The sins of our feminist mothers

[Rahima]

The sins of our feminist mothers

By Virginia Haussegger

July 23 2002

 

The Age newspaper-Australia.

 

A few years ago, in my mid-30s, had I heard Malcolm Turnbull pontificate about the need to encourage Australians to marry younger and have more children ("The crisis is fertility, not ageing", on this page last Tuesday), I would have thumped him, kneed him in the groin, and bawled him out.

 

How dare he - a rich father of two, with perfect wife and perfect life - presume for a moment to tell women, thriving at the peak of our careers, that we should stop, marry, and procreate. The sheer audacity of it.

 

Yet another male conspiracy, a conservative attempt to dump women out of the workplace and back into the home. A neat male arrangement: a good woman to run the household, and a workplace less cluttered with female competition.

 

A win-win for patriarchy. And precisely the kind of society I was schooled against.

 

As we worked our way through high school and university in the '70s and early '80s, girls like me listened to our mothers, our trailblazing feminist teachers, and the outspoken women who demanded a better deal for all women. They paved the way for us to have rich careers.

 

They anointed us and encouraged us to take it all. We had the right to be editors, paediatricians, engineers, premiers, executive producers, High Court judges, CEOs etc. We were brought up to believe that the world was ours. We could be and do whatever we pleased.

 

Feminism's hard-fought battles had borne fruit. And it was ours for the taking.

 

Or so we thought - until the lie of super "you-can-have-it-all" feminism hits home, in a very personal and emotional way.

 

We are the ones, now in our late 30s and early 40s, who are suddenly sitting before a sheepish doctor listening to the words: "Well, I'm sorry, but you may have left your run too late. Women at your age find it very difficult to get pregnant naturally, and unfortunately the success rate of IVF for a 39-year-old is around one in five - and dropping. In another 12 months you'll only have a 6 per cent chance of having a baby. So given all the effort and expense, do you really want to go through with this? Why don't you go home and think it through? But don't leave it too long - your clock is ticking." Then he adds for comic value, "And don't forget, the battery is running low!"

 

For those of us who listened to our feminist foremothers' encouragement; waved the purple scarves at their rallies; read about and applauded the likes of Anne Summers, Kate Jennings, Wendy McCarthy, Jocelyn Scutt, Morag Fraser, Joan Kirner, Elizabeth Proust etc (all strong examples of successful working women); for those of us who took all that on board and forged ahead, crashed through barriers and carved out good, successful and even some brilliant careers; we're now left - many of us at least - as premature "empty nesters".

 

We're alone, childless, many of us partnerless, or drifting along in "permanent temporariness", as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman so aptly put it in a recent Age article by Anne Manne to describe the somewhat ambiguous, uncommitted type of relationship that seems to dominate among childless, professional couples in their 30s and 40s.

 

The point is that while encouraging women in the '70s and '80s to reach for the sky, none of our purple-clad, feminist mothers thought to tell us the truth about the biological clock. Our biological clock. The one that would eventually reach exploding point inside us.

 

Maybe they didn't think to tell us, because they never heard the clock's screaming chime. They were all married and knocked-up by their mid-20s. They so desperately didn't want the same for us.

 

And none of our mothers thought to warn us that we would need to stop, take time out and learn to nurture our partnerships and relationships. Or if they did, we were running too fast to hear it.

 

For those of us that did marry, marriage was perhaps akin to an accessory. And in our high-disposable-income lives, accessories pass their use-by date, and are thoughtlessly tossed aside. Frankly, the dominant message was to not let our man, or any man for that matter, get in the way of career and our own personal progress.

 

The end result: here we are, supposedly "having it all" as we edge 40; excellent education; good qualifications; great jobs; fast-moving careers; good incomes; and many of us own the trendy little inner-city pad we live in. It's a nice caffe-latte kind of life, really.

 

But the truth is - for me at least - the career is no longer a challenge, the lifestyle trappings are joyless (the latest Collette Dinnigan frock looks pretty silly on a near-40-year-old), and the point of it all seems, well, pointless.

 

I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase.

 

It was wrong. It was crap. And Malcolm Turnbull has a point. God forbid!

 

Virginia Haussegger is ABC TV news presenter in the ACT. She has been a television journalist for 15 years, hosting the 7.30 Report in various states and reporting for the Channel Seven's Witness and Channel Nine's A Current Affair.

[Baashi]

Timely article Rahima Virginia Haussegger is mad at feminist poineers but I gotta hunch that some of our late bloomers r mad in everything man Dang! She is right on the money wallahi.

[-Serenity-]

Whats so timely about it Baashi? There are no middle-aged-childless-high-flying-Xalimos on this site.

 

The way I see it, we all have our regrets. Her personal opinion is not a reflection of every 40-something woman neither is it consensus to go by.

 

[Final_Say]

biiskina when i read it the first time i though u were talking about ur self Rahima;

 

then i though no, scrolled up and got the picture;

 

yeah did u guys here that story of that 60yr old women that had (something or the other) and had a baby boy... by the time he is 10, she'll be long dead, pluz she nearly died given birth;

 

this is what i think everyone should do, even if u don't believe in love;

 

do ur thing, education watever..., by the time ur 22, get married, have couple kids in a row, get a muslim, live in nanny, do ur career, i prefer to enrol in islamic studies or something and get the husband to pay for it,and if he gets rude, u don't need him, u have ur education and experience to fall back on, kick him to the curb,

and work from home, he can have the kids for the weekend if he is nice

 

 

salamz

[Baashi]

Enchantment,

The article is insightful and timely. Insightful because educated, successful, working woman in her mid thirties has weighed the myth of feminism. She takes on feminists’ paradoxical and somewhat misplaced priorities. And she knocks down one by one. She touches on the biological clock - a no-no topic in some circles. Timely because nowadays the sisters have anything but negative stereotypes about men in general and their brothers in particular. Generalizations are imposing and overreaching wallahi. We Somali men are losers, abusers, qaat-chewers, uneducated, uncivilized, and list goes on. Sometimes you wonder what pushed some of you to the cliff to make such awful remarks. Btw, do u disagree with the author’s detailed write-up on the misplaced priorities preached by feminists.

[-Serenity-]

Yes Baashi, I’ve never agreed with the disgusting sermon those boot-wearing, bad haircut, fem-nazi, men bashing bigots out to spread lesbian love ever churned out. Indeed their priorities are messed up.

 

On another note: I took some Chinese inpired life test the other day and here is how my life priorities turned out.

 

Dignity - Family - Love - Career - Money.

 

Yes, even I was shocked. I love money.

[Baashi]

Who doesn't Ameen to that

 

Dignified, family-oriented, lovely and lovable, skilled, and pennywise laid back kinda lady is exactly what my cousin has been looking for for ages. He was thinking that all the good ones were taken like a good parking in a big city analogy . Is this you or is this what some Chinese fortune cookie has said about you

[-Serenity-]

Its what the cookie said. But I couldnt put those 5 words in any other order with reference to me. Maybe there are other things here and there that could fit in..

 

Whats your cousin got to offer?

[STOIC]

[Baashi]

I don't wanna speak for him you know. This tiger got it all His problem is he thinks there is a perfect woman out there. There he got it all wrong but kaala u sheeg adi...he sticks to his guns when it comes to the 'perfection' issue.

[-Serenity-]

Got it all? Thats not descriptive enough. However, he should demand all that he can give. Its all fair game.

 

Perfection is a myth. There are enough good women out there and not enough men to match them.

[Baashi]

Well I'm not good at description dept. but I'm sure you won't be disappointed if u r open for hook up

 

Why don't u update ur profile and give the lookers something to chew on...it will serve me too for I will have something to pass on to him.

 

Imagine the possibilities something good can happen.

[-Serenity-]

^ *I* do the picking. So feel free to e-mail me whateva you like

 

p.s. Rahima is prolly fuming with rage. We better quit the bidding.

 

I leave you with my signature... What do you think?

↕

[Pacifist]

^^^^ Kalei open the box U might hit the jackpot

Who said you can't have it all...But I would definately give everything up for the greatest gift Allah can give which is Children....While others would see success as the greatest accomplishment nothing tops little ones.

 

Good article, happens to a lot of people. Someone I know was like the above writer, she accomplished all she desired in her education and her business but when she realized it she passed her prime long time ago. You never know....

 

Good Reminder

[Baashi]

Do the picking but keep in mind this is a 2 way street .

 

Nop. Your signature is archaic and unoriginal. It equates (implicitly) being assertive, expressive, and independent with feminism.

 

My apologies to Rahima.