Mission no longer impossible - or is it?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 24, 1997 | by Suzanne Fields

Four decades ago Betty Friedan, in her groundbreaking book, The Feminine Mystique, wrote about women who suffer "a problem that had no name." They were sick and tired of being sick and tired of having no identity to call their own: "The problem is always being the children's mommy, or the minister's wife, and never being myself." One woman described her situation as living in a "comfortable concentration camp."

There's a new problem without a name now and it's a mare of another color. Women are complaining about work and writing about it. Elizabeth Perle McKenna left a high-powered position in publishing to search for the neglected parts of her life. In writing When Work Doesn't Work Anymore, she found lots of baby boomers like herself who had bought into what they call the New Oppression -- hard-earned success. The symptoms include burnout, boredom and lack of balance.

The boomers are the polar opposites of Friedan's suburban housewives. Typical then was the mother of four who complained that she'd tried everything -- hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, socializing with neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I love the kids and Bob and my home," she said. "There's no problem you can even put a name to. But I'm desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality."

How spoiled this woman can sound to a young mother today, who has to work to support her family and who would be thrilled to have the time to garden and can fruits and vegetables. But she sounds no more spoiled than the new whiners who complain that they're undervalued by their bosses, unfulfilled by their careers and enraged by workaholic lives where they must always hide their inner feelings. Who ever said work would be easy? (Certainly not a man.)

"I became the title on my business card," says one woman. "And while it was never a totally comfortable fit, I gauged it to be an essential part of my wardrobe, like panty hose or a brief case." She learned not to protest having to work on Saturday when there was a strategic-planning meeting, instead of taking the kids to a matinee, and never to refuse to work late. She learned to stay cool in the face of office politics and backstabbing.

With the hindsight that comes from living with half a loaf, rather than talking about what women want, even Gloria Steinem chastises these boomer women. "If I had a dollar for every time we said you couldn't do it all, I'd be rich," she says. "Look at me, I don't have it all; I never had or wanted children. And I know I couldn't have done what I have with my life if I'd had them." (So that's what she meant when she said "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.")

Iris Krasnow, formerly a feature writer for United Press International, who interviewed the rich and the famous and gave it all up to raise a family, tells a different tale. In Surrendering to Motherhood (to raise four sons), she writes that she found spiritual fulfillment and deep satisfaction in newly acquired domesticity. As a full-time mother she enjoys "the liberation that comes from the sheer act of living itself."

Friedan has discovered a new "paradigm," too. In her book, Beyond Gender, she calls for moving beyond identity politics to reframe family values in the interest of putting children first.

Two boomer ladies, Barbara McFarland and Virginia Watson-Rouslin, agree. They've rediscovered their mothers' wisdom, written about it in a new book called simply, My Mother Was Right, and offer this insight: "It is now occurring to us that the person we rebelled against, whom we used as a role model of how we would not like to lead our lives and who upheld outmoded ideas on the place a woman should take in society and how she would behave ... may not have been entirely wrong."

What goes around comes around.

When columnist Hall Lancaster asked his Wall Street Journal readers to help him craft a mission statement, referring to ends and goals in life, love and work, more than 200 readers wrote about what sounds like a mission impossible. The tsunami of advice ranged from "obtaining eternal bliss to losing 20 pounds by Christmas" to "the astral projection route." For some readers it was all a matter of business procedures. Others emphasized dreams, visions, values, instincts and purpose. Some suggested he write his own obituary and still others told him to return to the pleasures of childhood.

He finally settled on the two aspects that are most important to him--his writing and his family: "My mission is to enlighten and entertain people through my writing and to help provide a life for my family that is emotionally and financially secure, loving, learning and fun."

So true. Doesn't that sound just like a woman?