Commentary : Working Mothers Providing New Opportunities for Their Daughters

What horrible influence has today’s career-oriented woman heaped upon her unsuspecting daughter? This was the topic of a panel recently presented at the 10th Annual Conference for Women, sponsored by Coastline Community College.

As a participant in that panel and accompanied by my two daughters, ages 23 and 19, I considered myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to traverse a subject yet somewhat unexplored. Only now are the daughters of working women reaching an age where definitive data can be formulated.

I had no research materials, nor did the other two panelists and their daughters, but opinions and experience we did have.

Since we shared our ideas at the conference, I have pondered the topic. What really have been the results, good and bad, of we women leaving the home, leaving our traditional roles, and entering the strenuous, stress-filled world of business and public affairs?

Do our daughters begin to feel the need to return to the home or do they feel compelled to become, like their mothers, career women trying to do the impossible, trying to have it all?

If our small panel was representative of the real world, then I say no; I say we have provided our daughters with a sense of themselves and with a balanced concept of family and work--a more realistic sense of what is possible and what is wise.

Many women in the period from the early ‘70s until now have found themselves going from the sheltered world of marriage and a working husband to finding themselves forced to feed and shelter both themselves and their children, after the trauma of divorce or widowhood. Totally unprepared, they suffered the agony, as did one of our panel members, of working long, hard hours with little income and no time to be the mother they wanted and needed to be.

Today’s young women have seen or experienced this unhappy situation and have learned the importance of establishing high-level work skills. We career women have shown them that they need not find themselves so vulnerable. They can be independent and earn a good living; they can prepare themselves for the work force prior to starting a family. They can find ways in their younger years to make it work.

Today’s young women know, from their mothers’ experiences, that working mothers with children can still be loving and caring and can give to their children. They know the battles that made their road to a “good job” easier have been fought and continue to be fought by their mothers. They also know--because we mothers have paved the way--that they as young women in the work force will be taken more seriously and will not need to fight those acceptance battles again.

Perhaps because their mothers fought so hard, they also feel an obligation to maintain the same ground their mothers struggled for, not to give it all up and return to what frequently gets referred to as being “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”

One of the possible negatives has been the occurrence of a phenomenon long present in father-son relationships and now poking its head into mother-daughter relationships: competition. Daughters have large shoes to fill now. Their mothers have become high-powered, influential, “titled,” well-paid business and professional women. Daughters have to be asking themselves: Can I compete? Can I be as good as my mother? Can I be successful too?

Is it perhaps then easier to retreat back to those areas in which mother didn’t do well because she didn’t have time. To excel at baking cookies because mother buys microwaveable cookies. How many daughters are thinking: “Look Mom, I can be better than you. I take care of my own kids, I’m a gourmet cook, I remain scintillating as a wife without being competitive with my husband, and I am fulfilled--or at least I pretend to be because competing with you, Mom, is too tough.”

If our accomplishments have done this to our daughters, then what have we gained? How can we feel fulfilled if we are rivals with each other and in turn keep our daughters from their fullest potential? We will have driven them back to exactly where we were prior to the women’s movement and will have left them with little or no choice.

My instinct tells me, however, that although most of our daughters do feel competition, they have also learned from us courage, stamina and a sense of themselves. They know it’s OK to compete, if competing means being allowed to be yourself.

Career moms of today, we have done it! We came close to having it all and we provided our daughters with the gift of opportunity--the opportunity to do what they want. What more success could a mother ask for in her brief journey on this planet?

I am glad to have had the opportunity to participate in the making of history, and to have had an impact on future generations of women. How lucky to have been a part of the women’s movement and to have done it without the negative, “bra burning” antics associated with past years. If I ever worried about the impact on my own daughters, I found out the day of the panel discussion, I worried in vain.