Ann Friedman reviews Gail Collins‘ new book When Everything Changed:
My upbringing was something of an anachronism. My dad went to work every morning at the family business (where his father and grandfather had both worked), and my mom spent her days at home with me and my brother and sister. She made us breakfast, drove us to school, did all of the housework, picked us up, shuttled us to piano lessons or basketball practice, and when my dad came through the door again at 6 P.M., she had a solid, Midwestern dinner (meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread — sometimes all combined conveniently in casserole form) ready and waiting. My parents rarely, if ever, fought in front of us. We went to church every single Sunday, no exceptions. That’s the way it was for all 18 years of my childhood. And as far as I’m aware, my parents were both happy with this arrangement.
Even though I was born in 1982, I grew up much the same way both of my parents did in the late 1950s and 1960s — but very differently from the majority of my peers. At 27, I’m in the middle of the generation that is the subject of Kathleen Gerson’s book, The Unfinished Revolution. American men and women who are between ages 18 and 32 have “no well-worn paths to follow” when it comes to navigating the complexities of career and family, Gerson says, because of economic and social shifts that have made the male-breadwinner, female-caretaker model nearly obsolete. Even women who were raised in such an arrangement, like me, understand that work will be a part of the rest of their life, for both personal fulfillment and economic reasons. Across race, class, and gender lines, my generation sees work as absolutely key. This is perhaps why those of us who were raised by stay-at-home moms are much more likely than children raised by working mothers to feel conflicted about our mother’s choice. The majority of us don’t desire that life for ourselves.
