September 3-9 (Discussion #1)

When I went on a search to find men and women that were 20 and 40 years older than me, I thought “who better than my own parents and grandparents”.

Surprisingly, I found that my parents and grandparents had similar points of view even with having a generation in between them. I found that in my grandparent’s time, women’s sole purposes were to be good housewives. A woman was not judged by her intelligence or her worldliness, she was judged by how clean her house was. During their time it was unheard of for a man to not have a job. Men and women were expected to have long relationships that were closely chaperoned at all times and then move to marriage soon thereafter. Then after that came a family etc. It was inappropriate for women to think of having a career or do anything else but serve her husband.  Throughout my parent’s time it didn’t seem as though things were as extreme but similar values still arose. For example, when they spoke about expectations women were to look forward to starting marriages and families while men were expected to have stable jobs/careers. Women were expected to live at home until marriage and not to focus on a career path. Men were expected to become providers and prepare to take care of a woman. It was inappropriate for women to take on men’s roles  and for couples to live together without being married.

The similar pattern that I found is that it was very centered around men being the providers and women being the caretakers of the home and family. There was still a clear separation of gender roles and what is appropriate for a man versus a woman. The life goals were very much based on marriage and a woman catering to a man or a man providing for woman/family. There was no room for a person to take time for themselves and  explore what truly makes them happy. It was unheard of for a young woman like myself at the age of 22 to leave to college to study and travel the world for leisure. At 22 both my mom and grandma were both married with their first child! What a change 2 generations makes!