Every Monday I meet with a group of friends at a restaurant in London. We sat at a table near the window and talked about our lives.
We have many things in common. We are all around 50 years old and are professional women with a high level of education. But there is a void in our lives. We are all single and have no children.
I feel more and more, like many of my close friends, that feminism has failed our generation. I grew up with their beliefs. No, scratch that. They were force-fed to me.
When I was 13, my Women’s Lib aunt’s Christmas gifts were books by Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir, considered the mother of modern feminism. (My aunt was one of those militants who had interrupted the 1970 Miss World pageant).
My classmates and I watched Mary Poppins, idolizing the decidedly single nanny (never noticing the occasional sadness behind her eyes) and sympathizing with the suffragette Mrs. Banks, while wondering why she wouldn’t leave her fool of a husband.
The feminism I was spoon-fed in my youth made the mistake of telling members of my sex to behave and think like men, writes Petronella Wyatt.
Our heroine was Margaret Thatcher, who, although she had denied it, was a de facto feminist. In one of those encounters that make life instructive, I met Lady Thatcher at my late father’s house (my father was the politician Woodrow Wyatt) when I was 15. She was our first female prime minister and after our presentation, she started talking to me about the topic of life.
The gist of her speech would have been greeted with hosannas by all the feminists of the time: in short, a woman’s career far replaced her relationships with the opposite sex. (Her own union with her might well have been with a cipher rather than a husband. In fact, when the Thatchers dined with us, Denis retired to the drawing room with the women.)
At my private school, St Paul’s, we Thatcher children were similarly educated outside of marriage and womanhood.
One of my single friends at school remembers: ‘My teachers made me feel like marriage was shameful. My English lover once made fun of me for looking at a bridal magazine, but she was an arch-feminist who demonized men.
We both remember being told that ‘the Pauline women don’t cook, they think’. This is all well and good when you’re young and aspiring to greatness, but not all girls become executives or high court judges, something feminism dangerously forgot to tell us.
Historically, the feminist argument had its points. In the old days, when members of my sex were tied first to their parents and then to their husbands, they led unenviable lives. However, if a woman were well educated, she could earn a comfortable living and remain independent of male approval. When the desire to get married and have children overwhelmed her, she would almost certainly lose her job.
The world has now changed in ways that early feminists would find incomprehensible. Sometimes I think, and so do my friends, that the West has surpassed feminist philosophy and that it has become pernicious.
Where, for example, does it leave women like us, when we reach 50 and find ourselves alone?
Left to right: Tapiwa Romeo Murisa, Jonathan Ross, Harvey Ross, Ranald MacDonald and Petronella Wyatt attend an awards dinner in Canary Wharf in 2015
One of the main causes of unhappiness is the feeling of being unloved, while companionship and the feeling of being loved promote happiness more than anything else.
One in ten British women aged 50 have never been married and live alone, which is neither pleasant nor healthy.
My friend Sally, a lovely 55-year-old woman with eyes the color of Eau de Nil, once told me: ‘I constantly feel unwanted as a woman because feminism taught us that the traditional woman was a stereotype invented by men to keep us down. . Therefore, I was anti-men to the point of driving them away. Now I’m paying for this.”
According to a recent study by an American medical institute, loneliness is the leading cause of depression among middle-aged women. I should know, as I recently fell victim to the relentless jaws of mental illness.
Many of my single friends suffer from depression, the result of a solitary existence that a breed of stray cats would avoid.
Additionally, there are economic factors involved. It’s a truism that two incomes are better than one, and many of the single women I know work in low- or mid-wage professions.
A college professor friend laments, “As a single woman, it’s increasingly difficult to pay bills without the help of a partner.” For every JK Rowling, there are millions of women getting by on a pittance.
“Feminism kept repeating in my head that financial independence was ideal, but in practice that doesn’t happen unless you run a hedge fund or are able to write best-selling novels.”
Equally depressingly, many single women feel like they have failed in life. Far from empowering us, feminism has made us insecure. “My career is stagnant, I’ve never been married and I feel worthless as a person,” observes my pretty friend Rachel, 53.
Overall self-confidence comes more than anything from being used to receiving love, especially from the opposite sex. The woman with husband and children accepts her affection as a law of nature, but it is of great importance for her mental health and her success.
However, of all the institutions that have come down to us from the past, none are as derailed by feminism as the family. Many women with feminist ideals feel that parenthood is a much heavier burden than their grandmothers felt, due to the long work hours and the defamation of the housewife. Is it any wonder the birth rate has declined?
Another member of my Monday group says: ‘I was conditioned to have no burdens, especially children. Or at least wait until I’m established in my career, but now I’m too old and that ship has sailed.
Recently, after my depression became debilitating, I had a 20-year-old student living in my house. After a week of friendship, I realized that the idea of not getting married and giving birth before the age of 30 was anathema to her and she rejected it completely.
Ultimately, she wanted to live her life as a woman.
“Yes, I believe in women’s rights,” she reflected, “but I don’t believe in the militant feminism my mother grew up with.” She went too far. From the mouths of babies.
The feminism I was spoon-fed in my youth made the mistake of telling members of my sex to behave and think like men. This mistake was serious and women like me are paying for it, like players in a fixed casino.
It’s time for a cultural reset. It may be too late for me and my friends, but feminism must not be allowed to ruin the lives of future generations as well.
