(What Happens Later)
Feminism 30 years ago was busy raging against the glass ceiling; today it’s more likely to be discussing maternal instincts. Where women were once told they could enjoy hook-up culture for as long as they liked, now they are being told to settle down early. That is not what I did.
At 53, I live alone with a dog and sometimes eat dinner over the sink. Aside from the high cost of not splitting living expenses, I consider this arrangement to be optimal. Not having children brings me joy. But I’m an outlier. The majority of women are supposed to want kids and the implicit message even during the sexual revolution was that you would have your Carrie Bradshaw-style fun until the last possible minute, then slide seamlessly into family life with full confidence that you’d “done it all”. And yet by 2030, 45% of women will be single and childless — in most cases not by choice.
The stories we tell about these single, childless women matter. So I was intrigued when I heard about What Happens Later, the new romantic comedy directed by and starring Meg Ryan, whose career has been defined by the promise, and box office success, of Big Romance. Her genre has always been implicitly based on women finding the one well before the age her fertility starts to decline; but in her new film, there’s sexual tension between two attractive, middle-aged people who’ve had interesting, complicated lives.
Bill is an uptight, unhappily married corporate drone. Willa is a messy free spirit who works less-than-ruminatively as a wellness practitioner. She’s travelling from Austin to Boston; he’s travelling from Boston to Austin: they meet in the middle. But Bill and Willa are not strangers; they had a serious relationship 25 years earlier, in college. As such, they are not two older people falling in love but old lovers relitigating the past. Stuck in a regional airport enveloped by the storm of the century, they grouse about bad pop music, before getting to what might be the defining questions of their lives: why did they let their relationship go? Given what they know now, would they have been better off sticking it out?
The film doesn’t presume to answer that question. Still, its subtext wrestles with the failures of the sexual revolution in a similar way to the new feminist sceptics and, in its own way, takes a page straight out of the neo-trad playbook. It turns out that Bill and Willa broke up not because of some intractable compatibility problem but because they decided to open the relationship to other sexual partners. As he hid his jealousy behind a stoic exterior, she found herself unable to seize the opportunities at hand, even though seeing other people was all her idea, something she thought she was supposed to want. After parting, he went on to have a decent but unremarkable life and she went on to have something a bit worse than that — freedom of the nothing-left-to-lose variety. In short, they are both sad. Her especially.
Billed as a romantic comedy, What Happens Later is in fact a deeply sad movie about loss, regret, missed opportunities and gross miscommunication — a cautionary tale about what happens if you hedge your romantic bets. These two didn’t break up because of some intractable compatibility problem; they just wanted, well, more. Given all the ways in which they annoyed one another, it seemed only right to move on and keep looking for something better. To settle for what they had — a deeply imperfect but (at least according to my reading of the film) deeply connected relationship — would have been a betrayal to not just to their personal happiness but to some larger politics of social progress.
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SubscribeI just spent Thanksgiving with my fiance’s family. I hung out with her brother in law drinking whiskey and watching football, played and cuddled with a toddler, watched The Grinch with that same toddler and my fiance and then watched a collection of teens and early 20 somethings play games that had them in hysterics. I sat and had coffee and pie while holding hands with my fiance and then drove home an hour with my two kids while singing songs from the 1970’s.
I remember similar Thanksgivings, Christmas’s, Easters, 4th of July’s, with my family. My grandparents had 6 children. Each of my aunts and uncles had 3 or 4 children. Holidays, family gatherings, even the time we spent together at cookouts or on my grandfathers boat or just visiting each others homes were pretty cool. I have never in my life felt more safe, more loved or laughed as much as in those settings. I have only ever felt more fulfilled raising my own children.
My grandfather died at 94, at home, in the house he built with my grandmother, with my grandmother, his children and grandchildren there with him. My grandmother died in that same house with her children and grandchildren there with her. They were married for more than 70 yrs.
These are the kinds of things that make a life worth living.
I am a senior executive in an IT consulting firm. I’ve had a very good career. I make a lot of money. There is NOTHING that I have done in the last 27 yrs in this industry that will ever be remembered. There is nothing that I have done apart from mentoring people that will have any lasting import. I have done much that was satisfying, some things I am proud of, but nothing I would call “fulfilling”, nothing that I would not trade for a week in the mountains with my kids.
The vast majority of us will never be an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs, we will work decent careers, grinding out every day to retirement. Very very few of us will honestly be excited to go to work every day. It is why they pay us to do it. We will spend our work lives doing the occasionally interesting or challenging thing and finding that our greatest work satisfaction comes from the people we work with. Once in awhile somebody will hand you a disposable wooden plaque for something or some odd shaped glass statue that you gotta find space for and act thrilled when you get it when what you really would have liked is a bonus and a 4 day weekend.
But, somehow, somewhere, between the time my grandparents married and the time my generation left HS, we convinced ourselves that the former was silly and the latter was rewarding.
We also convinced ourselves that relationships were disposable entertainment, only to be maintained so long as they were entertaining and useful. Somehow we allowed ourselves to be sold the idea that a relationship was not supposed to be work, that it required a real commitment and maturity to build and maintain, that they do not look like what Cosmo, Hollywood and the self help industry made it out to be. People have made billions selling us an illusion of what is real and what is possible and the price of that has been the loss of what is beautiful in what is real and possible but not easy. We have paid a price for that.
Excellent comment.
Not entirely. There are plenty of people who realise that making a relationship work requires effort. They just expect that effort to be put in by the other person in the relationship. 🙂
Great comment.
This is the best comment by far.
There is no greater source of joy than a happy family but there is no greater source of misery than an unhappy one.
As I get older, I realise increasingly just how important these families once taken so much for granted really are.
An old (single male) school friend was diagnosed with widespread cancer earlier this year, and is now probably in his last weeks. He’s had a great life, good job, travel, can’t remember how many women he’s slept with etc.
The logistics of end-of-life care are incredibly challenging in this situation. The hospital would like to send him home (to die?) but can’t because there’s nobody to check on him every hour or so. Just having somebody around would make such a difference. Likewise, caring for elderly parents is often just a matter of manpower and being there.
The problem is, the happy singleton will not realise a lot of this until they actually get there.
Most of us no longer live in villages. Having children is no guarantee there’d be “someone to check on you every hour” and i certainly don’t expect mine to drop their lives (from some distance away) to do so. That’s simply not why i wanted to have them.
It is good that you did not have your children for the purpose of looking after you in old age.
On the other hand, will it fall to someone else’s children to have to do that?
At the care home, I mean.
Quite possibly. After a long career in the NHS, i’m well aware of the options and exigencies associated with old age.
I’m just not so damn selfish to expect them to put their lives on hold, or to load them with guilt if they can’t.
You’d think that with all the work us parents have done for these kids of ours and care and worry that ad i n more mature cultures like in China etc we can count on them to help us when we get old and sick ! isn’t that The civilized thing to do ? Not just put old people in care homes .In those olden days families looked after each other alot better.
I don’t think many actually plan to have their kids look after them, Steve, but when the situation suddenly demands it, it’s all hands on deck.
If you truly love someone then you want to be with them right to the end. It is the last and greatest service.
The .450 Webley ‘Bull Dog’ used to be the friend of choice.
Had to google that one, though I did suspect. Would it be your choice? I suspect you will be surrounded by loved ones unles you possess a 450 Webley ‘Bull Dog’ and choose otherwise.
I am fortunate enough to have had two ‘near death experiences’, once been ‘saved’ by my hounds, and on the second occasion by Mrs.
The ‘Bull Dog” will only be used in extremis, and after due warning. (I hope.)
That’s fair, though nowadays palliative care will sedate you until the end if it makes you more comfortable and is your choice. Maybe easier on your family. The near deaths sound intriguing: any unusual experiences?
Yes, but probably due to hypoxia!
Yes, well I am with Leibniz in that I believe that everything has a rational explanation but I do not believe that precludes an alternative, complementary explanation: a form of dualism. I would be very interested to hear about your experiences. How about if you tell me yours, I will tell you mine.
I think it will still be violent and leave a horrible mess. There are cleaner less violent options.
And a stiff whisky
Thanks, I forgot to mention that!
A lot of people end their lives rather than suffer unnecessarily or be a burden to their family. There is far more voluntary euthanasia going on than people realise. I have acquired the means to end mine peacefully when the time comes. I live alone so I will post my keys to the local police that way my body won’t be left to rot. My chosen method is not messy or bloody and my body will be handled by trained professionals who will inform my next of kin.
This way I can sort out my belongings and my documents in advance to save my family any trouble.
I have already organised and paid for my funeral and written my will.
Good to hear you have confidence in the UK Mail System – in the USA you’d be rotten! – even though the US Post Office with have racked up another $8 billion in debt this year.
.450? Jeepers. That’s a round for hippopotamus.
It’s a .45.
It never worked like that.
You only have to go back a couple of generations to find a society where grandparents were an integral part of the family and played almost a day to day role in the lives of their children and the rearing of their grandchildren.
As grandparents got older it was the most natural thing for children and grandchildren to drop round on a daily basis to see them, and as they faded to look after them.
It was not a question of duty or obligation. They had played such a major part in everyone’s lives that everyone felt the need to be involved.
To my mind things changed with the post war generation and the welfare state. Looking back it seems that the attitude became that your only responsibility was to yourself and it was the states job to rear your children and look after your parents in old age.
The net result is that my mother’s parent were cared for into old age by the family and died surrounded by family. My father on the other had died alone and lay dead on the living room floor for several days before being spotted by the postman looking through the window. If he had not died in the living room his body could have gone undiscovered for weeks
I am hoping that one positive effect of the housing crisis will be more multi generation families living under one roof and grandparents and great aunts and uncles will be a much loved and integral part of the family.
Far too many people are dying alone and remaining undiscovered these days.
But I am afraid that as with my father they are reaping what they sow
I don’t think when people use the term “die alone” it refers to palliative care. At least I take it to mean living a life of general loneliness without close meaningful connections to people (hence having dogs and cats), getting old in this way, and eventually dying without ever fulfilling that innate human desire for familial connections.
Some of us introverts actually enjoy living alone and prefer the constant companionship of cats or dogs along with a few close friends we keep in regular touch with.
I don’t understand why this indignant, rather smug attitude is always brought up by someone who thinks it’s okay to cast aside the ones who nurtured you, wiped your ass on a daily basis, gave you unconditional love as a child but there is no reciprocal feeling required. No one has children so that they will have a guaranteed care giver but for crying out loud family is there to be a bulwark against a hostile world; it works both ways. Okay then when you are ill and alone and in a cut rate nursing home, the minimum wage staff is letting you get bedsores because they don’t give one rip about you, then you can remember that you raised and approved a selfish asshole to abandon you to your fate.
Children raised with love do not abandon their parents – you are thinking of dysfunctional families who create a mountain of problems and not all care homes are ghastly nightmares some are excellent.
Sure but most people can’t afford those nice ones. I was replying to the person who wrote that they didn’t have children simply to have someone to take care of them in old age- it’s an annoying form of virtue signaling. no normal person has kids simply to provide themselves a caregiver in old age.
As someone hurtling to a probably similar situation, is it really worth organising your life around the practicalities of dealing with the hopefully short bit at the end when you can’t enjoy it anyway?
With absolutely no guarantees!
Well perhaps. But then I’ve heard quite a few stories of women jumping ship in just these circumstances. A local example is a woman who divorced her husband after he had a stroke. Imagine how he must feel: abandoned, asset stripped, betrayed and alone. Full of regrets and wondering if he was ever more than a paycheck.
I live on my own and every time I slip on the stairs I wonder how long it would have been until someone found my corpse. We’re not really made to live in couples or family units but we’re really not made to live alone.
I have an agreement with my neighbours that I whatsapp them good morning every day and if they don’t hear from me they come round as they have spare keys. I am lucky to have great neighbours but I also have a friend who lives locally with whom I have the same arrangement.
“They reap what they sow”.
Perhaps you shouldn’t plan your life around the last few weeks of it, in any case.
The solution is to build NHS convalescent homes to release bed blockers and NHS hospices for the dying. Even if you have children there is no guarantee they will be available to care for you when the time comes and your spouse might not outlive you or remain in good health when you are ill. Even loving families often reach the point where they can no longer care for a sick and elderly member. My mother had to put my father in a hospice when he was dying from cancer because she just could not cope. I was working abroad and my sister was too busy raising four children. We visited as much as possible which was never enough but there is a limit to the patience and generosity of husbands and employers.
The long term solution might be the reintroduction of the multi generation extended family living under one roof given the current housing shortage and crisis in elder care.
You mean, like (horrors), go back to the past.
So the entire aim of life is to ensure a happy death then (if there is any such thing) , to consider that above all else? you fail to consider that although your friend’s final days may not be ideal or comfortable, the preceding 20,000 plus days may have been quite wonderful!
This is societal suicide pretty much directly as a result of the sexual revolution with nearly half of women involuntarily single and childless. Every incel also means a single woman – it’s a zero sum game.
It’s a monumental failure of leadership. It’d be too easy to put the blame on feminism alone. Women wanting to be strong and independent is inseparable from men wanting non-committal casual sex. They are all looking to die along with their cats and dogs and sports cars.
Men have always wanted non-committal casual sex but it was not generally available until feminism convinced young women to provide it… the same women who now criticise men for being non-committal.
It’s much more complex than that. Men and women are not two uniform homogenous groups. “The same women”, for example, seems to be a very questionnable locution.
Don’t assume that women haven’t always wanted non-committal casual sex because they’ve never wanted it with you.
The primary reason that women, despite innate desires, have been reluctant to have casual non-committal casual sex is because they are (literally) left holding the baby. There’s a whole thing with male strength and violence too but the pregnancy thing is the big one. It just represents a much greater risk and – in depressingly many cases – for much lesser reward.
Feminism has less to do with it than the sexual revolution which allowed women to have sex without the pregnancy threat. Although then as now it meant a small number of men having a lot more sex with a larger number of women. The gains of that liberation weren’t equally shared because not everyone is an equally desirable partner. Even men have limits.
It also means a significantly greater number of men getting no sex at all.
I think in the good old days a lot of women found the safe dependable man to provide income and support while having sex with, and often getting pregnant by, the good looking desirable man who they knew would never stick around or accept responsibility, which only added to his allure
A lot of married men did not have happy sex lives and resorted to prostitution. Often because their wife had married them for mainly economic reasons and soon grew cold in the bedroom.
I am not allowed to vote for your comment for some strange reason. I was going to reply hence the enduring appeal of Mr D’Arcy and his endless clones.
Most women don’t want that. We want a high status man who will protect and provide. The most masculine men still are the most desired.
Hence the enduring appeal of Mr D’Arcy and all his clones.
And my gosh, the more “sex without the pregnancy threat” there was, the more abortions there were!
Imo feminism gave women a raw deal and can be blamed for much of our societal misery.
If they are wealthy enough to drive a sports car they can probably afford a live-in full time carer.
As the old Faces song goes:
Perspectives are changing very rapidly, and it’s not just as a result of the sexual revolution, which the writer believes has been largely successful but also includes significant drawbacks, especially for women. I agree with her, and think this essay is welcome and very well argued. Other factors include increasing longevity, where the timeframe of regret has suddenly expanded, and the ability to connect with potential mating partners via the internet means the limitations of distance and social circles have become much less relevant, perhaps adding to the hesitancy to commit.
We’re living through these changes, and having to negotiate our way through as change accelerates. It’s therefore, in my opinion, too simplistic to start drawing conclusions since today’s conclusions may become redundant. Plus, huge swathes of the the world’s diverse populations don’t appear ready to countenance what’s happening, even as the ubiquity of smartphones brings them the latest news and views.
The cultural effects of films such as What Happens Later may help by creating the opportunity to take stock, and anything with Meg Ryan is usually thought-provoking and worth watching. She has a kind of “everywoman” appeal.
Unherd itself is, i believe, a significant reflection of what’s happening and a vehicle for discourse by anyone with a subscription, prompted via articles written from various perspectives with which we may agree or not. I feel nourished by this article, and i’m grateful for it appearing on the same day as the brilliant analysis by Kathleen Stock regarding displays of gratitude!
Once upon a time I never dreamed I would marry and children was certainly a very very distant, vague possibility. But as it turns out after 25 years of marriage and 5 sons later, I look back with utter thankfulness. I’m still young, still fit and I’m looking forward to the post children stage- full of possibilities. I know that these things are not always in our control but I do know that there’s a lot more than luck involved in the way our lives pan out.
I can’t count how many times women have said to me ‘i wish so much I’d done it your way’.
Despite a changing culture, some things don’t change. Women’s bodies are the most fit for childbirth in the early 20s and the system starts winding down from 35.
Don’t wait for your life to be over to have children. Have your life with them.
My oldest daughter said last night that women shouldn’t get married until they’re at least 25. (She was 32.) Then she looked at me, did some math, and added, “I mean in the present, not back then.” “Good save. Have some more wine.”
She failed to account for a lot of things.
First, having kids in your 30’s means having kids at home into your 50’s, or, as in my case, 60. I became a father for the second time at 43. My son will graduate college when I am 64 assuming he does it in 4 yrs. Which means, if he moves back home after school for a year or two that I will have him under my roof until I am at least 66. I would never give him up, but knowing what I know now, I wish I had had both of my kids before I was 30, 35 at the absolute latest.
Second, it means living a large part of your healthiest years without kids. Honestly, kids, although work, are a lot of fun. It’s easier to enjoy them while you are still young and fit.
Third, if you follow that path, you have a new mother at 35, then, if she has kids and they do the same, she will become a grandmother at 70. Try enjoying your toddler grandchildren at 70 or 75. It also means that she will very very likely not ever know her great grandchildren. My grandmother had 29 great grandchildren when she passed at 96. I cannot begin to tell you how amazed and proud of what she and my grandfather built.
My oldest was born when I was 24, and the last one, the 10th, when I was 45. Obviously, this isn’t what most people are going to do with their lives.
I once had a conversation with a woman who was one of the younger of 18 siblings. All single births, she said. All the same mother, a woman who also had her first at 24, but her last at 48. Her mother married a man she met in collage, which she finished, as did all of her children. From Minnesota. Not Catholic .
Astonishing, doubled Queen Victoria for example!
Bravo!
You deserve a medal. But, I am going to bet that you find your grown kids and any grandchildren to be the best reward.
Looking forward to being a grandparent.
No grandchildren so far, but all the children (four still at home, four others in the area, two out of state) are doing well and make us laugh. Our oldest son, who works in advertising for a bank in New York, surprised us by turning up for Thanksgiving. “Oh, I thought you heard I was coming.” Epic flake.
Ma’am I am in awe! Salute!
I think the boon of birth control is choice. For those who wish to have big families they may still do so but are not forced to. Those who want small families likewise and people like me who are happily child free.
The worst is no choice.
When I lived in Africa the local women would talk wistfully about the ‘magic pill’ that stops you from having children. They were exhausted and impoverished from endless childbearing.
My sister is a grand mother of 7 and has just turned 70 and is still fit and healthy. If you look after yourself 70 should not feel really old. She looks after the 2 who live nearest for 3 days a week. She does complain of slowing down but we are talking about someone who was hyperactive until a few years ago.
My best friend is not yet a grandmother and well into her 60s but still fit and active. Her son still lives with her and is a great help. Neither of her children are 30 yet but are not planning on having children until after 30. Mainly due to economic reasons as it takes two full time salaries to pay a mortgage these days.
There’s no guarantee with relationships (which is perhaps why so many people test drive the relationship before commitment). But in previous generations it was far more likely that the prospective partners lived closer as children, had an extended family around them for advice(!), had a common religious background, and worked in nearby businesses.
One of the downsides of Tony Blair’s drive to increase tertiary education is that many people move away to University and encounter an entirely new set of people of different backgrounds. Educational perhaps, but it does throw people into relationships without backup of relatives and common background.
Children frequently cannot afford to live near their parents due to the explosion in house prices. In certain areas of Suffolk it is becoming increasingly difficult to find trades people as a result of the influx of an aging well to do population which has forced house prices up to a ridiculous level.
That was happening in Gloucestershire more than forty years ago!
Presumably people have just discovered ‘Akenfield’?
Akenfield no longer exists apart in memory. Akenfield was an incredibly accurate portrayal of Suffolk (it was full of indigenous Brits). It all changed when the new A12 was built (previously it weaved its way through every town and village – there was a particularly tight corner in Chelmsford which was invariably blocked by an accident) and the train line from Liverpool Street to Ipswich was electrified reducing a three hour train journey to an hour and ten minutes. Effectively placing that area of Suffolk in the commuter belt for the city. The new A14 meant Ipswich was less than an hour away from Cambridge and the hospital became a second choice to Addenbrooks. The upwardly mobile bought up the local houses (frequently without an inside toilet) incredibly cheaply, slapped preservation orders on them, did them up and sold them at a substantial profit to the incoming London migrants who were accustomed to paying much higher prices. It started in the late 1970’s but took a while to take off. Suffolk was rarely ever mentioned in the media, now it sometimes seems like the media headquarters are In Suffolk. I also remember West Kensington and Notting Hill before every other house had a skip in front of it.
I seem to recall that the A12 was upgraded to ‘autobahn’ status to allow rapid transport from Felixstowe in order to ‘break’ the London Dockers.
I well remember the old days of waiting at the Capel Level Crossing to allow the goods train to Hadleigh to pass!
Still Suffolk only has about 520 bodies per square mile to Gloucestershire’s 750 odd.
Did you go Robert Blythe’s funeral?
There is a lack of housing In Suffolk.it’s mostly farmland. When British Telecom built its research centre, housing and a pub (The Douglas Bader) were also built for the incoming workers. The existing village was composed of just a few houses. An ancient town has recently been discovered in Rendlesham (famous for its UFO sighting; why is it that UFOs are more inclined to present themselves to citizens of the United States than other countries?) which was as large as medieval Ipswich though much older and is currently being excavated. No I didn’t go to Robert Blythe’s funeral, why do you ask? Did you?
Presumably more houses are now being built? I gather there is currently ‘bovver’ at East Bergholt, of all places!
Given the ‘hoards’ found in Suffolk there must have been some as yet unearthed magnificent Roman Villas.
Yes I did go to Blythe’s funeral, if only to remind myself that Bury once possessed one of the finest ‘great’ churches in Medieval England.
There has been a great deal of building and expansion. The Royal Palace at Rendlesham is thought to be connected to the Sutton Hoo burials and to have been the greatest kingdom in the country at the time. It was an era in which Suffolk was the seat of power: 570 – 730 (post-Roman but more sophisticated than previously believed). Suffolk is full of beautiful churches: Blythburgh is a particular beauty. My father complains about the theft of the churches from the Catholics, the Church of England is all for sharing (including expenses) but the Catholics prefer to keep their distance. I do wonder if at any time in the past, our paths have ever crossed.
You’ve presumably seen the late medieval font cover at Ufford, just down the road from Redlesham? The one that even the despicable William Dowsing could not destroy! Extraordinary to think that perhaps 10,000 Medieval English parish churches had something very similar.
Wasn’t it Redwald & Co at Rendlesham? I’m a bit rusty on early Anglo-Saxon England. The lure of Ancient (pagan) Rome is far too strong.
Yes, Suffolk is full of treasures though as a child, I wasn’t aware they were treasures. I was aware some people visited especially to do brass rubbing; is that still a thing? Rædwald was a pagan wasn’t he?
Yes but NOT a Roman.
Brass rubbing is very much a ‘thing’, particularly as we have the finest collection in Europe (otherwise known as the world.)
Of course the rest of England is absolutely stuffed with ‘treasures’. I have spent a lifetime and more searching them out, and what fun it has been.
And then there is Ireland, France, Wales, Scotland, Spain, Italy and Germany. Then the Pax Romana, and if still ticking India.
For a few years, I attended a school that held school concerts in a Roman amphitheater. It added a great sense of occasion, of being part of history, of being a continuation of the past, of having solid foundations and the acoustics were amazing. It instilled in me a passion for the ancient world.
Was that Verona?
Quite so. Although when I was a lad (cough) decades ago young married couples often lived with one set of parents until they could afford to move out to their own rented flat.
The housing market has changed radically since then – but so have peoples’ expectations.
Maybe the rot set in before feminism with the onset of the highly mobile nuclear family which served capitalism far better than a more traditional stable society with several generations under one roof which had been in the family for generations.
But a family only works if it is psychologically healthy otherwise the women tend to get trapped in a miserable slave-like situation of financial dependency.
The ideal is a warm close knit loving family. Failing that a relatively happy free independent life. The very worst is being trapped in miserable dependency.
If we live in a society that considers nature as a problem, then this society will not last for long generations if maternity and childcare are considered a hindrance and not the accomplishment of a romantic relationship.
Another involuntary redpill article coming from a feminist.
Felt a little like a half-baked “deflection” article to me – you know the kind The Guardian publishes around a hot button issue touching every possible aspect except the main reason behind something tapping around it while taking great care to never mention it.
Tangential to the article, but why do American actors and actresses (among others) run to the plastic surgeon to make them copy of each other?
Take Meg Ryan depicted above, in what way have her looks improved? She could well be Jane Fonda’s double in Grace and Frankie. Why this obsession?
I think Jane Fonda has surgically transformed herself into Carl Burnett’s double.
Is that Carol’s better looking brother?!
I much prefer Lily Tomlin who has aged naturally and you can really see the difference when they are on screen together. Jane just looks weird.
She just didn’t have the proper thing done. She did filler instead of facelift. Fonda looks rather good with hers as does Mae Musk.
Because they are scared they won’t get work if they look their age but actresses like Frances McDormand and Meryl Streep are fighting that trend and more power to them.
The older I get the more I appreciate a really talented older character actress. Hollywood caters far too much to fickle youth.
“But Bill and Willa are not strangers; they had a serious relationship 25 years earlier, in college.”
Meg Ryan is 62 years old, so Willa was in college at 37. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The ‘idea that two parents are better is retrograde and discriminatory’ What a crass comment – talk to children.
She’s being sarcastic.
If you read the article again I think you will see that she is not advocating this position, merely describing views that she is exposed to.
A woman in the child raising stage of life needs to be a stay-at-home mom until the youngest is 10 years old. At which time the children can be latch keyed and mom goes back to work. This was my family. Mom was 37 and Husband 43 when I was born, and she worked for first part of her life. No other kids due to depression and WW2. The money came from her husband while I grew to age 10. Then back to work with wife outearning husband. Two incomes. Parents die shortly after child leaves college. Inheritance arrives at time when it is really needed. I highly recommend this life pattern. Today a woman can freeze her eggs at age 13 and avoid birth defects due to stale eggs. I have Asperger syndrome and had a constricted ureter at age 3 due to mother’s not so fresh eggs. Men should do likewise with sperm.
But there’s no way that can be proven that it’s due to ‘stale eggs’. Good idea about freezing eggs however it’s quite expensive to store them and the process to extract many at once is not easy either.
Most families now unfortunately need both parents working simply to keep a roof over their children’s heads. Criticising women for going back to work is a rather privileged position to be able to hold in my opinion
Thats a huge red flag right there! 🙂
The feminist movement, like all movements that last, is always taken over by more militant and obsessed folks after a period of undefined time. The sexual revolution was a godsend to men (they thought) at first but then turned into a nightmare as the movement was taken over by angry women whose only agenda was to play catch up and are still at it. The great strides brought to our society by this movement are now tempered with reflection by both women and men. It is time to ditch the catcher uppers and have an honest direct dialogue in our society that can provide a baseline for progress, and what that means.
“Not having children brings me joy.”
Sounds like one of those self help mantras you repeat to yourself as you lie in bed attempting to fen off the despair that is waiting in the dark for you.
I do not see how you can express any view on the joys of not having children until you have actually had some. It is rather like someone blind from birth saying how grateful they were that they never had sight
It seems odd to ascribe joy to the absence of something rather than the presence.
True
And I cannot recall anyone who has had children saying they regret it, apart from my father
I am child free and happy to be so but I did experience surrogate motherhood as an au pair caring for 4 boisterous children for a year and knew I was hopeless at it plus helping my sister with her 4 only confirmed my unsuitability. Some of us are just not cut out for the very demanding task of motherhood and it is best that we realise that rather than have children and then regret it as a friend of mine did.
I am and always will be the amusing eccentric aunt to my nephews and great nephews. And that role suits me perfectly. Too many children suffer neglect at the hands of unsuitable parents. A boy at the local school threatened a teacher with a knife and was excluded. The next morning his father and uncle were at the gate threatening the same teacher with knives. Some people should never become parents. The boy is a notorious bully. His dad and uncle local criminals.
I accept what yo say is all perfectly reasonable, but it is all very different when the children are your own. As I say above, I cannot recall anyone who has had children saying they regret it, apart from my father.
It is true that many people who are not fit to be parents have children, but nothing anyone says is going to stop them and they tend to have ore than most.
On the other hand it is sad when people who should have children don’t
But are they better off because of the sexual revolution?
I would say yes because we have more freedom of choice and more earning power due to better training and education as well as birth control. But I wonder what the future will hold with the advent of AI and automation due to destroy many jobs. Mass unemployment is not good for any economy.
…he went on to have a decent but unremarkable life …. Well that describes me so far and I feel very lucky. I am often puzzled by why people seem to think a good career is so important – or an adventurous sexual life – particularly compared to a good marriage or having children. I am a well paid professional with a fairly interesting job – but I never talk about work with friends or acquaintances. Why? Because it is boring. We talk about children, hobbies, old friends, marriages, births, divorces, deaths, shared experiences – basically we talk about people. I am going to tell my children 1) get married and don’t wait too long to find someone 2) have children – don’t wait too long or maybe you can’t. 3) make an effort to hang on to good friends. This is what will give your life meaning and happiness.
“The idea that two parents are better than one is retrograde and discriminatory and, therefore, should not be discussed.”
Tell that to millions of black children who’ve grown up without fathers.
The research would suggest that the the statement you responded to is just flat wrong.
The research shows the following to be true.
First, kids that grow up with both parents end up happier, healthier, less likely to commit suicide, far less likely to have involvement with the law.
Second, kids that grow up in single father households have better outcomes by far than those that grow up in single mother households.
I think you would agree with his point if you reread the comment
I often wonder about all the children who lost their fathers in the two great wars. Why didn’t they become a generation of hooligans? Their widowed mothers raised them single handedly in relative poverty. Was it due to the extended family of grandparents in the next street and aunt’s and uncles just around the corner?
What we really need to know is why. OK, feminism and the sexual revolution directly, but what about the difficulty of affording a suitable house to raise children in at a reasonable child bearing age. Then there’s the general infantilism in our society. Hits women harder. If a man only grows up at age 40 he can still have a family – for a woman it’s difficult.
And are these women childless because they don’t want the men available to them, or because the men don’t see them as marriage material? Are everyone’s expectations too high – or are a lot of us just really not up to snuff?
Freeze your eggs as early as possible. Age 13 is the best age. Avoid birth defects. Work, save money and pay for house. Double income no kids. Exit career at 40 and unfreeze eggs. Husband and savings support wife until youngest is latchkey able. at age 10. Recommend multiple births to get all kids in by age 43. Implant several eggs at once. Return to work at age 50. You will have a job record from pre age 40 work. Children full grown at age 60. You will die and give children their inheritance at an age they need the money to start a family.
This sounds like some hideous dystopian fantasy of yours rather than a sensible direction for society
Ridiculous. Meet hot chick. Alpha male her. Shag her rotten. Make babies whenever you (2nd person pl) want.
The issue imo is entitled Hypergamy. Women think their value is raised by having a strong will, career, college education and money and they still look for higher status men. Plus they have a lot of sex partners. Men in general don’t give one crap about career or college and money in a woman and they don’t want a pain in the neck to come home to. And they very much care about body count. High status men will sleep with the afore mentioned women but will marry a younger fun woman with a low or nonexistent body count. Women don’t realize that the nice middling men that they turned down when young are the ones they should have gone with in the first place until they are 35 but by that time both sexes who are still single blame the other.
Intelligent well educated men tend to marry intelligent well educated women. Graduates marry graduates often meeting at college. Working class marry working class, middle class marry middle class. It is rare that people marry outside their social class and education level. I know one man whose wealthy privately educated family fell down the social ladder due to their father being swindled by business partners. He married the coalman’s daughter. His own father condemned her as ‘common’ and never gave his approval. He is still married to her and is now 73 with grown up daughters who still live at home. The trouble is his sister and two brothers really cannot get along with his wife. She resents them for being posh and looking down on her. They resent her for being working class and resenting them!
It is so bad now that his sister and wife had to be kept apart at a family funeral because there is so much bad blood between them.
It just works better if you marry someone who is similar to you in age class and education. You just have so much more in common.
Uh oh…Kat L has cracked the code.
It seems that unless you’re attractive to the opposite/same sex on dating apps you’re destined to the author’s lonely life.
As we grow older, our outlooks, needs and wants all change. If those of our our partners change in a different direction, then a change of partner sometimes becomes desirable or even necessary – especially as we live healthily for longer.
I’m on my third marriage. All have been enjoyable, but importantly, each has felt like an improvement on the previous one. So I should hope – we ought to get better at selection, with practice.
I remain on excellent terms with my first wife, the second moved away, but there were no hard feelings at the time. I could fret about the damage caused by the separations, but what’s the point? We never know the path not taken, so the damage might have been worse had those separation not occurred.
And what did happen were three relationships which added something to the lives of all at the time, and which didn’t become boring or unhappy. I now feel that I am with the right woman for this (probably last) part of my life, and I believe she feels the same way. It’s a good feeling.
…all good, till your throw in the children, then, it is impossible to manage…
I wish you well, but statistically people don’t learn how to identify a better partner or learn to be better partners with experience, the rates of divorce increase with each subsequent marriage, even though you might anticipate they would decline as there’s left time left to divorce.
Does this one understand you don’t actually have a lifelong commitment to her? That you might dump her at the drop of a hat depending on how you feel at that moment?
None of us ever has a lifelong commitment to another human being. All we ever have is an intention to have one.
There is nothing worse for children than growing up in a miserable marriage where the parents are staying together purely out of a sense of obligation. Where you can cut the atmosphere with a knife, the mother is permanently depressed and the father frequently has outbursts of volcanic rage and practically lives in the pub. I would not wish that on anyone.
“At 53, I live alone with a dog and sometimes eat dinner over the sink … Not having children brings me joy.”
How soulless, hollow and self-absorbed. Here speaks modern leadership.
It sounded sad to me too. I screams “existing” safely rather than fulfilling and with risk. But, maybe her life lead her to a place where “content” and undisturbed is what she needs more than fulfilled and busy with the risk of conflict.
I am an extreme introvert and fully understand the joys of living alone. I do not do well in noisy, crowded homes. I love visiting my nephews and their little ones but I am very glad to come home to peace and quiet. For me a little goes a long way. There are all sorts of people in the world. We are not one size fits all. In the past wealthy women employed surrogates in the form of nannies and servants to do all the heavy lifting which shows that given a choice many women prefer to enjoy their children in small doses.
I think you have made your point very well. Of course there are all types as you say, and we need to respect that. I just didn’t like the author’s proselytising tone.
The underlying problem may be that we are inclined to want too much, both in quantity and quality, from what our circumstances, capabilities, and life decisions are likely to deliver. Urges for the ideal life are bound to leave us disappointed to one degree or another. Do our lives really need to be perfect to be precious? There’s more to life than sustained happiness. How about wisdom, inner peace, a recognition of everyone’s limits, and an authentic gratitude for the good, even when it falls short of the perfect?
Speaking of which, shouldn’t “Willa is a messy free spirit who works less-than-ruminatively…” be “…less-than-remuneratively” (i.e., less well paid, rather than less thoughtfully)? Or is Willa short on self-reflection?
Also, “Her especially” should be “She especially [is sad]”. And shouldn’t “…would have been a betrayal to not just to their personal happiness” lose the first “to”?
Apologies for the quibbles.
I agree that rampant consumerism and materialism has fooled us into thinking the more stuff we have the happier we will be which is clearly a lie but capitalism depends on endless consumption of non-essentials. We live in a world saturated with advertisements for all sorts of inessentials promising nirvana and this time of year is especially bad.
My parents belonged to the frugal wartime generation and I take after them but I am really out of step with most people nowadays who consider essential what I would consider a luxury.
We always want what we can’t have. When I first got lumbered with the sprogs I’d have sold a kidney to be able to go out on the beers with the single lads on a Saturday night til the early hours, the sheer monotony of work, bills, no money and looking after newborn kids was hard to get my head round. However the boys who were still going out have said that during the week when nobody was about and they were sat bored in an empty house they’d have quite liked what I had with the missus and kids.
I always thought I’d quite like to get the kids ready in the morning before work, but my missus who actually does the mornings and school run would do anything to no have to because it’s absolute carnage.
No life is perfect, and in my opinion a good chunk of it is completely outside of our control so just it’s best just to sit back and enjoy the good bits while enduring the bad, because it’ll always swing round again
I sure hope this author and her dog don’t experience an intractable compatibility problem.
These days I frequently hear the saying “Buy a dog and die alone” applied to women.
This author seems to have taken the message to heart.
You can be a widow and die alone.
A decent, well balanced article.
I believe that humans should be left to do what they feel is right, if we find love (a good ‘attachment’) we have a good chance of settling down and having children, most things fall in to place. Technology and the coercion it brings is destroying our culture and populations, we have to stop this if it is not too late…
I rather fear that the words that I have put in italics are where Western civilisation has started on a path to unhappiness, perhaps even self-destruction.
Really playing to the gallery with this one…
Without birth control feminism would never have stood a chance.
I am 68 and child free by choice and live alone by choice with a partner who visits. I am very happy with this arrangement which was not possible for women from older generations.
Far too many marriages were the result of shot gun weddings and were often miserable.
Freedom to choose is priceless.
Most women from my generation are married and grandmothers so feminism did not overly influence them.
I would never want to go back to the pre-birth control days.
A former colleague was rightly bullied into a shotgun marriage by his parents which prevented him from marrying the woman he loved. He has resigned himself to his fate but is not very happy about it – nor is his wife. If they had had access to birth control and sex education it might have been a much happier story.
Their consolation is many grandchildren who bring them joy.
But it is still a life overshadowed by regret on both sides.
Did you ever watch the Aly McBeal comedy. The protagonist had prudently frozed her eggs prior embarking on a career. She discovers that the egg lab had used her eggs when an 11-year-old orphan shows up and informs her “Surprise you are a mom’ Ally quits her big-time job and becomes a full-time single mom. She must have saved up a lot of money to abandon the job and take a child sans husband to pay the bills. A single mom has to leave the child alone in the house and latchkey it if she is to raise a child alone.
To leave the child alone in the house and latchkey – really?
“Somehow we find ourselves at a time in history when nature itself is the problem. Biological clocks are sexist by definition, and should be outsmarted through technology. The idea that two parents are better than one is retrograde and discriminatory and, therefore, should not be discussed.”
The article was going well until the author pulled these progressive dogmas out of her hat. “Retrograde” is a funny word for “has been done by all humanity for millennia and is painfully obvious from even a biological point of view”. Fawlty nature to be fixed by technology…? Transhumanists ain’t what they used to be – now, they can’t even be bothered to offer a simple argument to support their extravagant views.
“Sounds like one of those self help mantras you repeat to yourself as you lie in bed attempting to fen off the despair that is waiting in the dark for you”
Sound like you know a lot about this…
I think the latest Meg Ryan movie is about 62 year old women who haven’t the means or inclination to spend half of life at the plastic surgery and recovery center (at home if she’s really affluent) vicariously airbrushed back to her very late 40s. Some movies aren’t meant to be taken seriously.
“somehow… Nature itself is the problem”.
This is all that is wrong with modernity. Seeking to outsmart nature before it’s really possible, or perhaps, as we wipe ourselves out trying to do it. And even if we do at what consequence to culture, the mind, to progress if humanity proper?
There’s so much absurdity in this article. Women’s reference frame is always men not life itself. This always seems to be the problem. The reference frame should be meaning, what life gives you real meaning instead of self indulgent distraction.