The choice

So I watched the movie Mona Lisa Smile this past week and something about it really hit a chord with me. The movie began as a pretty predictable flick about women in the fifties breaking the "chains" of tradition i.e. marriage, family, etc. I thought to myself, "Oh great, another movie about how being a wife and mother isn't as respectable as having a career.

Then one character surprised me- Joan. She was the smartest girl in the class and her teacher encouraged her to apply to Yale Law School. She gets accepted and then decides to get married and start a family instead. Her teacher expresses her disappointment and Joan answers by saying this:

"I know exactly what I'm doing and it doesn't make me any less smart. You stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don't. To you a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial.(?) She has no depth, no intellect, no interests. You're the one who said I could do anything I wanted. This is what I want."

I just love how she acknowledges the fact that she is glad that she now has choices, but that she has chosen to become a wife and mother. Every woman has the choice to make between life goals and she can decide whatever she thinks is best for her. I just get tired of people who say that becoming a homemaker is the least deisrable of goals. Why isn't it as respected as any other profession? I have seen the good that my mother did in raising six children who are out making a difference in the world. I didn't become a homemaker as a backup because I couldn't do anything else. I could do whatever I wanted to do- it's the fact the I CHOSE to be a wife and mother that makes it so meaningful to me.

Anyway, that was longer than expected. Thanks for indulging me:-)