Motherhood now different, not necessarily easier

After a recent meeting with a former colleague, also a friend and sister feminist, I've dropped my surety a notch or two. Over lunch, we reviewed the gap in time since we let our hair down with each other -- 12 years.

Eileen (we'll call her) and I have a generation between us, but we speak intensely about the way things would be, ideally. We of the Third Third thought her age group, the first to act upon what we designed, would benefit from my era's planning, from our going out on a limb to change things, from our enthusiasm to swing the pendulum to make the world better for women.

We are mothers. Even the most liberated of women wants to reproduce and, with our children more perfect than ever before, move the world forward. Tell me, young one, that it is better being a mother in 1996 than in 1946. Eileen says no.

In recent years, she had divorced. I recall her talking about the angst at home as she moved up in her career while her former husband's remained the same. Although religious concerns were an obstacle to their separation, when her son started school, she thought she could handle it alone and called for a divorce.

What do we owe the kids?

The path of a single mom is a rough one, but she had chosen it. Her former husband remarried and became a father to his new wife's three children, with little time or interest for his own. He contributed to support according to the judge's orders, but as the years go on, he is less enthusiastic about being with his natural son. Eileen must be the one to drive him to the dentist, the soccer game, the movies and the myriad errands involved with raising a child.

Eileen's not a nun -- there's another man in her life now. But he wants her attention, more than Eileen feels she can give without interfering with the duties of motherhood. Her new man feels no obligation to take over the responsibilities of raising someone else's child. He left his own with his first wife. Things are, once again, tense, and she fears losing another relationship.

``What do we owe our kids?'' Eileen asks. ``Won't my son go his own way when he's out of college?'' She grew up in a family of nine, and her mother surely didn't ``serve'' her as Eileen is expected to do today. Maybe she is putting too much pressure on herself, I offer with my Third Third wisdom.

Feelings of guilt

But, we both agree, children are going astray so much today that she must keep a watchful eye on hers. At 14, her son is yielding to the usual temptations of teenagers, and mom feels the closer she stands by, the more apt she is to pick up on any problems. And what would she do about it? We both shrug our shoulders, knowing that drugs, gangs, dissident behavior, are universal societal issues that moms, with or without a husband, are facing today.

Eileen refers to her guilt several times during our lunch. She's stuck in a morass of inadequate feelings for having done what, with the best information she had at the time, she deemed the proper thing to do.

Should she have remained in an uncomfortable marriage, as mothers of our generation did, just ``for the children's sake?'' Should she not have taken the education that led to her career? Should she not have advanced in her profession as the opportunity arose? Should she not be giving the most she can to her son?

Would her son be any different if she had remained married to his father? Would he be less demanding and more respectful of his mom than he is now? Is it just a phase the youngster, and thus the mother, is going through?

Did my generation lead hers down the garden path in thinking women could have more control of their lives than their foremothers?

We hear the hue and cry of yuppie women. They are in charge but don't know which way to turn. Ahead of them seems a lonely road of pioneering in the Baby Boomer mode.

Claire Mitchel welcomes letters. Write to her at: The Herald, 9341 NW 57th St., Tamarac, Fla. 33351.