Moms

Lately I've been noticing a lot of moms. Not moms of people I know, just women with small children, going through their own lives and I just so happen to witness a few moments of it.

I have to say, I am becoming more and more impressed by modern moms. I do believe it does have to do with modern times, the advancement of feminism. I believe that women finally have enough entitlement to authority and autonomy that they are actually worth more than their children. And that is fucking huge.

We are only just coming out of a time where everything, and everyone, belonged to men. A father owned his wife, his children, his dogs, etc. So in this light, a woman's value is really subjectively in the eyes of the man that owns her at the time. For a husband/father, he may value his wife equally to, or less than, his children, but certainly below himself. As such, a woman's treatment of his children (and we can say "his", not "their", in the pyschosocial context I'm referencing) was clouded by his value of them, and his value of her. She could not violate his wishes in fear of losing his approval, realistically her only avenue of survival. In a convoluted manner, this can change the power dynamic between mother and child; if the father values the child over the mother, than the mother's survival is dependent upon the child's attitude towards the mother. This can result, simply, in children walking all over their mothers because their mothers are afraid of their children becoming upset, and transferring this disproval to their fathers. Worse, when mother and child are alone and the father is not present to make his wishes explicitly known, the mother just make a best guess about what course of action the father would approve of in any given situation, and my observation would indicate that this usually errs on the side of giving the child power and control, to maintain their happiness and approval. Fucked up shit, basically.

Enter a new age of thought. A woman can be independent, even if married. A woman's opinions and feelings are valid and cannot be negated by conflicting opinions and feelings of a male figure. Women can thus treat their children in the way that feels appropriate to them, even if and when the father disagrees. When mother and child are not being supervised by the father, the mother needs not attempt to channel the father's will and can make and implement her own best judgment about a situaiton. This is huge. Because what this translates to is that women exert a much greater amount of authority over their children, and from what I can tell, this is a good thing. They do not let their children get away with bad behavior. They demand a higher level of performance, pushing their kids to their maturity limit. Kids act more like adults at a younger age. I predict that this will translate to better performance in school, fewer delinquency and behavior issues, and better preparedness for the adult world. The next generation, the generation that is 7 and younger right now, is going to be the most mature, well-adjusted, highly disciplined, diversity-literate, teamwork-ready generation we have yet seen. All because moms are finally people.