One Foot in the Traditional World & One in the Modern

The generation known as the Baby Boomers is now aged somewhere between  57 and 75. When I began to write this month’s blog post, I realized that that this span is an 18-year difference.

Those of us born in the first five years of this generation grew up in a much different world than those that were born in the last five years. The expectations and experiences were much different. In this blog, I am going to share my experience being born in the first five years.

My Experiences as an Early Boomer

We were the girls of the 50s and became adults in the early 60s. We grew up in the generation that was seen and not heard.

I do not ever remember being asked what I liked or what I wanted to do. As a girl, all of my activities were constructed so that I would learn the skills I needed to become a housewife. Even college was to prepare me for marriage and to be a safety net if I had to support my family for some tragic reason. The goal of our senior year was to have an engagement ring on the 3rd finger of our left hand by the day we walked across the stage and received our high school diploma.

So, when I speak of having one foot in the traditional world what do I mean?

I mean is that as girls, we were expected to learn skills that would help us do women’s work.

• I learned to sew in order to make my family’s clothing.

• I learned to embroider my clothing, sheets, pillowcases, and dish towels.

• I made my own curtains too.

I didn’t learn to cook though, as my maternal grandmother lived with us and she deemed that as her job. My mother didn’t like to cook and decided that I could learn how after I married. My husband taught me, and I never thought my cooking was good enough.

I did go to community college for a year before I was married to earn my insurance plan. I was pushed toward Home Economics and/or Business classes to help me when I was married. I already knew how to sew and I hated working with numbers so I chose Music. Music was my silent rebellion, and I met other creative individuals like me who didn’t fit the mold.

I married in 1964 and continued to pursue a music career. I had a part-time job in the music library of the community college I attended. When my first child was born in 1966, I became a stay-at-home mom. That is what most of us did. Besides, most places of employment would not employee women with children even if she were the sole income for the family. As you might imagine, my life continued to be about the same even when my second child was born in 1970.

A Shift in Women’s Rights

Then sometime between 1971-1972 unmarried baby boomer women restarted the women’s movement, and personal growth classes began to flourish. I began to think about wanting to join that world. It was not until 1976 when my son started school that I returned to finish my education. I was turning 30 and placing one foot into a newly forming world of women.

At this time, I had both worlds pulling at me. I wanted to be home, and I also wanted to be a part of this new modern world. I tried to find mentors and I eventually had two. One was my mother and the other was a woman in my mother’s generation that became my mentor. She became my best friend until she died at 94 three years ago.

My mother is a 97-year-old adult child of an alcoholic father and stepfather. She attended 17 grammar schools and two middle schools in the county of Los Angeles before ending up in one high school before graduating. She missed the entire fifth grade because she contracted polio. Yet, with all of that, she maintained a 55-year marriage, which ended when my father died in 1998. As a working adult, she was the office manager of a large elementary school in the LSUDH.

What I learned from my mother was tenacity, persistence, determination, and independence. I learned this by watching her. I learned kindness from her and that that kindness was to be extended to those outside of my family. Her mentoring was not by discussion but by action.

I met my best friend in 1975 on my 30th birthday at a YMCA young girls camp. What a gift she was to me. She mentored me though action and discussion.

Both of us were California women who married southern men older than ourselves. Her husband left the coal mines of West Virginia and mine left the swamps of South Carolina. Our husbands came from vastly different experiences than our own, and she helped me to understand this and taught me how to love my southern husband and to see how he showed love to our children and me. When my husband’s back began to give him problems around the time of the US bi-centennial, she encouraged me to go back to finish my bachelor’s in human services. She had gone to UCLA in the Great Depression and was raise by a mother that was a nurse. She understood the value of education. She continued to push me to achieve and support myself in ways that called me.

The most important mentoring lessons was that I was to pay my gifts forward, success is not always measured by money, and that the wisdom of an elder generation could help me and the generation behind me to connect us all to each other.

What I have now come to understand is that I am the bridge between the older baby boomers and the younger ones. When I look at history, I have learned there have always been women wanting to be both traditional and modern no matter in what era they lived.

Inspired by the mentorship of these women, I went back to school in 1978 and took care of my family along with earning a BA in Human Services in 1980. In 1982 I finished my Counseling Drug and Alcohol Certificate and then earned a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology in 1987. Along with the master’s, I received a Community College Counselor and Instructors Certificate. In 1990 I passed the California State Licensing Exam for Marriage Family Therapist. Along this journey, I taught and counseled both clients and students.

The Bridge Between the Generations

What did I learn?

• I learned that early baby boomer women have become the bridge between WWII women and late baby boomer women.

• I learned that we all stand on someone else’s shoulders. I learned this by making friends with women of all ages. Some were twenty or more years older than me; some were ten or more years younger than me. My friendships were integrated in race and age.

• When I had social gatherings and women’s retreats, we learned each other’s hearts, histories, and beliefs. We were able to teach each other our likenesses and differences. We connected heart to heart. In our groups we saw that the older generations paved the way for the younger generations to support the women’s movement and take it further. The eldest of us had wisdom and they younger ones had fresh ideas and the drive.

Did this era solve all the problems?

No. What it did do was bring them to the light and create a new understanding for baby boomer women passed down from the WWII women. And now it’s our job to pass our wisdom to the next generations.