Searching for Harriet, Blondie, and Lucy

I started thinking about the demise of women's clubs a few days ago. It was at the PEO meeting this past Thursday when I had a brief conversation with one of the fellow sisters. She had just presented a program on Julia Child and remarked that women's roles had changed so much sociologically in the past sixty years that women no longer felt the need to gather together any more. After all, their roles have changed from the view presented in the early television programs such as "Ozzie and Harriet" and "I Love Lucy," or the cartoons like "Dagwood." The change has been from seeing beautifully clad women in pearls pushing a vacuum cleaner to that of professional women going to the office very day. They simply have no time for women's clubs any more. Should there be a resurgence in 2010? Perhaps so--and here's why.

The day before my PEO meeting I had visited the Rockefeller Center located on Petit Jean Mountain with my book club. We were given a tour of the farmland and met Nicholas, the donkey, who scared away raccoons; Otis, the sheepdog, who lived in the same pen with the sheep; and numerous orphan lambs whose mothers had rejected them or died. The crops were coming up nicely with the rain we have had recently--sweet potatoes, purple hull peas, tomatoes, grapes, and so on. Our guide for the tour casually mentioned that she and a group of her friends had just had a "women's night out." They had gathered together for food and games while the men stayed with the children. I tend to believe that women's groups such as these still perform a valuable psychological function. Not only do they give women a few hours away from their roles as wives and mothers, but they also provide opportunities to discuss the nature of families in 2010, the trials (or joys) of multi-tasking, the challenges of rearing children, etc.

Even for someone in my age group (retirement), the fellowship often provides an outlet for an otherwise routine dull day at home alone. Yes, the programs can be a bit outdated, i. e. last month's PEO program was on Estee Lauder, but they challenge us to think about our roles in the past and in the present. We might not be able to resurrect Harriet, Blondie, and Lucy in their original forms, but we can create new models who still value the mentoring role of older women to younger mothers.