Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 20, 1995 TAG: 9504210064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I'm skimming this new book called ``Things Will Be Different For My Daughter,'' sent to me by an eager New York publicist. The headline on her press release reads, ``Welfare Reform Begins at Home: Eight Basic Skills Parents Can Teach Their Daughters to Encourage Self-Reliance.''
The release has fallen into my messy pile of story ideas and things I'll probably never get to, but for some reason the page with the Emerson quotation catches my eye.
It transports me, immediately, to the flat cornfields of Northwest Ohio. I am in my mom's rusting Mustang, packed to the roof with stolen milk crates and cheap suitcases containing my life's belongings: my clothes and books, my cherished Neil Young album collection and my beloved stuffed Ziggy.
The corn is high, the sky overcast. It's every Midwesterner's back-to-school landscape, the late-summer setting that includes JCPenney underwear sales and too-blue jeans.
It is August of 1982, and I am 18 years old. I have never seen the beach, nor written a check, nor spent the night any farther from home than a friend's house across town. Like my mother who is driving the car, I have never been in college before, and I am nervous as a wet cat.
I count the tar patches in the highway and the green mile markers beside the road. Thirty miles from Bowling Green State University and 70 miles from my home, I consider asking Mom to turn around.
I worry about not finding my classroom buildings, about not knowing where to eat. I imagine not making any friends, nor good grades, nor maintaining the false middle-class image I have emulated for so long.
I am afraid, deeply afraid, to do the thing no one in my family has never done. Afraid I'm not enough like everyone else, afraid I'm not good enough.
Somewhere in my mom's attic boxes there's a picture of me on that gut-wringing day. I'm standing in front of a towering dormitory, behind the rusting car, and I'm grinning painfully, as wide as my lips will allow.
Behind the lens is my mom, her phony smile just as wide and her gut just as grinding. I remember her snapping that picture, then hugging me, then pretending not to notice when I choked up saying good-bye.
Then I remember her driving off as fast as she could, leaving me there.
Before I changed my mind.
|n n| My mom couldn't have read ``Things Will Be Different For My Daughter,'' but she made its tenets her model, whether she meant to or not.
``What no one taking part in the debate over welfare reform seems to realize is that just giving women job training or forcing them to work will not solve the problem,'' says Mindy Bingham, co-author of the book. ``They are not psychologically prepared to become achievers in contemporary society.''
And with the number of female-headed households having tripled in the past 30 years (their median annual income is $13,000), ``many women fall into poverty because they were never taught some of the basic personal skills of self-reliance.'' Among the authors' keys to nurturing an ideal ``hardy personality'' in young women:
nGirls must learn to recognize and tolerate anxiety - and act anyway. Doting parents who rush in to ``rescue'' their discomforted little girl are teaching her to run away from problems, which can lead to scaled-back ambitions.
nGirls must be able to separate fantasy from reality and tackle the reality. Middle- and upper-middle-class girls are especially vulnerable to the myths that ``someday my prince will come'' and then they will ``live happily ever after,'' and may have fewer incentives to prepare for a career and take responsibility for their own actions.
It's often the inability to separate fantasy from reality that leads to unplanned pregnancies or unwise marriages, the authors contend, and to increased chances of becoming poor single parents.
nGirls must learn to ask for what they want and to trust their own perceptions. What's considered ``assertive'' in a male is ``pushy'' in a female, but a person who can't act in her own best interests is left with few options.
nGirls must learn to set boundaries and limits and not put others' wishes above their own. ``Encourage her to have opinions. Ask her what she thinks about the issues of the day. Allow her to stand up for herself when she's been bullied . . . Make sure she knows that her opinion of herself is more important than what anyone else thinks of her.''
|n n| My mom never signed up for welfare, though there were times when we easily qualified. When I was little, she earned money soldering airplane lights when the local factory's business was good and baby-sitting when it wasn't. Once she waited tables at a diner, but was fired after spilling food onto someone's lap.
While I was in college, she worked the night shift test-driving cars. Her salary was so small that I qualified for full financial aid. Combined with student loans, a few small scholarships and part-time jobs, it was enough to get me through.
My mom sent a $10-dollar bill when she could spare it, and stamps so I could write her back. But the federal Pell Grant was my savior - and the only government handout she ever took.
Not long after I married, Mom told me she was sorry she hadn't been able to pay for college, or buy all my clothes, or finance my wedding. My husband and I were standing by her door, leaving for our six-hour drive home.
``You have practically raised yourself,'' she said.
It's taken me all these years to realize how untrue that statement really is. Through her own self-reliance and grit, Mom taught me more than any person or any college: Work hard, don't take any crap, and don't sit around waiting for a man to come in and save you.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
To which I would add the following from Clementine Paddleford:
Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.
Beth Macy is a features writer and Thursday columnist. The book, "Things Will Be Different For My Daughter," is published by Penguin ($14.95, paperback).
by CNB