The problem with women--another general observation

A while back I blogged about the problem with women. Basically, girls grow up not realizing that maybe what they will have the desire to do more than anything when they actually reach adulthood is to be a wife and mother. And then they become a wife and mother and suddenly they are torn between what they "always" wanted to be and what they now want to be exclusively.

It is an odd thing. I sometimes wonder if it deserves more attention than raising children outside gender boundaries. And not to be judgemental, but that just seems odd to me.

Anyway, back to my point. Grace is Star of the Week this week at school. I was to send a few photos of her in and she needed to fill out a questionnaire. It was harmless enough and really pretty cute. Name, age, height weight, number of brothers, number of sisters, favorite thing to do at school and at home, and what she wants to be when she grows up.

I was helping that day in her class and her teacher (who I love) was sweet enough to swap a couple things around so I could see Grace do her little presentation. And Grace did a good job. It made me smile.

She wants to be a "ballet teacher" when she grows up. Never mind that she's not even in ballet right now, that's what she wants to do.

I came home and was thinking about the whole thing. I'm not anti-public education or anti-education or anti-let's-give-our-kids-dreams-and-goals. But it bugs me.

When I was in high school I had one friend who wanted to graduate, get married and have children. That was her plan. She didn't know who she was going to marry, but she was going to college to find him. And she would sit in Physics and do her cross stitch. No, she wasn't weird. She is possibly one of the nicest human beings I've known. And she was beautiful and intelligent, kind and compassionate.

But she was going against everything we were there to learn. And now I think she's the one who had the right idea. She KNEW what she wanted to do. She knew what she was made to do. I don't think she ever declared a major in college because she got married one year after we graduated.

Now if Grace had put on her little form in Kindergarten that she wanted to grow up and be a mom, that would have been fine. But she didn't. And if she did that in the seventh grade, she'd probably get funny looks and people would wonder what on earth I'm grooming her to be.

Why isn't it okay for our girls to want to be wives and mothers? Why do they have to discover it later in life that really it's not a bad job? I know those are complicated questions that require the psycho-analysis of an entire culture and its history, but in truth, it's a simple question.

And in truth, the answer should be a simple answer. The answer should be that they can grow up wanting to be wives and mothers. But really, don't tell too many people! You'll scare them and they'll think your mother is a nut case and your father was an abusive control freak.