Narrative Essay About Kath Mlitor Lively

1427 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender inequality and issues solutions

While speaking with Kathleen Molitor Lively, I learned so much about her, but also myself along the way. My mother has always been an inspiration to me in my current life, but after interviewing her about her past, I absorbed a lot about her that inspired me even more. I wanted to investigate her life, as well as how she felt as a girl growing up, but what I loved most was hearing about how she grew up and was raised which lead into how she raised her children, including me. Here is the story of Kathleen Molitor Lively, growing up as a girl, being a woman, and mother. “I didn’t know the difference between boys and girls. We were all friends.” When I asked my mother about her life growing up as a girl, she hesitated to reply due the emphasis
“It was always awkward when it came to paying on a date because I knew about a man’s sense of pride, and I guess it was his ability to pay. The dating thing I guess is the idea that he is supporting you because he is supporting you in the life later, but I thought it was stupid to make a guy pay all the time. I thought it was a stupid rule, but I didn’t want to buck the system, and always got confused on when I should treat or I should pay.” This was a forward thinking and progressive idea that my mom had. Most of the time the man should pay, but I really liked that my mom thought that she wanted to pay or treat the man on a date. I continued on the topic of her adulthood and examined her thoughts about the biggest challenges women face. She reacted, “Balancing the family and your career… I think that’s really it. It’s out of balance. When I was growing up, it was all about the expectations of women and expectations of the man. Housework and family and kids are mom’s jobs. Dad’s job is to go to work. But the tuition for schools went up so then both parents needed to work. We started to think that we have got to get our daughters to college to add to society and fulfill humanity goals. So, this lead to renegotiating jobs around the house. So woman did everything. To work part time was a luxury or to not work till the kids went to school. But, the women needed to work as well as remain the main housekeeper and childcare

Show More
Related

  • Eulogy for Mother

    2087 Words  | 5 Pages

    So, therefore, I would like to share a little about my mother as I knew her--as her oldest child, her first daughter, her “firstborn” (as she called me), as her “Suzy”.

    Read More

  • James Mcbride's Identity In The Color Of Water

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this memoir, James gives the reader a view into his and his mother's past, and how truly similar they were. Throughout his life, he showed the reader that there were monumental events that impacted his life forever, even if he

    Read More

  • Margaret Higgins Sanger: Sex Educator and Nurse

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    I choose to do my biographical paper on Margaret Higgins Sanger, because I admire the work that she done and that is continuing to be done, because of her. She was one of eleven children born to Michael and Anne Higgins; a Roman Catholic working-class Irish American family; on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. Margaret’s father a man of the bottle and one who enjoyed talking politics, rather than earning the money needed to take care of such a large family, therefore she spent most of her life in poverty. While I think her father had an impact on the person Margaret grew up to be; it was her mother that really shaped her into the person she was. Along with the eleven children she birthed, Anne also had many miscarriages, Margaret believed that it was the many pregnancies that took a toll on her mother's health and contributed to her early death at the age of 40. (BIO, 2014)

    Read More

  • The Mother Daughter Relationship in I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.

    Read More

  • Essay On Birth Control By Margaret Sanger

    575 Words  | 2 Pages

    Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was the daughter of two Irish Catholic parents who had eleven children in total. She witnessed the struggles that having a large family brought upon all aspects of her childhood, specifically her mother’s neverending stress. Sanger later attributed her mother’s death at the ripe age of 50 from tuberculosis to the strain of having eleven children and s...

    Read More

  • Interview with an Elderly Woman

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the early 1940’s Marie was born into a small tight knit family living in a small rural Kentucky town. Marie is now in her seventies and has led a very interesting life traveling the country, raising four children, and shaping her chosen profession. Our interview sessions were conducted over a period of time, as Marie is very active and has little “free time” to spare.

    Read More

  • Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

    2637 Words  | 6 Pages

    On March 13, 1933, Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Celia Amster and Nathan Bader (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). Ruth had an older sister, Marilyn, but she passed away at the age of six from meningitis; Ruth was one year old at the time. Cecilia, Ruth’s mother, stayed home and took care of Ruth while she grew up. Cecilia made sure that Ruth worked diligently in school and taught her the value of hard work. Cecilia was diagnosed with cancer while Ruth was in high school and the day before her daughter’s graduation she passed away (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). One of the greatest influences on Ruth’s life was her mother and the values she instilled in her from a young age. Two of the greatest lessons that Ruth learned from her mother was to be independent and to be a lady, and by that she meant not to respond in anger but to remain calm in si...

    Read More

  • Coming of Age in Alice Munro’s "Boys and Girls"

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...

    Read More

  • Evolution of Traditional Values: A Perspective on Gender Equality

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    It’s not like women couldn’t work before, they could, but they didn’t have too much social freedom like getting divorced or not having children. Their voice wasn’t as important as men. Most of the time, men had to decide everything in the family and had control over the family. Coontz believes that today women have more control over their own lives and they can choose however they want to live their lives. Kuttner also agrees that “most Americans, after all, believe women should not be consigned to the nursery and the kitchen” (122).

    Read More

  • Allan Johnson The Gender Knot Analysis

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    “There is a double standard here that shapes our perceptions of men and women in ways that support patriarchy as a system. What is culturally valued is associated with masculinity and maleness and what is devalued is associated with femininity and femaleness, regardless of the reality of men’s and women’s lives”,( Johnson 64). In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, Betty’s mother was pressurizing Betty to make her husband read a poem at the wedding not just to act like he enjoyed the marriage but mainly because it was a tradition for men. When Betty said she didn’t care about it, her mother refused and still insisted that she should do it. Women are looked down upon when it comes to the assignment of gender roles and this is because of labels that the society has placed on the female gender. In a home, the father is always the head of the home, providing food and clothing for every family member but there are some women who like to be independent and would also love to work and make money and cater for the family. In the 19th century, women were told they were home makers and were not allowed to endeavor further in higher educational studies. Wellesley College was a college built to raise future wives and not future leaders meaning that society had already placed women below the ladder without any intention or thoughts of them climbing back

    Read More

  • The Role Of Women In Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

    1100 Words  | 3 Pages

    Marjane’s mother was one of the most influential people in her life, her mother taught her to be strong and independent. By introducing her mother through the story of her

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Jamaica Kincaid's Girl By Jamaica Kincaid

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a story that everyone can related to. The story is about a mother telling her daughter what to do, what not to do and how to do things. Kind of like society or parents or a friends of what to do. There has also been always been expectations of what to do and how to do things in life regards of gender, nationality or religion. The male has he’s duties and the female has different duties. However, in the typical society today, a person is supposed to graduate from high school and go straight in to an Ivy League university, to get a degree in a field of study that makes lot of money. While working a person must save money for that dream big house with the white picket fence. At the same time, you have to look for that perfect spouse so you can have the big beautiful dream wedding. After the wedding it’s the romantic honeymoon to Bora Bora. After a couple years the baby comes, and you are a happy family. Typically, that is what parents teach their children of what is what is expected of them.

    Read More

  • “Working Parents” Synthesis Essay

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the late 1920s, this started to change for good. More and more woman was becoming educated and finding work outside of the home. Woman were earning money and doing many of the same jobs as men when the 19th Amendment to the constitution gave women these rights. This changed how modern Parent balance work and family time. Should Women have to work or staying home? “Over the past generation, home prices have risen twice as fast for couples with young children as for those without kids… The average couple with young children now shells out more than $127,000 for a home, up from $72,000 (adjusted for inflation) less than 20 years ago (“Why Women…Work”).” This shows that now days it’s expensive to have kid and for couple’s more adjustment that both support each other economically. Many women and solo parent neglect to stay home because they decide that the cost is just too high, and the choic...

    Read More

  • The Role of Women in American Society

    1488 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout history, the roles of men and women in the home suggested that the husband would provide for his family, usually in a professional field, and be the head of his household, while the submissive wife remained at home. This wife’s only jobs included childcare, housekeeping, and placing dinner on the table in front of her family. The roles women and men played in earlier generations exemplify the way society limited men and women by placing them into gender specific molds; biology has never claimed that men were the sole survivors of American families, and that women were the only ones capable of making a pot roast. This depiction of the typical family has evolved. For example, in her observation of American families, author Judy Root Aulette noted that more families practice Egalitarian ideologies and are in favor of gender equality. “Women are more likely to participate in the workforce, while men are more likely to share in housework and childcare (apa…).” Today’s American families have broken the Ward and June Cleaver mold, and continue to become stronger and more sufficient. Single parent families currently become increasingly popular in America, with single men and women taking on the roles of both mother and father. This bend in the gender rules would have, previously, been unheard of, but in the evolution of gender in the family, it’s now socially acceptable, and very common.

    Read More

  • Motherhood in The Summer Before the Dark by Kate Brown and The Fifth child by Harriet Lovatt

    5038 Words  | 11 Pages

    Motherhood is a traditional role for women. From the time they are young, girls are taught to grow up, marry and become mothers. Of course they can do other things with their lives like play sports, have careers, and travel, but an overwhelming amount of women want to be mothers no matter what else they accomplish with their lives. It is common knowledge that being a good mother is one of the hardest jobs in the world. It is to forever have a special link with another person or people and have a tremendous influence, maybe the most tremendous influence over their lives. Motherhood is a roller coaster ride for women, full of ups and downs, fears and accomplishments. But what happens when motherhood defines who a woman is? All children grow up, and while a woman is always a mother, children need their mothers less and less until eventually their dependence is very minimal. What happens to the woman whose singular role and purpose is no longer needed? In The Summer Before The Dark, and The Fifth Child, the maternal roles of Kate Brown, and Harriet Lovatt are analyzed and traditional motherhood behavior is deconstructed due to these characters’ experiences and relationships with their children.

    Read More

More about Narrative Essay About Kath Mlitor Lively

Open Document