The times, they are a changin'

[fpb]

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly agin';
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
For the times they are a changin'.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g798CHaazwkE1E0TMQv8AZ60Bj1wD91DKPI00

Like all really inevitable and natural development, this one surprised everybody, including me. Well, what the Hell did we all expect? People like babies. Women particularly like babies. Girls - with a few exceptions in whose personal history it is all too easy to read the emotional reasons - intensely love babies. You cannot introduce a baby among a group of schoolgirls without being practically drowned by cooings and bursts of wonder at the cuteness of them. Nobody should have expected that this natural instinct could be for ever silenced by an artificial image of a brilliant career woman, something which, for nine women out of ten, has no reality at all. Women look at Sex and the City with its childless, unmarried, rich, elegant forty-years-old, as they read Hello magazine: as a kind of fable. I do not understand the appeal myself, but I very much doubt whether it has anything to do with daily or real life. Women read their glossy magazines in ordinary, sometimes drab homes, and do not seem to make much of an effort to imitate them. It all seems to me to live in a special space of the mind dedicated to unreality. If any woman identifies with the Sex and the City characters, it cannot be because of their surroundings or careers; it is more a matter of the common complaint about weak, shiftless, commitment-phobic men - which, whether or not it is true, is at least a commonplace female whine. The idea that millions of schoolgirls go out into the great wide world in the hope of becoming top corporate lawyers, marketing VPs, or even fashion designers or Hollywood actresses, seems to me naive in the extreme. Some of them may dream of such things; most of them know that they never will happen. And the universal cultural pressure on girls to regard babies as obstacles in the way of their careers is increasingly nullified by the fact that, across the advanced world, the vast majority of women know that they will have no careers. The idea of spending one's life moving forwards in a job until one achieves a high and permanent rank is outdated, not only for the majority of women, but of men too. The same people who tried to scare us with the fear of being hobbled to babies for life also informed us, in the same breath, that the notion of jobs for life is an outdated superstition.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide;
The chance won't come again.
And don't speak too soon
For the world's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin';
For the loser now will be later to win,
For the times, they are a changin'.

It is a case study in the power and limit of cultural consensus. They removed the stigma from illegitimacy; these days, most people who call someone a "bastard" (and weirdly enough, it is a popular insult) do not know what is meant to be insulting about the term. But they could not remove the attraction from babies, or the magnetism from sex. Every attempt to make maternity unattractive or dreaded must founder on the reality of human nature. A number of people will no doubt absorb these attitudes: they are the kind who, for one reason or another, deviate from the human average. The majority may well learn to repeat them by rote, but will never internalize them; their emptiness will become manifest - they will vanish like mist in the sun - at the sight of a single real baby. You have made it easier, not harder, for your children to have babies. The result, as I said, should have been expected; it is only the result of our universal attachment to statistics - which are, after all, always yesterday's news - that kept us from seeing the obvious.

I am not saying that there will ever be a fad for having babies as such among sixteen-year-olds. One good (or rather bad) experience of childbirth would knock that sort of nonsense on the head, and at any rate even sixteen-year-olds are not that silly. The point is rather that the coming generation is beginning to instinctively see its future, not in terms of career - they learned at the cradle how difficult and fickle a thing it is - but in terms of children, of family, of heirs. These girls know that in nine times out of ten, what will give their lives continuity and content will not be the ever-changing, mostly frustrating, sometimes dangerous and unwelcoming, reality of work, but their families; that their real life is apt to be at home, with a husband or partner if they are lucky, but with a baby anyway. And like young people across the world, they are impatient to start.

The line, it is drawn.
The curse, it is cast.
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'.
AND THE FIRST ONES NOW WILL LATER BE LAST -
For the times, they are a changin'.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are too honest for your own good. Your reply is so full of the words "personally" and "for my part" and "I know women who", that it becomes clear that you are not really able to contradict my statement as to the NORMAL behaviour of human beings. All of us deviate in different ways, and I think you are probably grateful that you come much closer to the human average than I do in the matter of anger. But your own experience is not an answer to anything, and, as such, has no more universal validity than that of any other girl - or sixteen.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I know I can't generalize about the normal behavior of humans. I don't want to. Generalizations make me really uncomfortable.

However, I would say that you really couldn't make the generalization as to the 'normal' behavior of human beings either. Not unless you can come up with studies to back it up or something.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Heck no. I will make one generalization: sociological studies always prove what they want to prove. My view of human normality is based on what has been normal for humans down the centuries - and I think that we would agree that if it had been normal for humans to suffer from anger such as mine, the human race would have been extinct for a while now.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Well that's one theory. :p

I think it's difficult not to end up there if you start with a hypothesis. But if you start trying to do an exploratory study, and you're intensely aware of your own biases (as in you state them at the beginning of your report) and you're also an objective person... then it can reasonably objective! (I'm actually doing an essay on whether sociology can ever be as accurate and precise as the natural sciences! I do believe it is possible, but not probable in the near future)

Hmm. I think your anger issues have gotten better recently. Your writing seems slightly... different to how it was before. I can't quite put my finger on it though. And honestly, I think a lot of people suffer from that kind of anger. It's anger management that's important. :p

Oh and to answer the point, how do you know what's normal for humans down the centuries? These ideas would have to be based on *something* whether it's from personal experience, novels, historical accounts, or 'biased' sociological studies.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes. "A lot of people" do suffer from anger issues - and most do not, luckily for mankind at large. That is what I am trying to say. I think that the perception of normalcy is intuitive, and the fact that you intuitively stress the exceptions, the "many people", your own experience - anything, that is, that is sectional, minority, or personal - strongly suggests to me that you understand, on some level, what this intuitive idea of human normality is about. You just prefer to stress the opposite poles - the exceptions, the deviation, the sectionality. And I am far from condemning you for it. Variation is both necessary and largely positive, and we should never argue as if it did not exist. I certainly did not (check my answer to elskuligr, if you have not already done so. But I think the notion of proving everything rationally is unsustainable; it leads to an eternal regress.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that is an interesting point. I think I might stress the exceptions because I don't believe there is a norm. I believe there can be an 'average' as in 'most' humans do this, but I don't believe things should be considered 'normal' or 'not normal'. I guess I could always argue that I think everybody is special in their own. :p But that sounds too much like a self-help book.

I probably do have a intuitive belief of what normal is, but I don't like the idea so I sort of suppress that intuition.

If I really think about it, then yeah, most women will probably start off wanting both a career and kids but they will most likely sacrifice the career to have children. This sounds quite similar to what you believe (or least my interpretation of what you believe), however I do not believe this is a good thing. I might be stressing the exceptions because I don't believe our current norm should continue to be the norm.

Or, y'know, I could be overthinking this. I think I used far too many 'in my opinion' and 'my belief' statements in my comments. Gah. This is what happens when I'm in essay-writing mode. I would never state my opinions as fact in an essay. Actually, I have difficulty stating anything as fact in an essay.

Re: For what it's worth

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Why is it bad for there to be a "normal"? Normal isn't bad. It just is.

Re: For what it's worth

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Because 'normal' is not the same as average. It implies that there is an abnormal and that this abnormal is wrong. The term 'normal' makes me feel very uncomfortable.

Re: For what it's worth

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Alas, that feeling often creates a reciprocal attitude, but instead of finding abnormal wrong, one finds normalcy wrong (I am not accusing you of this! Only observing that people who feel they fall outside the range of normal behavior condemn normal people for being normal).

Re: For what it's worth

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

True (well assuming that deep down you actually do have a definition of normal. :p)

It is quite annoying when people are determined to be 'abnormal' and try to do so in a way that is simply conforming to the standards of another group.

Personally, I have difficulty coming up with a definition as to what normal is. Only what most people do. So if we define 'most' people as normal, then yeah, there's nothing wrong with normalcy, :)

Re: For what it's worth

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

That's my definition of normal, anyway! :)

Re: For what it's worth

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Ah! Really, for these discussions, we should include definitions of all the words we use. :)

My definition of normal is more loaded. I see it as a normative term that automatically classifies everything else as 'abnormal' or deviant.

Whereas, I guess I'd see your definition of normal more as 'average' or maybe 'the majority'. :)

Re: For what it's worth

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Considering that I excluded that meaning at the start of our discussion, I find this rather strange. Do you remember that I said that variation from the norm is both inevitable and mostly useful? I do not exclude such a thing as a bad kind of abnormality, but that is simply not what we are talking about here. And it is you, not I, who assume that the only possible opposite to normality is the bad kind of abnormality. Get rid of that false opposition, it will do you good. Genius, holiness, and heroism, are all abnormal. Reflect on it.

Re: For what it's worth

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I must have totally missed that. Sorry. It was a rather long debate and I was typing it at 2 am yesterday morning!

In any case, I still dislike the world abnormal. Regardless of the definition. To me, the implication is still a deviant type of abnormality rather than a 'good' abnormality.

Re: For what it's worth

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, I do not take responsibility for what you like or dislike, especially since I have already made what I mean clear. Besides, the point would not change if I changed the language; I would only, in all likelihood, end up making the prose uglier and more obscure.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

We're all sharing personal opinions here. You're no less guilty of generalizing based on personal experience than curia_regis. Your own mother had you at a young age, so naturally you're defending these young mothers and their ability to make a responsible decisions. I'm drawing on what I remember of high school, and what I've seen of teenage girls since then to suggest that a high school girl isn't the best candidate for motherhood. And curia_regis is telling you that in her experience, plenty of non-screwed-up women aren't very interested in having children - something I also agree with. None of us are drawing on statistics or hard data here. We're just talking.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I think I did try to draw on statistics somewhere up there, but I haven't really researched the area so it probably doesn't have a huge amount of validity.

This is always a really interesting topic to talk about. :)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No. I am defending those girls, first, because I do not think that anyone who answered here has caught the point of what I was saying (not surprising since everyone who answered has a vocation, Ayla to a public career, you to medicine, elskuligr to scholarship), which was the cultural significance of this; and second, because your patronizing put my back up. As a matter of fact, the one thing that seems to have come out clearly from Gloucester High - the families and the girls themselves are saying nothing - is that the girls had made a pact to help each other with parenting; which shows, to me, both maturity and immaturity. Maturity, because they are clear on the matter that children take hard work and lots of it and that mothers need each other's help; and immaturity, in that they seem to believe that high school friendships can be relied upon to last after graduation. So there is ground for both viewpoints, but not for dismissing this as the silly behaviour of brainless chits who do not know that motherhood is tough. If one thing does in fact come through from their pact of mutual help, it is not only that they know that it is, but that they expect little help from boyfriends and adults.

"normal behaviour"

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

Now, this is the reason why we addressed the question of universal instinct elsewhere than on your own livejournal.
curia_regis says "personally" precisely because, as you admit yourself, she is being honest intellectually.
Because all anyone here has access to is personal experience and some knowledge of independent facts.
No one has access to universal truth and no one knows for a fact what is "normal behaviour" for a woman. What does "normally" mean anyway? Is it what most people do? Is it what people would "naturally" do? But natural behaviour doesn't exist, men have always lived in society.
I find all your arguments based on some supposedly universal conception of what is normal for a woman (sacrificing herself for her kids, loving kids, etc.) unsound as far as rational arguments go because it has no solid basis and is solely based on a personal opinion masquerading as universal truth.
I'm sorry if I'm making that point rather strongly, but you insisted we took the matter frankly so here it is.

Also I'm aware that curia_regis already addressed part of these points below, but I did not want to be accused of hiding my opinions or talking behind your back.