I do agree we need to face the truth about our relationships.

I think that some of us cringe with RW's essay the same way we cringe when we accidentally see Jerry Springer, Cheaters, or any other embarassing day time show with topics like "my daughter's a slut" or "my dad's a junkie", etc. The thought of doing something like that makes me ill, which is a personal thing.

I would die of embarassment if my diary (destroyed, yeah!) when I was a teen was released. I hated everybody in my family...now we're quite close. I realize that my parents did not wake up in the morning trying to figure out ways to embarass me, repress me, etc. They did the best they could, just like most do, including (unfortunately) even some of the abusive ones. Very few of us were raised by true pyschopaths, instead we were raised by neurotics, the depressed, the lonely, the fearful, the disappointed, the overworked, etc. In other words, real people.

Maybe RW is different and feels empowered by airing her grievances, though I think her blaming feminism on her mother's falings a bit of a stretch, AW might not have been touchy feely Mom even if she had been forced to be a stay at home with her child.

If this helps her move on, good for her.

Yes, of course motherhood (and fatherhood) is important, and how you treat your child shows a good portion of your character and that person should be loved and cared for. No one disputes that here...

But are you really saying that MLK would have better served the world being a better (faithful) husband and (at home)father?

Are you saying that we don't need the inane writings of people like Shakespeare or silly artwork of people like Picasso if it meant they weren't always "all there" for their children...every single time they felt they needed it?

I personally think that this has nothing to do with feminism, and is the not uncommon unresolved issues of parents and their children not getting along.

And ParsonJim, somehow I think that abuse, neglect, bitterness at decisions of our parents are not new to the world, so trying to make this an indictment of feminism is a stretch.

What has feminism done for me?

I'm an engineer. I'm 44. I have friends that are not much older than me who lived in a completely different world. One was told to sit in the back of her Physics class so she wouldn't distract the serious students. One was pulled aside many times by professors to discuss wasting her own time in the sciences when it was so obvious she could/would marry well (she was very pretty).

In earlier days the only options presented for really smart women who wanted a career was to be a teacher, regardless of their interest in children. And it was children they were expected to teach, not college students.

I can legally own land in my name, even though I'm married...even in Texas. My math teacher in high school wasn't so lucky in the 60's.

As an adult, I can decide whether I want birth control without getting written permission from my husband, boyfriend or parents.

My husband doesn't have the right to beat me, I'm not his property.

You can pretend that because there is still some injustice in the world that nothing has changed.

I don't want to go back to the fake ideal world of the 50's, let alone before then.

Feminism is the reason I've been allowed the choices I've made, whether they've made me happy or not.

I think that was what caused AW to withdraw rather than celebrate when her daughter got pregnant by an older, already married man with children. I can't see anyone that loves RW thinking that this is the greatest thing ever.

AW saw that even though her daughter would of course love the child, that there are tons of things that would be complicated by this choice.

BTW, I know single parents can do it. My mother died really young and my dad (still in his 20's) did the best he could. He made some serious mistakes, but no doubt, different mistakes would have been made by my real mother. My stepmother being added to the picture was a good thing in my life and my father's. I didn't always see that growing up, now it's pretty obvious.

The road had been paved for me, too, I think that was the point I was trying (obviously poorly) to make. My life is better because of the fight the feminists made.

But the things that occured that I mentioned were to women just a few years older. I knew their stories because they were return students, women in their late 20's and early 30's who were giving it another go. They were my friends but their experiences were harder than mine. In engineering at the time at my school there were 10% women, but it was much less than that in my specialty.

I was really trying to rebut Mirabel who seemed to say that feminism changed nothing for the better, that things suck for women now more than ever. I disagee, though there are still things to be done.

Back to the point of parents "being there" emotionally. I thought most of the attempts of my parents to connect with me as cloying, intrusive. I withdrew. My sister could never get enough, always felt deprived, always needed more. My parents could not have pleased either of us, they shouldn't be expected to. They did the best they could.