What's The Matter With Politicians? Don't They have Families Like the Rest of Us?
It has occurred to me, belatedly, as with nearly all ideas that come to me, that I come of a generation of women who had very little challenge before them, in terms of today’s economic climate. Educated men could look forward to the likelihood of a decent living with a decent amount of work to assure it. If we so chose, so could we.
Now I have to wonder: Don't politicians have families like the rest of us?
For us, the end of WWII had temporarily decreased the ingrained notions of superiority of the male sex in matters of intellect and physiology. Our graduating class was nowhere near a fifty-fifty division between the sexes. About three quarters of the students were on the GI Bill, and half of those were married, a couple even with small children. Women had proved they could pilot airplanes and work on assembly lines, but we had to work hard to hold our own among those maturer classmates.
Our baccalaureate address was given by a man of known liberality of views and true geniality who pointed out that we women should regard higher education as something of a duty as well as a privilege, since it would be such an advantage to ourselves and to our spouses and children. We would have the means to avoid boredom while we backed up our advancing husbands by taking care of our homes and children.
Bradshaw Crandell, artist. c 1943. From Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Washington, D.C.
As I observe my grandchildren, who like us, tend not to know exactly where they're heading because they don’t know better than most of us did what they want to do with their education and their lives, I feel a stab of real guilt. Five of the seven are now college graduates, and three have found a direction, though only one in what he planned. He's not yet successful enough to be independent. One may have been pushed by fortunate circumstances to acknowledge what she really wants when she was accepted into a graduate program on terms that were financially desirable. Two are floundering and dissatisfied, one who dropped out is in an apprenticeship program. He seems content, but he still has to live at home.
Having spent quite a lot of time talking with the graduate student, I realized how different we are. She is not only expected to make her living, she must. She is the product of a liberal arts education (as opposed to a scientific or technical one), and like those of us with such degrees, finding a use for a BA is hard.
My first job out of college paid $35 a week. Even in 1950, that wasn't much in New York City. I lived at home, rode the subway to work, paid for my clothes, and doctor and dentist bills, but nothing else. I did start a savings account. My parents didn't complain, seemed satisfied with my status, and I didn't suffer guilt pangs over it. After an unsatisfactory year, I about made up my mind I'd have to get an advanced degree, and doubtless teach.
At the same age, my granddaughter is paying for a car, beginning to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, fretting at being a burden on her parents, and afraid to take any kind of financial risk. If the offer of a place with an assistanceship and liberal scholarship hadn’t surfaced, she would have given up hope of graduate school at the one university to which she had applied that offered what interests her.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Women’s Congressional Policy Institute: The House Will Consider H.R. 3226, the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers Who Deliver Infants Early (PREEMIE) Reauthorization Act of 2023
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: Something’s Got to Give by Governor Christopher J. Waller
- February’s Hot Data Releases: Governor Christopher J. Waller, Federal Reserve Board Frames a Few of the Issues Around Inflation and the Economic Outlook
- Remarks by President Biden on American Rescue Plan Investments; September 02, 2022, South Court Auditorium Eisenhower Executive Office Building
- GAO Report On Air Travel and Communicable Diseases: Federal Leadership Needed to Advance Research
- Veterans Health Care: Efforts to Hire Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists
- The US Housing and Mortgage Market, Risks and Resilience: Federal Reserve Governor Michelle W. Bowman
- New York Historical Society Presents Exhibition Honoring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Adrienne G. Cannon Writes: Those Lonely Days
- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell: Monetary Policy in the Time of Covid