A First to Last
(published in The Monthly Caucus of the Episcopal Women's Caucus) When I was a little girl my mother made certain I could accomplish two things: that I would be the first woman in my immediate family to go to college and I would have a career. Her primary goal was that I become financially self-sufficient and thus I would not be dependent upon a husband to “take care of me.” A lot has changed since 1963 when my mother, influenced in part by Betty Friedan’s book the “Feminine Mystique,” instilled in me the dreams and fears she had for her only daughter. Fifty years later I hold two master’s degrees and have a vocation as an Episcopal priest. I’ve been married to the same man for almost thirty years. And, for a time I was a stay-at-home mother tending to our two children while my husband worked outside the home and earned the money we lived on. Both my mother’s dreams and her fears became my reality, but not with the outcome she worried about. As a p...