What's Love Got to Do with It?

Wellesley's unease over wife and mother Barbara Bush renews the debate about women's divided loyalties

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On commencement day, few college graduates want to be reminded of the dilemma; at 22, motherhood is easy to devalue. The rush that comes from closing a million-dollar deal, getting the corner office or winning collegial respect has an immediate appeal that mountains of diapers and twelve years of PTA do not. Not just men or the marketplace but the sisterhood as well came to believe that the only jobs worth pursuing are paid and the only accomplishments worth having are ones that enhance a resume. In last winter's alumni magazine, Wellesley graduate Mary Morrow wrote about how her classmates responded to her decision to combine college with motherhood with "bewilderment and occasional pity."

Bush may be the perfect antidote to this culture, which economist Sylvia Hewlett, author of A Lesser Life, says has "taught young women to almost despise the nurturing role." Indeed, now that Bush is on her own, she is holding her own. Rather than hype fashion designers or choose new White House china (she is replacing chipped plates one at a time), Bush spends her days drawing attention to the homeless, AIDS patients, the poor, and those whose lives have been so impoverished they never learned to read. For Wellesley students, says Hewlett, Bush "has all sorts of wisdom about what half of their lives will be" -- of the victories of motherhood, small and evanescent, which occur largely behind closed doors with results apparent in the next decade, not the next deal. It is a profession in which almost nothing happens day by day but everything is won or lost over time. Important stuff for these women who, if they are lucky, will graduate to more than a paycheck.

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