Hope Springs Eternal

My grandmother’s generation got the vote. My generation fought for equal rights and both were necessary changes, but there was a price to be paid for both.

Women do not necessarily do things the same way men do, but they can do most of the same things. Small men cannot lift like large men, so size is an arbitrary thing that is not necessarily related to gender and both of us have minds. Still whenever there is no pattern for dealing with new and radical changes someone pays a price and this time it was the children.

Our generation had more divorce than the ones before it. I believe there was probably more open discord in marriages too. Many women no longer felt the need to kowtow to over bearing husbands and many husbands no longer felt the need to baby wives. Finding the balance during periods of radical change is always difficult. People tend to go to extremes in their search for common ground.

Add the drug culture from the sixties, the ideas of communal and free love and a whole generation was turned topsy-turvy. It’s not the first time in history, but possibly the first time that so many people across the board sacrificed their children’s security for so many things at once.

Now these children are starting families of their own and I am heartened by their attempts to give their children what they feel was lacking in their childhood. I see them placing the welfare of their children above and beyond personal desires and I believe this is a good thing. Children are a choice.

My son, a young attorney who struggled to put himself through law school, put it this way. “When we decided to have a baby, we knew things were going to change. Why have a child if you are going to give it to someone else to raise? Some people do not have a choice, but we do. By tightening our belts we can give this new human being the start she deserves if we are going to bring her into this world.”

His wife makes much much more than he does, so he is taking the first five years off to stay home with their child. A huge decision, but one he made freely, knowing it will put his status as a trial attorney on hold and maybe even end it altogether.

The trials and tribulations of our generation are paying off in a new generation of men and women, fathers and mothers, able to look at what we did and make educated changes. From the father who simply insists on getting his share of time with his children in spite of a divorce to parents consciously deciding what kind of life they can give their child, I see hope across the board.