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PURPLE PATCH: Why I Want to Have a Family —Lisa Brown

For years the theory of higher education operated something like this: men went to college to get rich, and women went to college to marry rich men. It was a wonderful little set-up, almost mathematical in its precision. To disturb it would have been to rock an American institution.

During the ‘60s, though, this theory lost much of its lustre. As the nation began to recognize the idiocy of relegating women to a secondary role, women soon joined men in what once were male-only pursuits. This rebellious decade pushed women toward independence, showed them their potential and compelled them to take charge of their lives. Many women took the opportunity and ran with it. Since then feminine autonomy has been the rule, not the exception, at least among college women.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the invisible push has turned into a shove. Some women are downright obsessive about success, to the point of becoming insular monuments to selfishness and fierce bravado, the condescending sort that hawks: “I don’t need anybody. So there.” These women dismiss children and marriage as unbearably outdated and potentially harmful to their up-and-coming careers. This notion of independence smacks of egocentrism. What do these women fear? Why can’t they slow down long enough to remember that relationships and a family life are not inherently awful things?

Granted that for centuries women were on the receiving end of some shabby treatment. Now, in an attempt to liberate college women from the constraints that forced them almost exclusively into teaching or nursing as a career outside the home-always subject to the primary career of motherhood — some women have gone too far. Any notion of motherhood seems to be regarded as an unpleasant reminder of the past, when homemakers were imprisoned by husbands, tots and household chores. In short, many women consider motherhood a time-consuming obstacle to the great joy of working outside the home.

The rise of feminism isn’t the only answer. Growing up has something to do with it, too. Most people find themselves in a bind as they hit their late 20s: they consider the ideals they grew up with and find that these don’t necessarily mix with the ones they’ve acquired. The easiest thing to do, it sometimes seems, is to throw out the precepts their parents taught. Growing up, my friends and I were enchanted by the idea of starting new traditions. We didn’t want self-worth to be contingent upon whether there was a man or child around the house to make us feel wanted.

I began to reconsider my values after my sister and a friend had babies. I was entertained by their pregnancies and fascinated by the births; I was also thankful that I wasn’t the one who had to change the diapers every day. I was a doting aunt only when I wanted to be. As my sister’s and friend’s lives changed, though, my attitude changed. I saw their days flip-flop between frustration and joy. Though these two women lost the freedom to run off to the beach or to a bar, they gained something else — an abstract happiness that reveals itself when they talk about Jessica’s or Amanda’s latest escapade or vocabulary addition. Still in their 20s, they shuffle work and motherhood with the skill of poker players. I admire them, and I marvel at their kids. Spending time with the Jessicas and Amandas of the world teaches us patience and sensitivity and gives us a clue into our own pasts. Children are also reminders that there is a future and that we must work to ensure its quality.

Now I feel challenged by the idea of becoming a parent. I want to decorate a nursery and design Halloween costumes; I want to answer my children’s questions and help them learn to read. I want to be unselfish. But I’ve spent most of my life working in the opposite direction: toward independence, no emotional or financial strings attached. When I told a friend — one who likes kids but never, ever wants them — that I’d decided to accommodate motherhood, she accused me of undermining my career, my future, my life. “If that’s all you want, then why are you even in college?” she asked.

The answer’s simple: I want to be a smart mommy. I have solid career plans and look forward to working. I make a distinction between wanting kids and wanting nothing but kids. And I’ve accepted that I’ll have to give up a few years of fulltime work to allow time for being pregnant and buying Pampers. As for undermining my life, I’m proud of my decision because I think it’s evidence that the women’s movement is working. While liberating women from the traditional childbearing role, the movement has given respectability to motherhood by recognising that it’s not a brainless task like dishwashing. At the same time, women who choose not to have children are not treated as oddities. That certainly wasn’t the case even 15 years ago. While the greying, middle-aged bachelor was respected, the female equivalent — tagged a spinster — was automatically suspect.

When she wrote the following essay, Lisa Brown was a junior majoring in American Studies at the University of Texas. In her essay, which was published as a “My Turn” column in the October 1984 issue of Newsweek on Campus, she uses a variety of transitional devices to put together a coherent argument that many women in their drive to success have overlooked the potential for fulfilment inherent in good relationships and family life

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