On Tuesday I mentioned the booklet of autobiographies written in my seventh-grade class.    Here’s a comparison–of course there are many but this is the one I’m going to pick up on.   In the seventeen autobiographies written by girls, all of them had wife and mother as future plans.  And in those seventeen autobiographies, I was the only girl who had any other vocation listed. 

I rush to say I have no problem with anyone who says that what they want to do in life is be spouse and parent.  Not a bit.   I accept that choice completely.    I also add that not one of the nineteen boys in the class listed as their one goal in life husband and father.  Not one of them listed that.   Lots of pilots and doctors and lawyers but not one mentioned a desire to be a husband and father.  Probably implied but not mentioned. 

This seems interesting to me because it points out how different the lives and choices of young people are today.   Both men and women can chose to stay home to care for family.  Both men and women can and do make plans to work, sometimes from necessity, sometimes because they want to.   Women today–and for many years–know that life is tricky.  They may not marry a man who can “take care of them”.  They may have to work for economic reasons and they may want to work because they know one size does not fit all. 

There!  That’s my sociological musing for today.