Paradox Clarification

Last night I made the mistake of Googling myself--a strong temptation for a writer--and I discovered my immature self being roundly abused on a Catholic forum for this post a post I've  removed. I was comforted, however, by the memory of my mother saying, the first time I came crying to her about this sort of thing, "If you stick your head above the parapet, expect to be shot at."

Words to live by, especially if you are dumb enough to write about yourself on the internet. 

The point of my post was to muse, for the sake of the Single-and-panicking, on Phyllis Schlafly's warning to career-minded women that if we don't get married and have children, we will have a lonely old age. 

A more direct answer to her warning is, "Eligible bachelors haven't been knocking down my door, Phyllis."

I said something similar in an open letter to Mark Steyn years ago. 

Most women want to get married. That is, the majority of women in the west want to fall in love with good men we respect, live in tolerable economic circumstances, and enjoy a happy life of companionship with or without children resulting from our unions.  Sadly, infatuation or desperate loneliness will make us settle for less, if we let it. 

Having been unhappily married in my 20s and being now happily married in my 40s, I am a true believer in not settling. Childlessness has put this belief to the test, and I have concluded that I still believe in not settling. I'm glad I have Benedict Ambrose, and if I'm all alone in the nursing home, I will tell the nurses how great Benedict Ambrose was. Given the Scottish birthrate, the nurses will all be Polish, so it's a good thing I'll be fluent in Polish by then. I will be their special Polish-speaking pet, fed on cake smuggled in from the kitchen.

This, by the way, is the paradox: I'm simultaneously glad I married B.A. and sorry I didn't have children.

In my post I pondered why it was that I felt marrying any of a number of suitors would have been settling, and I observed that I myself was not mature enough to marry until 32, which my critics found blameworthy. Perhaps I might have pointed out that a bad marriage, divorce and annulment process can knock you right back to gibbering infancy, if you're unlucky.  The experience is why I have spent so many years writing variations on "Don't settle." 

Meanwhile, I did not (as is alleged) suffer menopause at 38. As far as I know, I'm still not there.The kind functionary who phoned up to smash my dreams of motherhood merely said I had hormone levels consistent with peri-menopause; I think I was over 40. It's not a day I treasure, so I'm not sure of the year. My mother had her last baby when she was 35, so fertility issues at 40+ was not a surprise. 

To return to the painful issue of immaturity, it was in hindsight a blessing, for like everything else it somehow led to marrying B.A. However, it is not something I would wish on anyone else, since you are not going to marry B.A.  Let us leave me out of it, except to use my experience to figure out how to cure immaturity. Feel free to leave your own suggestions in the combox. 

How to Cure Your Own Immaturity

1. Stomp on the idea of serial dating.

Thanks to books about teenage life in the 1950s, I honestly thought that the point of dating was to go out on dates with as many boys as possible so as to figure out which was the best one to marry. This possibly made sense in the 1950s when the social trend was to marry young. 

It sort of made sense within Catholic circles, where the social trend was to marry soon after university graduation, although not really because there was no agreement among the boys that if Mary agreed to go out to the movies with Mike on Friday, Pat was still with in his rights to ask Mary to the college ball. Bad feelings could and did ensue.

If I knew then what I knew now, I would have said, "Sorry, So-and-so. I'm flattered that you like me, but I'm getting married to a Scottish guy in 2009." But, naturally, I didn't know that. 

Make a lot of friends of both sexes, but put off "dating" until you are a grown-up. I'm not sure how to tell when you have actually grown up. This will take more thought.

2. Understand ASAP that boys have feelings. 

Thanks to an unusually violent and profane group of elementary school classmates, I had doubts on this score. I did not know at the time that these boys were unusual. Meanwhile, thanks to the female pecking order, I absorbed the idea that as rotten as boys were, the more of them who were attracted to you, the more social caché you had. It didn't matter if you liked them or not. 

Although this may sound stupid, it was an idea reinforced by Gone with the Wind, almost all romance novels, and the works of Louisa May Alcott.  Louisa May would have been horrified, of course, as Polly in An Old-Fashioned Girl gave up trifling with an eligible bachelor for the sake of her best friend's feelings. Still, LMA did present "scalp-hunting" as normal feminine behaviour. 

We need to take responsibility for our sexuality and be aware of its effect on others. It has been fashionable for some years to blame everything on boys. If boys are uncomfortable with your top, or can't keep their eyes off your pushed-up bazooms, that is entirely their fault, etc. You can wear however little you want, and they just have to deal with it, etc. One of the many problems with this point of view is that it denies your moral agency. 

That said, it is true that there are bad men, and you should stay away from them.

Meanwhile, if you're not sure what is appropriate wear for any given social group, ask a trusted authority. For example, you don't have to wear a mantilla, hat or anything else on your head at the 12 Noon Edinburgh EF Mass, but if you wear skin-tight leggings with a little T-shirt, we will look at you funny.

3. Understand ASAP that you have agency. 

Maybe you don't feel "like a girl". Maybe you're a real tomboy. If you were a guy, you are absolutely sure you would not be attracted to a girl like yourself. Therefore, there is no danger if you hug and squeeze random guy friends, (pretend to) flirt with them, wear the sexy Hallowe'en costume (as a joke), ask them to marry you if you're both Single at 40---right?

Wrong. See 2. You're a girl. Sometimes you may wonder if any guy notices this. Believe me, they all do. All. That said, not all of them will find this wonderfully exciting.

You are not the football of fate. You can make things happen in your life, either through carelessness or through serious thought. Your choice.

4. Understand ASAP that boys don't have it all worked out either.

I have many readers over the years who just want to get married and have children. They are not interested in alternative careers. They expect their future husbands to have careers. They expect their future husbands to make enough money to support a wife and family. 

I have suggested to such readers that in this case they do their best to meet men who are somewhat--maybe a few years--older than they are. Boys of 22 are more unlikely now than ever to have the financial means to support a wife and a child, and although sometimes this is their fault, it usually isn't. Any man who says "I really don't know what I want to do with my life" is not marriage material. But he isn't Hitler, either.

5. Understand ASAP that you will not be defined by your husband's job.

Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, has been defined by her husband's job. She is one of a very few women in England of which this is true. It would cease to be true if there were a Revolution and the new communist overlords sent Citizen Windsor to a reeducation camp and then employed him as a plumber. Citizen Kate would then be free to define herself as she wished, either as the mother of Citizen George and Citizen Charlotte, or as a Hardworking Member of the People's Republic of England and Wales 

Because most books written before 1950 were more real to me than real life, I honestly worried about being stuck as Proletarian's Wife, well down the social scale from Doctor's Wife or Prime Minister's Wife unless through my own efforts I managed to get my own professional title. 

This was, of course, complete unadulterated, out-of-date, snobby nonsense, Mrs Doctor Dear. All the same, I knew deep down that I would not be happy married to someone who didn't dazzle at dinner parties. B.A. dazzles at dinner parties--or at least makes everyone laugh like drains. 

***

Well, I realize I may regret this post, too, but I am a great believer in encouraging the young to learn from my folly. Because it is increasingly unlikely that I shall ever have children, I am really very pleased that various friends and readers give me partial credit when they marry and have babies of their own. I do love babies. May my words help bring more babies into the world.

Update: I've removed my post. Indeed, I may shortly remove this one, too. There was just something so awful about self-professed Catholics discussing another woman's fertility (or lack therefore) like that. Ugh. I know you meant well, Xanthippe, but reading that conversation was like finding slugs under a rock.

Update 2: And I've taken down Edinburgh Housewife. After all these years, I think it's time to ring down the curtain on my unhappy twenties. If it is true that many other "conservative" Catholics are spreading the message of "Wait for the right man, don't panic and settle" there is no need for me to do it anymore.