A Mother's Steady View of Her Marriage

It wasn’t until the early seventies, when women were encouraged to reevaluate men’s traditional role in marriage, that Daddy’s authority in family decisions came into question. Now, the woman’s movement is a good movement, which I support wholeheartedly, but after Daddy’s death, some of the girls—and possibly Oprah Winfrey—worked mother over pretty good and tried to get her to revisit her history regarding Dad’s self-appointed authority in terms of the new women’s rights movement. I’m guessing Mom played along with the girls, but I don’t think she ever bought it. I say this because, later on, during one of her long summer visits to California, Mother told me Daddy’s authority never did come into question for her, although she mentioned the girls had taken a hard line about this. “What’s the use,” Mom said. “He’s gone now. What am I supposed to do? Be mad at him? We each had our jobs, and that was that. He was your father. He was a good man and he never hurt a soul in his life.” Those last words were the same words she had said to us kids in the hospital only moments after Daddy died. I could feel that she still believed it, and even better, wanted me to. For me, Dad’s relationship to Mom never came into question, either. He was a hero for taking care of us kids and Grampa and Mom. Being a boy kid, I did not question Dad’s unilateral decision-making power. If that wasn’t fair then, that’s one thing, but it was the way marriages worked. That was his job, I thought, and Mom’s job was different and neither had anything to do with equality. Sharing in the care of all of us was , after all, their prime motivation in life. This was proven over and over and over again. What a fine world it would be if everyone did only that. Dad’s independent actions and unilateral decision making was the norm for responsible men in his time. End of story. If you want to look back on that and call it wrong by today’s standard, go ahead.