| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
By Jane Fraser
|
THE baby-boomer scientists have been at it again, asking questions about us: our lifestyle, our longevity, our lingerie and so on, so that they can put those of us born before them in little boxes and predict when we might end up in a big box and make way for boomer days. If they had their way, we would already be sucking glucose through a tube or drooling and nodding off in a rocker or a zimmer frame, and speaking as if we have a mouthful of hot macaroni. Put a sock in it, you booming urban Imoderates, we fifty bloody somethings are having fun and we're here to stay.
I looked into the mirror this morning and saw my mother. I did not yell "Hello Mom!" and wait for a reply which I normally do. Instead I whooped.
We should feel strengthened in the knowledge we are the last generation of women who delivered children without a "How To" manual at our bedsides.
There is something happily liberating about becoming the female generational elder statesmen, and, although they may mock us now, I feel certain it is only a matter of time before our sage pronouncements make the world and Iits younger people sit up and take notice with the general exception, of course, of our children, who in any case do not wake till noon. This can sometimes be a liberating factor in parenthood. It is a great moment when you realise you no longer give a sod about the glass ceiling or the biological clock and that you may now voice your aesthetic objections to mothers who always had what it took to mobilise an army of gingerbread soldiers while you were out sullying the world with idle gossip at long lunches. My generation of mothers has felt the whip of the sharp tongue of boomer mothers who feel it is their goddess sent role in life to raise conspicuous achievers and to that end micromanage their chidrens' lives with a vengeance. They think we sucked as mothers and cared diddley-squat about our children's futures. Didn't do the school project? A shame upon your house! Left the harp, private elocution lessons, simulated mathematics and aromatherapy off the repertoire? Straight to mom hell!
 I have a boomer friend whose child was learning from prompt cards, Beethoven concertos and Suzuki before she was born. Twenty years later this friend still wakes at night having anxiety attacks in case she had, during the course of a mushed vege day, forgotten about this or the other part of her child's brain. There was a time, a long time, when I felt guilty, and I have always been open to the suggestion that the haphazard manner in which we brought up our children may well lead them to becoming axe murderers. But I also feel quite serene in the knowledge that at least they will be happy axe murderers, and happiness, I sometimes think, is not a commodity at which to be sneezed.
Which reminds me that one of the more disappointing items of news I have heard for ages is the boomer scientists' prediction that the older we get, the more women resemble men: round and bald.
|
Please mail any comments and suggestions to:
robink@mail.austasia.net
HAVE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE OTHER GREAT ESSAYS WE'VE FEATURED!
This page hosted by 
And so, in a self-gratifying time in our lives, euphoria brought upon no doubt by encroaching senility, many women of my age feel we have become imbued with a beneficence, a mellowness, a live-and-let-live attitude. We have metamorphosed from silly sausages into the bons oeufs of society.