Having been born 85 years ago, I remember many irrelevant "facts." If you don't get married, it behooves you to be a schoolmarm. Women are better with children than men, that's why they are teachers and not airline pilots, judges (fill in the slots.) Poppycock!
I congratulate young women of today who walk, dress, and talk as though they are as important as the other gender in this world. But biology speaks. Not to bore you with gynecological details, I'll just say "I'm childless." By the time I was 30 I was used to it, and didn't mumble when someone asked me about my children. I've been a step-mother. That's a hard role to fill. When I had a chance, I tried to be constructive. But it's not a major part of my life with my late husband. For most of our 40 something years together, we were just a couple in our house.
Not changing diapers and wiping little noses, I think maybe I compensated by watching how other women associated with their children. And I realize there are cases where mother/child relations may almost have a role-reversal. A glaring example is what Gloria Steinem experienced. Less critical is what I call the Rose Kennedy manifesto. She was quoted as saying that if you work hard with the first one, the rest will be taken care of. I assume that includes "watch the little kids." Once in church the smaller daughter was making noise. She was there with her older sister and their mother. After the service, Mother was scolding No 1 for not keeping No. 2 quiet.Without saying this is a common condition, I would aver that girls too young to understand what motherhood does to them are likely to have a hidden resentment against their forsaken girlhood.I wondered what that mother's family history was.
Since this group is so involved in cultural issues, it seems appropriate to consider how adults can be more influential in teen culture. Not the rant variety of blaming the entertainment world for seducing youth.
During a Mexican revolution (not quite sure which one) illiteracy was attacked by "each one teach one." In the same way, I do now, and in the past, feel that adult women have a challenge to mentor a young girl who seems ready for woman talk, more effective than prattle found in larger groups. Perhaps I understand this so well, because I was a total hayseed when I left the range in Wyoming to attend the University in Iowa. In the 1940s we were not so overcrowded that professors' wives and some female professors couldn't see students with rough edges. It was not just about sex and pregnancy (those days having sex usually guaranteed pregnancy), but what part we played in society as a whole.
Now I close before I tell the story of a little neighbor girl who has made my life richer from the time she was in the third-grade until now in her 20s. She's not the only youngster who has made me a smarter person, but she is one who stuck around to keep on challenging me.