What Do Women Want?

I recently got an e-mail from a high school friend whom I thought did it all right. Still married to the same guy, four grown kids, a successful small business, active in her community. She was our Senior Prom Queen too. What could be better?

So imagine my surprise when she wrote she sometimes feels like an alien among the women in her world -- the ladies who lunch. When she both lunches and manages.
Which just goes to show no one’s life is as good – or as bad – as we imagine.

My friend said it’s not only the women in her world who don’t understand her – but the men as well. Men who are more comfortable with the stereotypical and predictable.

So where does that leave me? The one who has always been different? Oh sure – I too was once a teenager-lemming- wanna-be. But I never quite fit in – and eventually I grew up and learned to be comfortable just being “me”.

I probably could have been a lot more successful if I had been more like other women -- with an “I’m no threat to anyone” attitude. What is that old saying – you catch more flies with honey? Ah well. I was more into red hot chili peppers. So I and others like me fought hard for the rights of all women to be equal to men socially and professionally. And for awhile it seemed to be working for all of us. There were even men comfortable enough with themselves to be comfortable with us. I am still married to one of them.

But unfortunately today's educated younger women don’t seem to care at all about their rights – except for the one that lets them chuck it all and stay home with their kids while their husbands work 16 hour days. Deja vue all over again. 50’s redux.

A recent New York Times article was eye-opening. It quoted the best and the brightest Yalies talking about their goals: working for a few years, having kids and then staying home. Probably permanently.
Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood

Someone ought to warn them that doors tend to close if someone doesn't prop them open. Someone ought to warn them that husbands sometimes lose their jobs and marriages sometimes shatter into divorce, abuse, illness or death. Leaving the wife and mom to make her way as best she can in the real world she so cavalierly left behind.

Strangely – it was my mother who told me all these things. My pampered mother – who somehow found a way to survive in a man’s world and was determined her daughter would be able to do it better.