‘Just because my dreams are different ,doesn’t mean they are unimportant.’
~Little Women.
I’ve read a few articles in preparation for this blog post…but I don’t like any of them. They’re all so factual and abstract. But I’ve only read like three of them so I don’t think it’s fair to make that judgement. I want to talk about this from my perspective and for me, it started when I was really young. When I was about eleven or twelve, I watched the women around me. Women from church, neighbors, my mom’s friends, my teachers, my aunts, all of them. And I remember this one day… I was walking home and I could overhear my neighbors talking really loud about nothing in particular. It was a group of five maybe six women. I was twelve and I was angry at them for settling…for not wanting more for themselves.
Here’s the thing, I had grown up watching a lot of movies, movies where I had watched women be surgeons and lawyers and spies and computer hackers. And I remember thinking that I could be all of those things too. At first, I thought it was only acting because I had never seen actual women achieve that level of success. But then the internet got better and I realized that people actually are these things. It occurred to me that if there are women who have it all, you know, they are doctors and scientists and so much more, then the women who weren’t had made the choice not to be.
In retrospect, I was such a little brat. I’m twenty now. I know things now. I know that most of them didn’t have a choice. I know that most of them gave up higher education to be mothers and wives. I know that some of them couldn’t afford to. I know that some of them, didn’t know how. I know that society built this mold of what they were supposed to be and that they had no choice but to fit into it. I know what is said about the women who chose their careers over their families. I know how women who put their careers first feel. I know both sides now. As I grow up, and especially in the last few months, even at twenty, I know how difficult a choice it is to make.
And for some of you, it might not be as puzzling as it is for me. Let’s do the math…If I want to pursue my career fully I’ll have to put off starting a family for a while. I know how that sounds but listen, I can’t be a wife and mother and still travel around the world at a moment’s notice. It’s also instinctive, I have to be there for my kids fully because if I’m not, then what’s the point of having them anyway? On the flipside, I want to achieve the highest level of success in my career. I really do. But I want to have a family too someday. And I know you’re probably saying it’s 2024, and I can do both. But you need to understand that no matter the choice, I sacrifice something. If I choose my career, I sacrifice being a good mother. The time I put in my work means less time with my kids. But if I choose a family, of course I still get my career, but not at the level I’d want to be. And realizing all this, I look at my mom now and I wonder what she had to give up. I wonder what she had to sacrifice…how I’ll never know what choices she didn’t pick.
When I think of hyper-independence in women, that’s what I think about. The world has always consisted of patriarchal societies regardless of the culture. There’s only a handful of cultures where women led. And for so long, women couldn’t go to school or vote or participate in any important decisions in society. They were just women…left to cook and clean and take care of families. When women fought for equal rights, men said okay…but on one condition, they had to prove they could do everything. They had to prove that they could go to work and still take care of their kids. They had to prove that they were competent enough to make political decisions and still be submissive wives. They had to prove that all their responsibilities, both old and new, could co-exist successfully. This is what women have done for many generations, especially today. We have more single-parent families now more than ever where the mother is left to raise the children on her own. The disappointment from everyone around us has caused a mentality where we learn to depend solely on ourselves.
It’s difficult to tell whose fault it is. And as much as I would love to blame men for this, it would be unfair to. I think it’s something that has been deeply embedded in our history, passed on from one generation to the next. Every subsequent generation of women expected to be better than the last but still maintain the same responsibilities their great-great-great-great grandmother had. Maybe not the exact same, but you get my point. They’re just the same responsibilities in a different font. It’s an unrealistic expectation to put on us. But it’s not going away any time soon. In all honesty, I expect my daughter to be greater than I ever will be. Same goes for every parent. But I don’t want her to go through the same things I have. I don’t want her to have to make the same choices I made or my mom made. But I can’t control that. I can’t single-handedly solve hyper-independence. I wouldn’t even know where to start.