The times, they are a changin'
Jun. 20th, 2008 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbCome 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'.
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'.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-21 01:47 pm (UTC)Motherhood isn't a job - we can't punch out at the end of the day. Mothers can't quit when plans go wrong or they aren't appreciated. Motherhood is the only vocation I've ever felt - I don't understand why everyone equates it to a job. I work at a job to provide for my children. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't paid. Motherhood is the hardest of hard work, but it isn't a job.
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-21 03:05 pm (UTC)Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-21 09:12 pm (UTC)These girls are not as free as you are. The girls who organized this horror are not morons -- but don't pretend this is an adult decision. The 14 year olds looked at the life they lead and grabbed it by the horns. Now they think they have control - with these babies they can be loved and out on their own and make their own rules. To a child who never had a father's love, it makes perfect sense. She can't be accused of depriving her child of something if she does not know it exists. But we know it does. We know a 14 year old is not prepared to raise a child on her own. Even they knew it - that's why they made the pact to raise their children together.
But we also know they put their lives in receivership. They will not have control - a faceless system will dictate where they live, and where the babies go to stay while mom is in school (if mom still wants to go). I'm sure they'll survive, and they'll love their children, but they cashed in their dreams too early, before they realized they had dreams for their children, too. Even if the community they plan works out, can it build a better life for their children? The community they came from didn't, and didn't give them the tools to lift up their own eyes.
I'm praying that this will be a critical mass of destructive behavior which makes people stand up and take action. My community has the same issues - and we have brilliant people who helped us solve some problems. My daughter is on a waiting list for 14 year old girls who want to learn how to build and fix computers. But since she isn't "at risk" she has to wait to see if she is in the program. After this story, I'm more than happy to let some other girls take the spot I wanted for her. Because I can teach her what she wants to know, and so can her father and her grandfather. The hard part is done - she wants to know it. The girls who get in ahead of my daughter will not have the resources she does. And they'll need a boost to look out that window more than she does.
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-23 10:52 pm (UTC)This. There are a tremendous number of girls in this area who are or were teenage single mothers. The majority of them have no work prospects other than fast food and most of them are on some sort of public assistance. I'm not saying everyone needs to get a PhD or become a neurosurgeon, but it's damned hard to live your whole life on minimum wage and no insurance.
For some reason, often the girls I see who go back to school and make a life for themselves are the inner-city ones, not the suburban types you would think. The inner-city girls are more likely to be the ones you'll hear saying, "I don't want my kids to come up like I did."
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-21 03:16 pm (UTC)2. Having worked in education, I'm well aware of the prejudices, presuppositions, and agenda people - and especially principles - bring with them. Even if they "work with it every day."
3. I know we live in the 21st century -- and the 21st century is deeply flawed. No, I don't want to return to time before penicillin and the Salk vaccine, but I strongly believe that in our mad 20th century rush to "modernity" we (if you'll pardon the use of the expression here) threw a lot of babies out with bathwater. The change in the *definition* of childhood in the Western world in the 20th century and especially in America post World War II is well-documented. And I don't think the change is necessarily for the better.
4. The understanding that most people died at 50 in the past is a flawed paradigm. But that's a rant for another place.
5. I'm well aware motherhood isn't a "job", but it is undisputably equated as such. "Don't have a baby; you can't go to college." As if it were an either or proposition. It came up on the ABC coverage of this story this morning.
Yes, I know I'm bringing my own experience in here (since my mother took infant-me to university lectures in a basket that sat at her feet), and not everyone is emotionally, mentally or organizationally equiped to do that. Even so, this societal expectation that *everyone* must go to college/university is in itself detrimental. Our society faces HUGE student debt right now. I have one myself. It shouldn't be forced (even by implication) on everyone.
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-21 07:15 pm (UTC)Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-23 02:18 am (UTC)No, I don't believe I did. I believe I said that in the 18th century 14 was the age to start university, an apprenticeship or a trade. Further I said that those actions were closer to adult responsibility than we (20th/21st century people) allow 14 years to take on.
I said nothing whatsoever about age of consent or about 12 year olds.
If someone did, you should have directed your comment at them. I understand you're angry, but to post in reply to something I said about something I did not say in a discussion with over 100 comments is just plain sloppy.
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
Date: 2008-06-23 07:12 pm (UTC)