Today is my birthday. Let me fill you in on a little history of my generation. Those of us conceived during the Great Depression of the 1930s are the smallest group in the twentieth century–people didn’t need another mouth to feed. Only 24.4 million birth cries were heard in the United States after the stock market crash of ’29 compared to 31.7 million in the forties and 40.3 million in the fifties.
We “remember Pearl Harbor” and did our little bit for the war effort. Following high school, our boys marched to battle in Korea, the first in a string of undeclared wars. President Eisenhower ended that conflict in 1952, but the Cold War with Russia continued and so did the draft. The men in uniform were trained and ready to do whatever might become necessary. The threat of nuclear weapons wafted over the globe like a mushroom cloud.
In our twenties, we settled down. Ninety-six percent of us girls wed and most had three babies. Only seven percent of those who married did not become mother, the lowest proportion of childless women in any generation in American history.
The Pill became available in the ’60s and revolutionized women’s lives. Those who had sacrificed their own college education to work for PHTs (putting hubby through) went back to school and careers. Our generation became the first to have a large number of females employed outside the home. This new independence contributed to more than a quarter of our marriages ending in divorce. This created single-parent families, which were predominately headed by mothers.
Raised on radio, we revamped TV. Mary Tyler Moore went from Dick VanDyke’s wife to the single-woman star of her own show. Other female firsts abounded: Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State; Janet Guthrie, Indianapolis 500 race car driver; Sandra Day O’Conner, Supreme Court Justice; Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic Party nominee for Vice President; and Elizabeth Dole, candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. All of those events were reported by journalists including Barbara Walters.
The Census Bureau predicts that in 2020 there will be seven to eight million 85 and older. Many will be single–one out of three American women passed 65 lives alone and one out of seven men. Strong ancestors, healthy eating, exercise, medical care and camouflage help keep us feeling good and looking good, but physical and mental impairments can reduce us to climbing molehills instead of mountains. We must continue to speak for ourselves and form partnerships with the generations following us.
What are you planning for your future?