Women, how has the dichotomy of traditional values and modern necessity of independence affected your general mental well-being?

Probably overall by making me feel like a failure.

I understand that there are countless women out there that are able to juggle everything, and many of them do a phenomenal job of doing so. Also, while keeping themselves pulled together much better than I do without half of the ambition. But, as I grow older I’ve come to accept that I am just not that person… and many of us are not. Although it is hard for me to shake the feeling that there are expectations that I feel like society insists that I meet, the harder I push myself over my own limit, the worse off the outcome ends up being.

Ah, but @ANef_is_Enuf , therein lies the tale. There are not countless women doing all that cool stuff and keeping it together, there are countless women pretending to do all that stuff and keep it together. Really, there are only 6 women that do the stuff and are not overwhelmed. And they’re cyborgs.

@JilltheTooth true, good point.
Even so, I do feel like my threshold is not quite as high as many other women. Even those that are pretending still seem to be more capable than I feel.

That’s what the whole pretending thing is. I’m really good at it. And there were some days, I must admit, when @KatawaGrey was small that I would’ve welcomed a traditional set-up and not had to “worry my pretty little head”.

Maybe I am just really bad at pretend.

Not a bad thing, that!

NSFW
One thing I’ve noticed about this conundrum is an increase in women at least admitting to wanting to be spanked and dominated. It was a little fetish in prior generations and now it’s almost universal.

I wonder how much of that is a subconscious cultural implantation of wanting to submit to the prior patriarchy? “Oh please, take care of me and tell me what to do.”

Ooh, @Blueroses , I don’t know whether to be horrified, titillated, or just saddened by that. The confusion factor is so high, makes me miss the days when deciding to shave our legs or not was a grand social statement.

@JilltheTooth ah, but things build from bra-burning and liberation of female sexuality. You paved the way. With liberation comes repression (everything attracts its opposite). It should titillate and horrify. As a mother, you certainly hope my prior post isn’t true for your daughter. As a woman and an individual (sexless/ageless), you see how it can happen. Transitions don’t happen in one generation.

I grew up to be really independent and not need help from anyone for my day to day living. But in my interactions with men, it seems they like and hate that about me. Once such example: An ex-boyfriend was here watching a ball game and I needed more firewood so I went out and brought it in. He got really pissed that I didn’t ask him to help. I’m not helpless, he was watching TV, I do it whether someone else is here or not, so I didn’t see the issue. Yet I didn’t hear him asking to help me clean house. I guess he was stuck in those “traditional role” values that annoy the hell out of me. Unless of course, there’s a spider that needs killing. Then I’d ask someone else to do it.

Yes, @chyna we are the middle generations. My grandmother is always telling me why I don’t have a man; “You need to let them win. Make them know you need them.”
But she was part of what raised me to know how to aim a rifle, how to feed a carb to start a stalled engine, how to change a flat tire and how to take things apart to find out why they aren’t working.

Following. Great question. I don’t know if I have anything to add, but I definitely want to hear what others have to say. Except the cyborgs.

Actually, @incendiary_dan , I’m also interested in the views of a young anthropologist. Your take on it has enormous value as you have studied the phenomenon somewhat objectively, you get to study the package as it stands now, interpreted by observers, I have the somewhat dubious honor of living through the evolution of it. The perceptions, I imagine, are quite different.

Well, one observation I’ve made is that women seem to have a greater choice as far as career vs. family goes. There will always be a group who vilifies a woman for choosing one over the other and there is a third group that expects all women to be able to have a career and raise their children. The thing is that men have been making this choice forever only it is much more common for a man to choose the career over the family. However, because women still often think that they need to be home with the kids, they are torn between the family and the career, even if they have chosen the career.