TheBanyanTree: Notes

[JMoney]

1.
Saw a program last night on babies and the women who aren't having them.  A
38-year old TV news presenter told how she'd been to the doctor who'd asked
her if she had any children and when she'd said, "Not yet but maybe some
time in the future," he said, "But you're 38," in a tone of astonishment.
That was the first she'd heard, she said, that maybe she'd left it too late.

For crying out loud, I thought.  She's supposed to be a journalist - you
know, capable of doing a bit of research - and she's telling us that's the
first she heard about the biological clock.  Come on!  Come over here and
pull the other one.

Probably what's more likely is that she didn't hear because she wasn't
listening because she wasn't interested.  The idea of the fabulous job with
accompanying glamourous lifestyle does tend to make having babies, washing
nappies, staying home and playing peep-oh seem unattractive as goals by
comparison.  Now she is disappointed to discover that she may not be able to
"have it all".

2.
Indeed, so disappointed and aggrieved was she that she wrote an article in
which she lambasted the feminist movement for denigrating motherhood and
women who chose babies over pursuit of a high-powered career.  One of the
leading feminist lights then got up and said, more or less, "We never did!"

Oh dear!  Oh dear!  Do such women believe that the rest of us were born
yesterday and have no memory of the last 30 to 40 years?  Everything they
did and said denigrated mothers, especially "stay-at-home" mothers.

3.
None of the men in my family seem to care whether their pillowslips are
ironed or not but I like them all smooth and crisply ironed so I'm going to
go soon and iron some.  While I do that I'll be waiting for a phone call.
My sister in law is having her first baby today.  She's 45.

4.
My grandmother had the last of her seven babies when she was 45.  According
to my mother poor Nanna felt humiliated by being pregnant at that age.  The
whole world could know that she and her husband were still sexually active
at an age when, for some reason, people were supposed to be past, or maybe
above, all that.

5.
How things have changed.

Last night we watched the Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton movie, "Something's
Gotta Give".  During the love scene James walked through the room and,
catching sight of the two elderly folk going at it, said, "Ew!  Old people
having sex!"

I'm old enough that I didn't find that too much of a gross-out but what I
did find particularly unappealing was that these two, though so old, were
presented as though they had the passions (and silliness) of the young and
we were supposed to buy it.  Here's the two of them grasping and pawing at
each other just like any young couple overwhelmed by psychic and hormonal
urges even though neither of them could, in the normal course of events, be
expected to have been capable of such surges of sexual drivenness.  Here's
Diane Keaton walking down the street, weeping and wailing, clutching at her
hair, and saying, "How could I have been so stupid?" - just like any
teenaged or 20-something girl.  It's the youth culture, I expect.  Or maybe
it's the sex culture.  Too bad we don't have a wisdom and maturity culture
anymore.

Janice