The Problem of Generations

Most serious writers on the problem of youth have recognized that youth's present difficulties in Western society are closely related to changed social and economic conditions and to the ensuing difficulty for youth in finding self-realization in work. As Goodman observes: “It's hard to grow up when there isn't enough man's work,” and he continues, “To produce necessary food and shelter is man's work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, “It's better to die than to live so hard” – but they worked on... Security is always first; but in normal conditions, a large part of security comes from knowing your contribution is useful, and the rest from knowing it's uniquely yours: they need you.”

Just as in this country an earlier generation needed youth because the economic security of the family depended on its contribution, so in Russia today youth is needed because only it can carry on the task of creating the new and better society; and in Africa because only it can move society from tribal confusion toward modern democracy. If the generations thus need each other, they can live together successfully, and the problem of their succession, though not negligible, can be mastered successfully. Under such conditions youth and age need each other not only for their economic but even more for their moral survival. This makes youth secure – if not in its position, at least in its self-respect. But how does the parent in modern society need the next generation? Certainly not for economic reasons any more, and what little expectation a parent may have had that his children would support him in old age becomes superfluous with greater social security. More crucially, the status-quo mood of the older generation suggests no need for youth to create a much different or radically better world.

In many respects youth has suddenly turned from being the older generation's greatest economic asset into its greatest economic liability. Witness the expense of rearing and educating youth for some twenty or more years, with no economic return to be expected. Youth still poses emotional problems. To the preceding generation, as of old. But in past generations these emotional problems were, so to speak, incidental or subservient to economic necessity. What at best was once the frosting on the cake must now serve as both solid food and trimmings – and this will never work.

Thus the economic roles, obligations, and rewards are no longer clearly defined between the generations, if not turned upside down. Therefore, another aspect of the relation between the generations looms even larger; in a balance sheet of interaction that is no longer economic but largely emotional. Modern man, insecure because he no longer feels needed for his work contribution or for self-preservation (the automatic machines do things so much better and faster), is also insecure as a parent. He wonders how well he has discharged that other great function of man, the continuation of the species.

At this point modern youth becomes the dreaded avenging angel of his parents, since he holds the power to prove his parents' success or failure as success is no longer so important in society of abundance. Youth itself, feeling insecure because of its marginal position in a society that no longer depends on it for economic security, is tempted to use the one power this reversal between the generations has conferred on it: to be accuser and judge of the parents' success or failure as parents.

The Second Stage

The first stage of the women's movement, says Friedan, was fought against the “old structure of the unequal polarized male and female sex roles.” In their struggle for equality, however, some militant feminists went too far and also rejected the family itself. In the second stage, Friedan believes that women should fight for a restructuring of our institutions so those women can be truly free to choose their roles – including the important choice of having children.

The women's movement is being blamed, above all, for the destruction of the family. Churchmen and sociologists proclaim that the American family, as it has always been defined, is becoming and “endangered species,” with the rising divorce rate and the enormous increase in single-parent families and people – especially women – living alone. Women's abdication of their age-old responsibility for the family is also being blamed for the apathy and moral delinquency of the “me generation.”

Can we keep on shrugging all this off as enemy propaganda – “their problem, not ours?” I think we must at least admit and begin openly to discuss feminist denial of the importance of family, of women's own needs to give and get love and nurture, tender loving care.

What worries me today are the agonizing conflicts young and not-so-young women are facing – or denying – as they come up against the biological clock, at thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-nine, forty, and cannot “choose” to have a child. I fought for the right to choose, and will continue to defend that right, against reactionary forces who have already taken it away for poor women now denied Medicaid for abortion, and would take it away for all women with a constitutional amendment. But I think we must begin to discuss, in new terms, the choice to have children.

What worries me today is “choices” women have supposedly won, which are not real. How can a woman freely “choose” to have a child when her paycheck is needed for the rent or mortgage, when her job isn't geared to taking care of a child, when there is no national policy for parental leave, and no assurance that her job will be waiting for her if she takes off to have a child?

What worries me today is that despite the fact that more than 45 per cent of the mothers of children under six are now working because of economic necessity due to inflation, compared with only 10 per cent in 1960; no major national effort is being made for child-care services by government, business, labor, Democratic or Republican parties – or by the women's movement itself.