I grew up with a hybrid of family life. Until I was eight years old my mother and father had a very typical American marriage. He was the “breadwinner” who went to work each day while my mother stayed home caring for the children and the house. When my father died leaving my thirty year old mom to keep us afloat things suddenly changed. I saw two sides of a woman’s role. One was quite traditional and the other was cutting edge. 

Few women worked outside of the home in the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. I remember being curious about one of our neighbors who worked as a lawyer. She was so different from the other ladies who lived near us. For some reason she took an interest in me and sometimes invited me to her home for tea time and conversation. She showed me how to play chess and encouraged me to study and consider attending college one day. I liked her confident air and the interesting topics that she discussed when I visited. She seemed more like my father than my mother at the time. The idea of one day holding down a full time job like the men became fixed in my mind. 

Before my father died my mother adhered to a daily and weekly routine that may as well have been a paid job. Each day was filled with tasks designed to keep the household running smoothly. She stopped from time to time to have a coffee break with a lady friend or to talk with one of her sisters on the phone, but mostly she worked around a regular schedule that kept the house tidy and in good repair. She often used her work to teach me how to properly clean, sew, cook, and mend broken items. I became an expert at making a bed, folding clothes, creating a straight seam on cloth before I even started school. 

My mother suggested that when I was older and married that I should halt my labors each day to make myself presentable for my husband. She showed me how to brush my hair and use some perfume to smell nice. Then she insisted that when the man came home it was my role to be pleasant and loving. She suggested that I keep discussions of bad news for later in the evening rather than blurting out negativity as soon as my husband walked in the door. Hers was a very traditional role followed my women for ages. 

When my father died everything changed. I watched my mother morph into an even more impressive version of the neighbor who had once so impressed me. Mama was in charge of everything so unimportant tasks were pushed to the side. She became the family provider, accountant, head of household. Even her advice for me changed. She began to encourage me to get an education, obtain skills that would allow me to work. She taught me how to do the things that had traditionally been the duties of men. She insisted that I be an equal partner in a marriage rather than playing a more servile role. She prepared me for the women’s movement of the sixties and seventies without ever thinking of herself as a liberated woman. 

I adopted a free spirit with abandon. I was lucky to find a spouse who encouraged me to first be my own person. I kept attending school to earn undergraduate and advanced degrees. I worked outside of the home and shared in duties that women had once surrendered to men. We made important decisions together and encouraged our daughters to be bold. I knew that there were times when I made men of an older generation uncomfortable. In particular my father-in-law would sometimes insist that I did not know my proper place in a marriage. 

I was part of a movement that toppled so many of the stereotypes of women. I was ambitious and outspoken in a time when not everyone my age was adopting such a progressive stance. My friend, Marita, invited me to accompany her to a convention of feminists that featured some of the trend setters of the time. She and I spoke of the balancing act that women would need to learn if we were to demonstrate that it was possible to maintain a good marriage, home and relationship with our children all at the same time. We were learning how to accomplish things that had rarely been done in the past. 

I used examples from the neighbor who had so intrigued me when I was a child and mostly realized how strong and intelligent my mother had been when she did all the heavy lifting for our family. I drew on their wisdom and somehow made it work even as I sometimes worried that I may have slighted my husband and my children now and again with my devotion to developing myself. I learned that it takes team effort to make men and women equal partners in a family. Somehow we adjusted even when the going got tough. 

Today seven out of every ten married women work outside the home. Girls are educated in subjects once thought to be the domain of the boys. Women are free to voice their own beliefs and even get their own avenues of credit. Women can also stay at home if they so wish, but nobody is simply expecting them to do so. They enjoy the freedom of choice that women of my mother’s era so infrequently saw. Not surprisingly families are still doing well and girls in particular are encouraged to dream as big as the boys do. 

Since my father-in-law has come to live with us I often defer to his routines which were built around the same ways of doing things that my mother did so well before my father died. Each evening my father-in-law convenes with us at the dining table where we speak of pleasantries before eating dinner. He has marveled at the independence of my two daughters, his granddaughters and mentioned that they were the change makers. My husband laughs and gives me a knowing look and we just let it go. It’s difficult for an older man to understand the earthquake that changed the world in my generation, but my mother-in-law certainly knew what was happening and she quietly encouraged me to topple the status quo. 

The opportunities for women are limitless today and that is a wonderful thing. At long last we mostly seem to understand that our baby girls are just as capable as our boys. We’ve come a long way and there should be no turning back!