The Culture

Good Daughters: Loving Our Mothers as They Age
by Patricia Beard

CHAPTER 1

The Culture: Some Things Have Changed

"Remember, His Topics of Conversation Are More Important Than Yours."

Why is it so difficult to be a good daughter to an aging mother now? Partly it is hard because of the changes in the culture that our generation has made. As Victoria Secunda writes in When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends, "Women who today are in their thirties and forties probably have even less in common with their mothers than any two generations of women in history." That is true of many women in their fifties and older, too, who just missed being classified as members of the "baby boom" generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) but whose lives are considerably more like those of baby boomers than like the lives of women brought up during the 1920s and the Great Depression.

Women of our generation remember some of the reasons we created a gap between ourselves and our parents. Certainly, we haven't forgotten what we wanted for ourselves when we were young. But while we know what we were running toward, it can be hard to recall exactly what we were trying to escape, why we were so anxious to create a larger stage on which to play out our lives-and so unwilling to consider the consequences.

Coming across glimpses of the roles for which we were being prepared in the 1940s and 1950s can be something of a jolt. To remind myself of what those roles were like, I turned to the periodicals middle-class women read when I was growing up: guides for young women such as Glamour; chronicles of life at the top of the social and economic spectrum, as represented by magazines like Town & Country; and those that reflected the broad middle, such as the Saturday Evening Post.

Higher Education

Glamour, August 1960. Glamour's "Ten Best-Dressed College Girls" (a concept that, in itself, indicates what really mattered at the time) were sent to Washington, D.C., to interview the senators from their home states. Each was to ask her senator for a "single piece of advice to a young woman graduating from college today." Senator John F. Kennedy suggested, "Marry a politician-it's an interesting life." Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina proposed, "Be beautiful, be natural, be holy," and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia advised, "Get married-and you'll never have any problems."

Town & Country, 1950s. A feature story about the all-women Smith College opens this way: "In one form or another Smith College has been honoring men ever since it was opened in 1895. All of its five presidents have been men; its faculty has always had a large male representation; and tradition has ruled that no greater honor could be accorded the senior who wins the annual hoop-rolling contest than that she be the first in her class to marry."

Silly "Girls" and "Women Drivers"

Saturday Evening Post, 1950s cover illustrations. In 1953, a George Hughes cover shows a living room crowded with bridge tables, around which sit mostly portly, gray-haired, middle-aged women wearing hats. At a guess, these women were meant to be about fifty, but only one was slim, blond, and animated; the rest had settled into that sidelined, out-of-play condition known as "matronly." The front door is open, and the hostess's husband stands there, looking horrified at the crowd through which he will have to pass to get into his house.

On a 1956 Steven Dohanos cover, two cars driven by women are halted on a suburban street. The women have backed into each other, crumpling their rear fenders, and are shouting angrily at each other. Women drivers!

Home Economics

Ad for Youngstown Kitchens Jet-Tower Dishwashers, 1950s. The image: Mrs. William A. Green, described as a "prominent Dallas hostess," stands by her dishwasher. She is wearing diamonds and a strapless ball gown. The caption: "To me, the care and cleanliness of tableware is a major responsibility."

It wasn't only magazines that conveyed such messages about the little woman at home. For the past couple of years, women have been forwarding "The Good Wives Guide," an excerpt from a 1960s home economics textbook, to each other via the Internet, with comments like "unbelievable." The subject: how a woman should act when her husband comes home from work. Along with such admonitions as "have dinner ready" ("his favorite dish") are "Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair. . . . Clear away the clutter. . . . Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Gather up school books, toys, papers, etc. And then run a dust cloth over the tables. . . . At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. . . .Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but . . . let him talk first, remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours." This good wife is a model of restraint. "Don't complain if he's late home for dinner, or even stays out all night," the text admonishes. "Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day. . . . Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness." Even, we are to assume, when he has stayed out all night.

Some of this is silly, some is pernicious-and none of it could be published in a major national women's magazine or a school textbook today. That is because women of our generation fought to change the way we were seen and portrayed and the way we lived.

We opened a gap-in some ways, a chasm-between our mothers, who were well established within the prevailing system, and ourselves, as we launched our lives and a new era of possibilities and respect for women. But along the way, we learned that, just as being treated as living dolls had its costs, independence came at a price. The greatest expense would be divorce and its effect on our ability to provide a stable environment for our children. Now we find that our attitudes and the lives we struggled to lead can also make it difficult to be good daughters to our aging mothers.

© 1999 by Patricia Beard

About the Author

Patricia Beard is Editor at Large for Elle, a contributing writer to Town & Country and Mirabella, and her articles have appeared in many other national magazines. She is the author of Growing Up Republican, a biography of Christine Todd Whitman, the first woman governor of New Jersey.