women together

I went to dinner with six women. One I know fairly well, another is a book group acquaintance, and I had met two others once before. All of us are white and highly educated. Most of us (I would guess) are thirty-something, and two have young children. I was reminded once again that there is a big difference between 35 and 52. Especially for women. For one thing, I've stopped thinking about the possibility that I might someday have a baby. I am divorced and my chances of getting involved with anyone are not good. My parents were born in 1930 and grew up on a small farm and a small town. I grew up during the second wave of feminism, at the tail end of the 20c. civil rights era, on the lower-income side of Kalamazoo. All of these shifts made a big impact. I am not sure what sort of world the other, younger women grew up in. I know that KW had a complicated childhood but, looking at her across the table, I suddenly realized that I don't have much of a grasp on the link between her experiences back then and the way she is now.

The odd thing was that we were making intimate conversation but presenting ourselves cautiously to one another -- well, it's odd and also perfectly normal among women. One woman in particular kept referring to the fact that she has two young children, and that it is a challenge to work full-time and raise them. But her bearing and tone seemed to indicate that she felt the need to protect herself from scrutiny -- and of course I can understand that. You can't trust a group of strangers to understand. The other woman with children (or just one child?) joined in with a refrain of  "I don't have the time to read or watch serious movies." I imagine there is some truth to all of that, but I don't know what I'm supposed to say. At some point I found myself complaining about the women in the celebrity magazines who tell carefully crafted stories about being working moms just like the rest of us, and the celebrity interviewers who ask childless women about whether they plan to have children or how they feel about not having children. Men who are also fathers usually talk only about their work but sometimes they congratulate themselves because having kids has allowed them to focus on something other than themselves. Not realizing, I guess, that this is a pretty selfish kind of selflessness. In our culture, having a baby means you can feel virtuous about turning away from all the other people and things in the world.