unless they are poor and can’t afford it or if they live in a state with such severe restrictions or lack of providers that it is unavailable.
They are also uncomfortable with the whole subject of abortion partly because technology lets them “see” their fetus almost immediately. They don’t relate to the previous generation’s rhetoric because it does not address their ambivalence which has been fanned by a strong anti-choice movement which has been present their entire lives.
These are just three areas where more understanding can lead to better, coordinated advocacy and action on behalf of women and men in new partnerships.
It’s inevitable that each generation rejects large parts of what came before it. This is always based on real differences in the environment and on a more fundamental need for each generation to make a distinctive mark on the world around it. And it automatically follows that this rejection is painful for elders who can feel unheard and unappreciated. This split is as predictable as the need of an adolescent to break from parents but like in any family, reconciliation based on understanding, mutual respect, and communication is desirable.
We need to bring different perspectives into our conversations, understand what came before and respect that a new generation has lived under different circumstances and must reframe the issues of gender relations in their own way. We need to be on each other’s sides more. After all, we’re stronger together.