What's Socially Acceptable for Women?

1815: You can be anything you want as long as it's a wife and mother... 

Alfred Edward Chalon, c 1815

1915: You can be anything you want as long as it's a wife and mother or schoolteacher or nurse, and not at the same time. . . 

One room schoolhouse, spinster teacher.

2015: You can be anything you want as long as it's not only a wife and a mother. . .

That looks fun for everyone.

 

We talk a big game today about how free modern women are to become anything they want, but watch what happens when a smart, promising, and talented college-aged woman declares that what she really wants to do is get married and have babies. (In fact, you can't watch what happens because most women who feel that way won't say it out loud, because it's an entirely unacceptable option, in almost every case.) 

If modern feminism was actually feminism it would celebrate all women who make free and unecumbered choices, those who work, those who work and have a family, those who have a family and choose to work at non-advancing or non-demanding or part-time jobs, and those who chose to not have a career, because it is a conscious choice, made by a free woman who has thoughtfully weighed her various interests, passions, and talents, and chosen what what she wants to do with her life.  

So my hat's off to women who don't "career" (if you'll permit me to use a current colloquial grammar-ism) and are "just a wife and mother." They are just as courageous as the first women to pursue graduate degrees, fly around the world, and explore Africa, because they are going against the grain of the greater culture around them in exactly the same way.