MOM'S ROLE HAS CHANGED DRASTICALLY
It wasn't so much a “down tools” moment as it was a slow realization that she didn't like the direction things were going.
What brought it to a head was the weather. It had rained and she had apologized for the rain.
Plans had to be cancelled and there was disappointment.
I'm sorry about the rain, she said.
Her husband and her three kids all accepted her apology.
That's because in some esoteric way, she was responsible for everything, even the weather.
Wife and mother: a huge, but sometimes, narrow job title.
Her name is Margaret. She wasn't just a good wife and a good mother, she was a happy wife and mother.
Well, mostly.
She'd married a great guy but she'd been young, just 21.
It was 1953 and that was the norm.
Back then, if you wanted to go out, you needed to be paired up. There was little social life on offer for the unaccompanied. Margaret and, let's call him Ed, found themselves coupled up in order to be allowed admittance. It didn't take long for Margaret to see Ed's many fine qualities.
Margaret was pretty and she was clever, but she had no great ambition in life. She hadn't gone on past high school, but then, few women did. It was simply assumed she'd marry and raise a family. That was the standard objective. A life that wasn't a replica of the life her parents had provided was beyond Margaret's comprehension. She would become her mother.
When Ed and Margaret married, she elected to remove the word “obey” from her vows.
Ed didn't object, but the omission registered with their friends and family. By Margaret's 22nd birthday, she was a mother. In short order, two more kids arrived.
Ed proved to be an ideal husband and father. Margaret had no complaints.
But she had inklings of complaints.
Her world, she sensed, was becoming repetitive and growing smaller.
There has to be more to life than just this, she found herself thinking. She chafed under the narrowness of her role.
The '60s came along and women everywhere were starting to read Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Their message resonated with Margaret. Her husband went on business trips. He went on sailing trips. He had his work. Margaret had the kids and the kitchen, but she had little idea of who she really was; of whom she might have been.
One day she announced to her husband that she was going to go on a trip.
“An excellent idea,” was his rejoinder.
“Where are we going?”
“Oh no,” said Margaret. “We aren't going anywhere. This is my trip.”
“I'll help you plan it,” he said. “Oh no, I'd like to do it all myself.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
And because she couldn't think of anywhere to go, Margaret said the first place that came to mind. “New York City.”
And so Margaret went.
She had never been anywhere all by herself.
She booked flights and she hailed cabs.
She checked into a hotel and saw the sights.
She ate dinner alone in the hotel restaurant.
She was thoroughly miserable. At one hotel, the desk clerk asked her, Miss or Missus?
Margaret bristled and asked why the clerk hadn't asked the man checking in just before her what his marital status was. The clerk raised his eyebrows and wrote down “Mrs.”
Margaret figured that the clerk reasoned that only a married woman would be that testy.
In the course of those 10 days, Margaret realized that what she'd been looking for was her voice.
She'd happily assumed the mantle of wife and mother, but she'd lost Margaret in the process.
Margaret returned home from her trip with a different perspective. It might be viewed as a small thing, but, to her, that solo trip was epic. She recognized that she was the linchpin in every equation — that she could be held accountable for just about everything, including the weather — but that she could redefine her role as wife and mother. When she returned home, she discovered that her family had learned how to iron, how to cook, how to take responsibility for themselves.
It was a start. Margaret is now 90.
That trip, she says, was a turning point in her life. It was, she says, the moment she found her voice.
This is a small story, but it's interesting to consider on Mother's Day. Today, women have a great deal of latitude. Within these new latitudes, however, expectations have been hugely expanded. The job of motherhood is now tougher than it's ever been.
Hats off to all the mothers out there.
Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes on The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane's up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com