Every Wednesday, the second hour of my national radio show is the “Male/Female Hour.” A few weeks ago, a woman named Jennifer called in. For reasons of space, I have somewhat shortened her comments. Every young woman should read them. This is precisely what she said:
“Dennis, I want to get right to it. I’m 50 years old with four college degrees. I was raised by a feminist mother with no father in the home. My mother told me get an education to the maximum level so that you can get out in the world, make a lot of money.
“And that’s the path I followed. I make adequate money. I don’t make a ton of money. But I do make enough to support my own household.
“I want to tell women in their 20s: Do not follow the path that I followed. You are leading yourself to a life of loneliness. All of your friends will be getting married and having children, and you’re working to compete in the world, and what you’re doing is competing with men. Men don’t like competitors. Men want a partner. It took me until my late 40s to realize this.
“And by the time you have your own household with all your own bills, you can’t get off that track, because now you’ve got to make the money to pay your bills. It’s hard to find a partner in your late 40s to date because you also start losing self-confidence about your looks, your body. It’s not the same as it was in your 20s.
“You try to do what you can to make your life fulfilling. I have cats and dogs. But it’s lonely when you see your friends having children, going on vacations, planning the lives of their children, and you don’t do anything at night but come home to your cats and dogs. I don’t want other women to do what I have done.”
I asked, “Was it hard for you to make this call?”
She responded: “It was. I want to be anonymous because I don’t want people that I know to really know my true feelings. Because you do act like ‘My career is everything. I love working.’ But it’s a lie on the inside for me. It’s unfortunate. I didn’t realize this until it’s too late. I don’t know if it’s too late. I would like to find somebody to go on vacation with.
“You have other concerns when you get older and you live alone. Who’s going to take you to your medical appointments? If something should happen to you, there’s no other income there to help you. These are things you don’t understand when you’re in your 20s because you don’t think you’ll ever get old and have health problems.
“I’m stuck now because I go to work every day. I smile like I love it, but it’s very painful to not plan a vacation with someone. It’s painful to not have a Thanksgiving dinner with someone. You sit home alone and you do nothing. I avoid my friends now that have children because I have nothing in common with them.
“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Why did you stay single and never have kids?’ There’s answers: Because I was brainwashed by my mother into this. But it’s hard and it’s shameful to tell people, ‘I don’t know. I ran out of time.’
“There’s not a good answer for it except ‘I was programmed to get into the workforce, compete with men and make money.’ Supposedly, that would be a fulfilling life. But I was told that by a feminist mother who was divorced, who hated her husband – my father.
“She tried to steer me on what she thought was the right path, but feminism is a lie. That’s what I want women to know.
“I didn’t realize this until late in life. I want to tell women: Find someone in your 20s. That’s when you’re still very cute. That’s when you’re still amiable to working out problems with someone.
“It’s harder in your 50s, when you’ve lived alone, to compromise with someone, to have someone in your home and every little thing about them annoys you because you’re so used to being alone. It’s hard to undo that, so don’t do what I did. Find someone in your 20s.”
I said, “I’m thinking of transcribing your call and making it a column.”
“Do that, Dennis. I want to help whoever I can,” she said.