A few days ago a friend posted something on Facebook about her
Dad having to answer the telephone, he promptly told the caller, “hold on while
I get my wife.” He did not want to talk
on the telephone.
My Dad would not answer the phone! I may have seen him answer
the phone one time in 10 years, ONLY because my mother was upstairs and the
only phone in that house was on the ground floor. It was the ONLY time I ever
saw him talk on the phone.
I think that was what I refer to as “generational”. In my Dad’s era answering the telephone was
part of the wife’s job. There was never
any doubt that my mother was not a “housewife” but a home-maker and that was
her job. Now that could be due to the
fact that my mother worked for my father in the capacity of childcare-giver and
housekeeper. Taking care of the house
was her job and that did not change when they decided to marry, nor should it
have changed. But that was the era; it
was generational.
The past few weeks I have been watching the AMC series Mad Men,
a program about men in the advertising business in the early 1960’s, and about
life in general in that era. I have
thought a good bit about things being generational and how much the world has
changed since I was a child.
My father worked, he raised hybrid carnations in greenhouses,
and chrysanthemums in the fields out back.
It was similar to being a farmer, in that we lived right there, where
the greenhouses were located, like many, many families of flower growers (also
known as florists). My father worked outside of the home, and my mother worked
inside of the home. In that era most
mothers worked in the home, taking care of everything from child rearing to
cooking meals to paying the household bills.
So, much like Don Draper’s wife Betty, my friends mothers, my
aunts, the majority of women in that generation were home-makers. The father’s, like Don, worked outside the home
and practically had whole other lives out in the world.
On the other side of the generational divide, I have never been
solely a home-maker. I have always had
to work outside of the home, or I would not even have a home. For as long as I have been in the workforce
it seems like there are more women workers than men –based on the industries I
have worked in: retail for many years and then office work for more years.
If you watch Mad Men, watch Peggy, she is the type of woman who
were at the forefront of feminism without realizing that fact. The part I find most interesting is that,
while Peggy was considered to be a secretary, she was given advertising
assignments for products that the men were extremely uncomfortable dealing
with. It is interesting to observe the different take on such products from the
uptight men versus the young woman, Peggy, who is obviously hiding the fact
that she is more savvy about the world than most of her peers.
And, getting back to my parents, they were actually of different
generations themselves, my father being 17 years older than my mother. My father never flew in an airplane, my
mother became rather well-traveled in the second half of her life, flying at
least annually for many years. Maybe
that was generational and maybe it was just that my mother’s idea of adventure
was so much broader than my father’s.
Anyway, I like to watch people and observe the generational
differences. Even those differences
between myself and co-workers who are only a few years old than I am.
