TV Reviews : ‘Hillary’s Class’ and Boomers’ Lives

Can a generation of women be understood through the experiences of a single graduating class? Tonight’s “Frontline” broadcast, “Hillary’s Class,” comes dangerously close to suggesting that it can. And it offers yet more proof that boomers are the most over-examined yet least-understood generation of all.

Nevertheless, producer Rachel Dretzin assembles some telling, affecting individual portraits of the Wellesley College Class of 1969, whose president was the then-Hillary Rodham .

None, of course, followed Hillary’s remarkable path, though classmate Betsy Griffith points out that she did not have it all, that rather, she made her ambitions secondary to those of her husband.

These women, all children of wealth and privilege, received one message in school, another in the workplace. The Wellesley motto of “Serve Rather Than Be Served,” along with budding feminism’s promise of expanding opportunities for women, produced a stream of hope that real life was bound to slow down or dam up completely.

At one extreme there is CBS correspondent Martha Teichner, who became so enmeshed in her work, which forced her to relocate at the network’s whim, that she couldn’t put down roots, marry and have children. The way Teichner conveys the shock of her fate is testimony to one kind of cost paid by the fast-tracker.

Another woman, on the other hand, found her career stifled by having children. She was born late enough to be admitted to the corporate boardroom, but not late enough to enjoy the kind of flextime work policies that later became more common. The irony of her story and that of ex-reporter Ann Sherwood Sentilles is that they ended up being homemakers despite their ambitious dreams.

Others, such as two of the class’s few black women, went on to live what they describe as happy lives. Still others struggled for years to find themselves.

The very differences among these personal stories warn us to avoid jumping to conclusions about Hillary’s generation. As members of a historical generation of women, they have changed, and will probably change again.

* “Hillary’s Class” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15.