Starting From Scratch
Women who choose a positive path need support from the men in their lives
A Gen X woman explains the challenge of learning how to become a matriarch without having the benefit of any positive examples:
Most women are natural followers and need an in-group of other women to build and grow their identity. And the older Boomer women who should be our matriarchs are STD-ridden, Diamond Princess-cruising nightmares.
When I left my stunningly-successful-early-in-my career professional position to (a) stay home with babies and (b) turn my professional skills toward supporting my husband’s business endeavors, every single one of the Boomer women in both of our families let me know how shocked and disappointed they were in me. How I was setting myself up to be too dependent on my husband, and was throwing away all the opportunities they fought so hard for. This included both my mother who was living vicariously through me, my you-go-girl mother-in-law, all three of their sisters, and three boomer aged step-sisters.
Notably, all but one of them are divorced. The one who isn’t is miserable. So it didn’t take long to look at their lives and think, well, if they’re all disappointed in me it must be the right call for not ending up as a miserable old biddie like them.
I ended up out-grouping myself from them, by standing up for how my husband and I have chosen to structure our lives and raise our children. But I had to create an in-group of GenX women who chose family over career from scratch basically. And not being natural “matriarch material” myself it’s taken conscious effort to study how the naturals do it.
Women that don’t have female leadership potential in them, need visible female leaders telling them that family > career is a positive value. They can’t form and commit to a values set without the group.
It’s on the GenX women to become those examples and voices for the millennials and younger because the Boomer women aren’t going to ever do it.
This woman did exactly what I fault young women, particularly of the Millennial and Gen Z generations for not doing, which is paying attention to the outcomes of the older women who are attempting to advise you! Misery loves company, and failures love giving advice; in both cases, the wise young woman will reject both.
However, this will inevitably create a challenge for the woman who has neither mentors nor matriarchs from whom she can learn. I know one Gen X woman who rejected her Boomer mother’s insane ways, but it took her literal years to learn how to cook, clean, and make a home from scratch as a post-college adult, because she had no female role model younger than her grandmother upon whom she could rely.
This is why it’s also incumbent on men to strongly support their wives and daughters who find themselves stepping up into what is almost certainly a new and alien role for most of them. They need the men in their lives cheering them on to help counteract the relentless negativity and criticism they will inevitably encounter as a result of rejecting the older women who seek to be their mentors in self-destruction.
The reaction of the Boomer women sounds like what I see on TV and read in the media, but I never hear in real life, probably because I live in the deep south. Here, career oriented women generally will say something about how they could never stay home full time because they would go crazy, but they don't act like anyone who does stay home is a traitor to the cause.
For the video inclined youtube generation this had a useful similar message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRXBDTgFToQ
"If someone is actually willing to make the effort to do what you want, then under no circumstances should you ever punish them for doing so. It is a much better idea to focus on the parts that they are doing right than to emphasize the (potentially many) parts that they are still doing wrong. By rewarding successive approximations to the target behavior, you can leverage the power of shaping. I discuss more in this episode."