My mother

[no_hypocrisy]

My mother attended Barnard College at age 16 after 3-1/2 years at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn. She graduated in 1948. She then got her masters degree at Wellesley College, graduating in 1950.

She married at age 24 in 1952 and had me as her first child in 1957.

While Mom was proud of her education, it got buried under the responsibilities of wife of a doctor, mother of 3 children, and head housekeeper of a 14-room house. She wanted to work but Dad wouldn't let her.

I felt that Mom was robbed of her achievements because of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. I now feel it acutely.

I did a name search of my mother on newspapers.com. Dozens of articles about her achievements, her leadership, her awards at Barnard College. And she couldn't bask in it once she got married. Almost like it never happened.

My heart aches as I read one article after another and I feel humbled at my opportunities to choose to do with my life that were denied to her. I know, I know. She chose to get married. But I believe that she thought it would be different for her because she had as much (if not more) education than my father.

I'm reminded of the movie, Mona Lisa Smile. The setting was a Wellesley just two years after Mom got her masters. I'm shaking my head. I want to talk to her, but she's been gone since 2003.

[SummerSnow]

1. Thanks for sharing,your mother left you an amazing legacy

[MontanaMama]

2. Oh my.

Your mom must have been an incredible person. Your mother did make choices but that doesn't make it okay that her brilliance was dimmed by the times in which she lived or her husband or anything else. Keeping her memory alive by remembering and honoring her achievements is wonderful. I'm very sorry for your loss.

In this same thought vein, I can remember feeling my oats and new found independence as a young college student in the early 80's. My mother would smile wryly and say to me " I know things look bright now but please remember that our fight for equality isn't over...not even clos...you'll know that someday". I thought she was being dramatic. She was right and I was wrong. Our fight isn't anywhere near being over. While I had a very conflicted relationship with my mom my whole life, I so wish she were still here so that I could tell her how right she was.

Thanks for your post!

[shenmue]

3. ...

[Bluepinky]

4. An amazing woman, so smart and capable.

She was lucky she lived much of her life when women were considered “sacred”.



I have a friend who’s mom was in a similar situation. She was an intellectually brilliant woman who had to give it up after she married and had four children. She never complained about it, but at the same time, she never quite fit in with other local moms. She took to expressing herself through art. My friend’s mom is also no longer living.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Thank you for sharing this.

Back in her day a woman who married and had children was then almost always locked into being a wife and mother. "Career women", invariably single, were universally scorned and looked down upon.

Not only Mona Lisa Smile, but both the movie The Best of Everything (1959) based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Rona Jaffe clearly depict what it was like in that era. You also get a pretty accurate picture of the time in the show Mad Men, even though that takes place a bit later. Through the 1960's women could work or get married and have children. By the time I entered the workforce in 1966, the typical working path was to get a job and work until you got married. Then, it was more typical to work until you got pregnant with the first child. Yeah, there have always been women with children who worked, but they were for a very long time not seen as the norm and were largely ignored.

There has been an unfortunate reversal in opinion in that these days a stay at home mom is often scorned.

[MLAA]

6. Wonderful, what a woman! You inherited some good genes I'd say.