This Woman's Movement

I don't quite get it--another double standard.  

Who were the women talked about and recognized by the speeches, at the Women's March in DC?

Susan B. Anthony.  Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug?  Was Kellyanne Conway recognized as a woman who had achieved something no other woman had achieved?  She is the very first woman in history to organize and run a winning Presidential campaign.  Was she praised and recognized on Saturday, for her accomplishment?  Probably not.

Back in the day, while I was reading "The Total Woman", those early feminists were reading "The Second Sex".  Then they started telling me, on the TV programs, that I was "unfulfilled."  After all, I was just a housewife and mother.  I needed a career, outside the home, to really find all my potential and be fulfilled.

Then the whole premise of "choice" came up.   A woman has a choice to do whatever she wants with her body.  Well, yes, I agree.  When it comes to what she wears, or piercings, or tattoos, or hair style.  I can't begin to tell you how thankful I am that abortion was not legal in Michigan when I was having children!

I got pregnant 2 months before I graduated from high school.  My Dad was pushing me to get an abortion.  My Aunt, a nurse, knew a doctor that would do it.  I was told that foregoing college and having the child would, "ruin your life."  I stood fast and did not kill my son--the only son I would ever have.   Then, when I found out I was pregnant again, so soon, I tried everything I knew to have a miscarriage.  I jogged, I jumped off the porch, I took hot baths and laxatives.  I so did not want to be pregnant.

If, in those first few weeks, there was a way to have an abortion in Michigan, in those first few weeks, I just might have killed my first daughter.  Because, in those first few weeks, it really isn't a baby--there is no heart beating, right?  It's just a mass of cells that could be swept away by a simple D&C.

I had no such thoughts with my third child, but 10 years later, when I was pregnant again, thankfully abortion wasn't legal in Michigan, because I was pressured by my husband and step-mother--"There are easy ways to get rid of it."  

Abortion was then legal in New York.  My husband had it all figured out.  We would travel to New York, I would have "it" done and we would spend the weekend there.  A fun time.  I refused.

This was the only baby I had planned.  Wanted more than anything.  Had prayed for.

Two weeks later, he brought up the subject again.  If I didn't go along with his choice, he would leave me.  I refused and he did.  

The funny thing is, I knew I was pregnant, but the pregnancy tests the doctor ran said, I wasn't.  So I told my husband about the tests, and 5 weeks later he came back home.  Every month, I had a pregnancy test and it came back negative.  It was only at the four and a half month stage that I felt "life".  I went back, told the doctor, he said, "Either you are pregnant or you have the fastest growing tumor I have ever seen."  AHA!   Thankfully, the doctor didn't suggest we "remove" the tumor.

Too late now to spend a weekend in New York.  No ultra sounds back then to see what was going on inside.  Four and a half months later, a beautiful 9# 4 oz. baby girl was born.   Her Dad loved her immediately. 

So when the feminists talk about choice, Yes--we have a choice and I made mine.  I, like many of my friends, choose to get an education, married and have our children.  THEN--when the children were in school all day, if we chose--we went to work and had our "fulfilling" careers.  Or, if we chose, we waited until the last one graduated and still very young, in our early 40's, we had careers.

I did get far more praise and recognition when I went to "work", than I ever did being a housewife and Mother.  What is more important?  The money you make for the company you work for, or raising loving, confident, well adjusted children?

I can honestly tell you, I NEVER felt unfulfilled by choosing to stay home and be a housewife and mother, in fact, it was far more fulfilling than the years I spent out there in the work force.

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Then the feminists campaigned that women must be equal to men.  Well, that's just baloney!  Women are far superior to men and always have been!  My mantra to my girls, "Don't ever lower yourself to be equal to a man.  Our bodies, our way of thinking and doing things, our way of speaking and living are far above what any man is capable of doing."

I also told them, "When it comes to your education and career, you can be and do anything you choose to do."  and they did.  

One choose to marry young and be a housewife and mother.  After 5 miscarriages, she chose to help her Grandfather on the farm and found great joy in that.  She knew how to plow the straightest furrow, birth a calf, milk the cows and even took a class with her Grandfather, on artificial insemination.  So she can plant the "seeds" for that calf and then help birth it.

The next one, chose to get a college education, marry young, have 5 children, home school them, and then, when they started high school, get her Master's and teach full-time.

The next one, took my words to heart.  She chose to get her college education, then spend a year in Spain, then move to Boston where she knew no one, and get her PhD in Juris Prudence.  Then marry, have children and work as an attorney.  She always said, "I'll work for a few years, then stay home with the kids."  She didn't.  She missed out on a lot of their firsts. Her Nanny got to experience all of that.  Now the kids are going to be graduating in the next few years and she may be realizing what she missed.  She didn't really have much of a choice because her job basically maintained her family. 
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To my way of thinking, I am the lucky one.  Thank you so much Gloria for stirring up my life by telling me I wasn't fulfilled as a woman.  If I had a career, early on in my adult life, would I now have more money to live on--a nice pension.  Probably.  But you know what, I don't have any lingering regrets and thoughts about, "I wonder what that mass of cells might have been."   

I saw every "first" my children did.  I was a Room Mother I made more dang cupcakes for the class parties then I care to remember.  I was a PTO member.  I was on the Curriculum Committee at the high school, when the men on that committee thought it was ridiculous to equip the school library with two computers--the school principal and I won that fight!  I worked with the Little League Baseball and 4-H softball programs.  

When the school didn't have a bus they could use to take the girls to their Cross Country tracks meets, I loaded those kids in my 7 passenger station-wagon and drove them wherever their meets were.  The same with the Freshmen boys baseball team.

I chaperoned high school dances and set up the school's annual carnival.  I worked Friday night fish fry's for the band--although the smell of frying fish made me gag. My barn was where the kids made their Homecoming floats and I sat with them and made big flower decorations out of tissue paper.  I sewed uniforms for the newly organized Flag Girls for the marching band because there wasn't enough money in the band's budget.   

Would I have had time to sit in a protest or march with a placard?  Oh hell no!  I was way too busy living my unfulfilled life!!! 

Do women have a choice?  Sure--we always have!  What I don't like is trying to force "their" choice onto me, by telling me I am not quite as intelligent or as important as they are.  (I have actually been called "stupid" on Face Book by a few of my Liberal female friends, because I may have disagreed with their political views.)  

Hey--you do your thing, okay?  I'm not going to tell you that your choice is wrong--for you.  Just give me some respect for the choices I made and remember, it was your Mother who gave you the choices you now have.