rivero@dev8.mdcbbs.com (04/06/91)
Okay, I am going to leap into this topic of 'social pressures' as a determinate in a woman's (or man's) life, and I shall use as my examples both my own mother and that of my wife. These two women were born less than 2 years apart and less than 150 miles apart geographically. Both were raised on the East Coast of the United States. Both came from families with strong "traditional" beliefs. Both married men of equivalent education and career. Both had 3 children. Both were ultimately divorced. In one case, the woman in question followed the prevailing social pressure, halting education at the high school level. She spent her days in an almost caricaturish ritual of beauty salons and New York's finest department stores. In her post-divorce world, she stills seeks a husband who is 'supposed to' pay her credit card bills. The other woman actually defied her parents to go to college, working to pay her own tuition. After raising her family, she took a second degree in chemistry, not exactly a lightweight subject. She enjoyed a career that equaled her husband's. Her post-divorced life cannot be analysed owing to an untimely death, but she was well equipped to live her own life as she chose it. For two American women to have had such similar starts and such diverse endings points out the fallacy of the 'social pressures' argument. Personal will has a lot to do with one's direction in life. It is easy to point fingers and blame parents, spouses, or society at large for a life that winds up filled with little more than tupperware parties and daytime television. Your life is what you make of it, and I for one am sick to death of underachieving women (and men) who would rather blame society, parents, husbands (or wives), or men in general (or women in general) than take responsability for their own lives. Talking about life is a damn poor substitute for living one! Michael Rivero
mara@cmcl2.NYU.EDU (Mara Chibnik) (04/06/91)
In article <1991Mar25.115828.1@dev8.mdcbbs.com> rivero@dev8.mdcbbs.com sketches what he considers to be the lives of two quite different women and from that concludes: >For two American women to have had such similar starts and such >diverse endings points out the fallacy of the 'social pressures' >argument. Of course it doesn't. It might actually be the case that enough detail on these two women would constitute a compelling argument, but none was presented here. Among the "social pressures" each woman faced were the specifics within her family, presence or absence of adults around her to provide encouragement and example for following or avoiding a clearly marked route, and the appearance or otherwise of distractions from pursuing a goal already in mind. I see no reason (on the basis of details presented) not to make the following interpretation: Woman A is someone who is an excellent team player, doesn't like making waves, falls in with what's around her. Woman B is someone who does a good job of bucking a trend-- likes fighting her way through obstacles, adapts against rather than to what's there... These are both personality types that under appropriate circumstances can do well for themselves and lead to happy and productive lives, but that can fail under other circumstances. Both are evidence of the importance of social pressure, not of its lack of importance. -- cmcl2!panix!mara Mara Chibnik mara@dorsai.com "It can hardly be coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." --Douglas Adams