Yeah, that’s what’s tearing me apart here as well.

There is something strange about this statement.
The implication of the first line is that she chooses not to see or speak with her mother.
The implication of the last two lines is that her mother will not see or speak to her.

I feel strongly that I am being manipulated, but since I do not know the truth, I can only suspect that she is not being honest with herself or her reader.

Yes, as a self-described knee-jerk feminist since my littlest days, and feeling ever more radicalized as the days go on, all that she says would normally get on my nerves. It is exasperating that people say things like what she says. But, again, having had some personal experience with things like ideology creating distance between people who care about each other, it is a sorrowful situation to me. Sorrow filled. Thank you for posting about this Kevin – seriously I like that you talk about this, and that you are someone who says things that constantly do my heart good. It is invaluable.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Come to think off it, who takes 20 years to get a PhD?

And yeah, I know lots of professional women. I can only think of one that is childless and that is by choice. My general manager, a lesbian mind you, has two children. So yeah, this whole feminism has left a generation of women childless thing is mind-boggling.

“Go home and get on with [getting pregnant]“? Yeah, since conception takes all of 30 seconds and is only possible a few days a month, I should absolutely devote myself to it. Never mind the assumption that a woman who says “if it happens, it happens,” may just be deflecting a too-personal discussion. Never mind that, prior to the pill, virtually compulsory conception for married women left them without a choice.

As for the “women in their 40s who… spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and [therefore] missed out on having a family” — are there **men** who missed out by concentrating on their careers? Of course not, because (thanks to in part to people who think like Rebecca) our society and economy are still structured around one person in a couple having to devote (usually) herself to raising kids — and while plenty of women sign on for the caretaker-parent role, very few men do.

The cherry on top is that RW has no numbers to actually support this drama — it’s all just based on her (filtered) experience. Well, if her experience is the sum of reality, so’s mine: and in my experience, out of all the professional women I’ve met, only four were childless, and only one expressed regret, for an estimated whopping .02% — hardly a crisis. (That one, by the way, was waiting for the right man to come along before she’d even consider getting pregnant, which damn sure doesn’t sound like feminism’s fault.)

Feminism isn’t responsible for RW’s problems with her mother (from this piece, I’d guess her holier-than-thou tone, her faulty logic, and her willingness to make public the sort of complaints most of would keep private are the likely culprits for their estrangement). And feminism certainly hasn’t failed women, not even — or perhaps especially — the childless ones.

Even at that, though, it’s still rebellion in the wrong direction, if you ask me.

Anthony

Also, re: “the ease with which people can get divorced these days” — is it really better (for the couple or for any children they might have) for two people to be forced to stay in an unhappy marriage? Personally, I’m certain that if my parents had remained married, we all would have been a lot more miserable.