Remembering the Seventies--Monday Memories

I first heard the details about the modern women's movement in my living room. A neighbor/friend with whom I worked on a fair housing committee mentioned she was losing interest in civil rights, but had become interested in women's rights. Not the one from the 19th century, not getting out the vote of the early 20th century, but Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay stuff. Neither of us were employed, although we both had advanced degrees, and that wasn't unusual in my neighborhood near Ohio State University. I think her teenage daughter had run away from home; shortly thereafter she did too, and I never saw her again. Not too long after that I remember attending “consciousness raising” groups on the OSU campus--women sitting around in dumpy duplexes, usually on the floor, discussing the various ways society or more specifically men had kept them from their potential or dreams, and how things would be different if women were in charge. More collaborative. Kinder. More team work. We were so radical we didn’t even serve snacks like church ladies.

Yes, I remember when the professional schools of medicine, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and law weren't over 60% female. I just stared in amazement when the female student vet walked in to look at my 5 week old kitten in 1976. I remember when suburban neighborhoods weren't expensively furnished ghost towns during the day. People were around and children were playing in yards unsupervised. I remember when most pastors in Protestant mainline churches were male seminary graduates. I can even remember when people only went out to eat (unless they were fabulously wealthy) on special occasions. I can count on one hand the number of times I'd been in a fast food restaurant before 1970. I remember when I knew no one who homeschooled and no one sent their children (except Catholics) to private school. Grover and Big Bird were just a few years old and quite innocent; Phil Donahue was leaving Dayton around 1970, as I recall.

I didn't read a lot of medical literature in the early 1970s (except baby stuff), but it seems it was more about disease, cures and epidemiology and not so much about poverty, ethnicity and gender in those days. Children played in their own neighborhoods, or mothers organized play groups and supervised each others children. I didn't see a Wal-Mart until about 1978, or later,--in Bradenton I think. I used disposable diapers only on car trips, held the babies in my lap not car seats, their toys and clothing were made in the U.S.A. (or by me), and I never took my children to grocery stores or church. Like most of the people we knew we had one TV, one car, and one telephone.

That's sort of how I remember the 70s. The women's movement changed everything and brought us many of our current social, economic and health problems. More on that later.

[Sorry, this missed the deadline for Monday. There's no one to blame, but me.]