Strollerderby

What Does This Generation of Moms Want?

Posted by Kelly Mills

multi-taskerThere's about a thousand headlines trying to define what moms of this generation want. Do we hope to return to the domestic spheres of the 1950's housewives (as has been reported), or are we career-minded? Do we care about our jobs or our kids? And one writer says we don't know what we want. When she works fulltime she can't wait to be home with family, but when she is on maternity leave she finds she hates staying at home. She gets a work-from-home freelance career but misses office action, and when she goes back to the office she chafes at the set hours that make her miss her kids. In short, women of this day and age have no idea what they want. What they really, really want.

I actually know what women want. Every woman really wants...A pony. Can I have a pony? A nice Shetland?

Sigh. If I had to hazard a crazy guess, I'd venture that women really want to feel fulfilled and satisfied at whatever they do whenever they are doing it, be it time with kids or the office grind or the freelance life. They'd also like financial security and crap like that. And that it's hard to balance many priorities, and the balance probably looks different for different people, making it impossible to (gasp) find one way to define an entire group of women, except with very broad strokes. I don't mean to Myspace the party here, but I'd also guess men want the same damn thing. It's a generation of people wanting to feel like they are engaged in meaningful things, which of course makes us sooooo very different from previous generations. It's just that our choices were more limited in the past, but I'd be surprised to find we have become suddenly impossible to please.   


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Comments

 

crabmommy said:

You said it, sister. As a "glass half empty" sort of mother-woman, I have always ahd trouble with this question. But you just answered it, and so simply and eloquently. A pony. I stlill really really want a pony. Shetland. Palomino. :)

February 8, 2008 12:57 PM
 

sanjay said:

This is silly.

"Some men want to be highly-paid executives, and some men want to be poets -- despite the well-known reduced financial rewards!  Just goes to show you -- you can't figure those crazy men out.  Maybe they don't know WHAT they want.  They are impossible to please!"

Oh...but we want [to play the] ponies, too...

February 8, 2008 2:14 PM
 

Karen Murphy said:

Shetlands are cranky and bite.  You don't want a Shetland.  How 'bout a nice mini giraffe?

February 8, 2008 3:53 PM
 

cooper1178 said:

I always tell my husband that if I had a herd of weiner dogs, I'd never want for anything else the rest of my life.  For whatever reason he's not buying it.  But a mini giraffe would be totally kick ass, I think I could talk him into that one.

February 8, 2008 5:27 PM
 

nathalie said:

I was going to write my thoughts on how to change your thinking so you can enjoy whatever you do to fulflmillent, but in fact what i really want is a horse, or a grown pony

February 9, 2008 10:35 AM
 

Amy Kuras said:

Pygmy goat?

This is good, Kelly. I also think more choice leads to more angsting about each choice. I'm a hell of a lot happier and more personally fulfilled than my just-missed-the-feminist-movement mother was at the age I am now and at the life stage I am in now, but she never spent the time wondering about the right thing to do that I do and have done. Or she did, but at the same time I was--me in my 20s and her in her 40s-50s.

February 10, 2008 10:13 PM

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