This continues my tribute to a dying breed, a generation of women of sixty odd years ago whose contribution to the world has never been applauded neither has their pain, striving and sacrifice been acknowledged. They are the women who by their ordinary effortful lives facilitated the momentous shifts in human consciousness that allows the young women of today, their grand-children, to enjoy the freedom of choice about their lifestyles and their careers which the young could not imagine being without.
The way these women coped was truly heroic. They suffered the sudden erasure of what they thought were indelible rules for life along with the demolition of all their certainties. They maintained their commitment to motherhood, to doing the best by their husbands and children. This dedication and its significance for the generations that followed deserves to be valued and celebrated.
Not all the women of this time chose dedicated motherhood, of course. There were other trajectories, women who embraced the new freedom in different ways. Some found an explanation for or a freedom from marriages that were unsafe or unsatisfactory; some fulfilled dreams they thought could never come true and others thought there was more fun to be had ‘out there.’ That there suddenly was greater freedom of choice for women was a thing to be wondered at and rejoice in. My particular focus in this paper is on those who stayed in the traditional role trying to find their way through the newness and the confusion.
Watching a performance of The Glass Menagerie recently I was struck by the way the mother was mother, ordinary, that’s how mothers are – or were – in the 1930’s when the play was set. Good or not so good a mother there was an acknowledged hierarchy which had an ‘isness’ about it – that’s the way things are and the power ultimately rests with mother. “I will not speak to you again until you apologise “the mother says to Tom, her son, and of course he does. I thought, as I watched, “I could never say that to my kids, and if I did fat chance of it being taken seriously.”
Considering this I realised that the women I know well of my generation feel the same about their daughters – when the going gets rough, we are, quite frankly scared of them, though we would be careful to whom we admitted that! The hierarchy of power gets inverted, so both generations are living on two opposing levels. No matter how cross she might have been, no woman of the bridge gen would have spoken to their mothers as the present generation speaks to theirs. Today neither party questions the daughter’s right to speak forthrightly, abrasively or critically to their mothers and expect to be heard and taken seriously.
This is very interesting, a generation of mothers who no longer exercise, or believe in the ‘normal’ rights of mother to have enduring authority over her off-spring. I am fascinated to discover how this has come about; what follows is my theorizing.
We were young mums doing what we were born for, fulfilling our biological destiny, not expecting acknowledgement and certainly not applause. Suddenly, almost over-night it seemed; all the sureties of our position were being questioned. We didn’t realise the enormity of what was happening, neither did anyone else; what was happening to us, I mean. Being women, we got on with what needed to be got on with, doing our best and never, at the time, nor in hindsight, counted the cost or the significance of our efforts.
We were in fact living through and enduring a change such as had never been known before. Until our time mothers were mothers. Good or ill, it was what women were born for, their expectations were fairly standard and throughout time up to and including our mothers, things went along in much the same vein. The knowledge of what it meant to be a wife and mother was impressed into our psyche from the start of our lives; one didn’t think about it really and variations were not all that significant. At a deeply unconscious level we knew what was expected of us, where we ‘sat’ in the scheme of things and then it all changed! We had one foot in a long, long biological certainty and the other waving around trying to find somewhere to land in this wholly new state in which women’s ‘biology as destiny’ no longer applied. Our role no longer meant what it had always meant so the ‘meaning of life’, our meaning, was being questioned and seemingly discarded.
The women in the forefront of the movement for change appeared to be on fire, and they were; any woman who didn’t catch the fire was dismissed, as of no account. Motherhood sat somewhat awkwardly in the picture and being ‘only a mother’ was definitely something to admit to with shame. Those of us who were and who loved being mothers had the very meaning of their lives questioned and demoted.
I think of all those women’s magazines we devoured with the quizzes, advice and questionnaires about what to do and more particularly what not to do to be a good mum. We were at sea; we were somewhere between 18 and 24 probably and needing all the help we could get, but no-one could help us manage the confusion of feelings we were too embarrassed even to admit to.
As our daughters reached puberty the problems became more intense because our whole system of sexual morality was chucked out and we were supposed simply to go with the new. I am not saying that the new was bad or wrong, quite the reverse, but the adjustments we had to make, on the run as it were, were profound. There was no real guidance, a great deal of embarrassment
and a huge overlay of anxiety, along with the real fear of getting it wrong, which felt inevitable.
This, of course, vastly exacerbated the problems of adolescence as two opposing moralities met head on. Mothers at this time ‘never understand’ in their daughters’ view, part of the growing up process, but of course in this case it was true at a real level. It was bewildering that the old certainties about sexual purity which, however fully or not they were observed, still represented the correct standard, suddenly were not relevant any more.
It was not difficult for the daughters, who were themselves trying to find their way, secretly to despised their mothers, who represented a different kind of safety that was definitely not cool. This is the point where the problems of the bridge gen are most poignant, and highlighted, and though glaringly obvious, they were never addressed. Talk about an elephant in the room! Here it is that we gave up our power. The authority which countless generations naturally accorded to ‘mother’ collapsed with us and we didn’t have any words for it. Embarrassment and confusion stopped us from speaking our bewilderment, with a good deal of shame in the mix, too.
When the next generation seemed more at ease in the world than their parents the natural order in the family could get inverted, and no-one was really comfortable with the switch. In the younger psyche, that person was still mum, who still had the ultimate power even if she didn’t own it, while mum was shaking her head trying to figure out where she went wrong.
This one can see, in hindsight, was a serious and genuine loss of identity, a loss that has never been recognised or given true value. It does, however, help to explain why this generation had no sense of parental power. They could no longer be ‘proper mothers’ as their mothers had been, exerting without question parental authority – for good or ill; neither could they be the mothers their daughters became, at ease in the new dispensation. They were at sea without a compass, devalued as women and feeling that it must be entirely their fault.
Many mothers of the bridge generation, given the personal growth work they took on, managed, with their daughters, to create grown-up relationships of equals and found a level of friendship which transcended the common wisdom that says such friendship is impossible. In this state the natural hierarchy fades into the background. But it never goes away, and it is as well to remember this. This is why ‘they’ say such friendships are impossible. Suddenly and unaccountably unconsciousness can take over and the old patterning comes to the fore creating pain and confusion, all the more distressing because it seemed such disturbance was the thing of the past.
There is always a way through the woods no matter how the traditional pathways are blocked. One route not to be taken is allowing the blocking of mother’s ‘historic’ way to permit the daughter to become the authority. This can be the road to more disaster that leads in time to a total inversion as mother ages and reneges on her personal responsibility.
That’s a very gloomy picture. Of course, the best way to go is to embrace the conflict, stay with it, aware as always that the depths of our relationships are grounded in unconsciousness. A lack of conflict does not necessarily mean that the relationship is perfect, it can equally mean both parties have given up on growth and would rather rub along ignoring or giving no weight to problems that arise. After years of turmoil, by this time both generations probably deserve a quiet life and are happy to be comfortable together and wise enough to know that they are not always right!
