I have thought a lot lately about the interior lives of mothers. When we first met, Shanai and I talked about women of different generations responding to #MeToo. After that, I called my mom to talk.
My mother grew up in a man’s world.
When #MeToo hit headlines late last year, I thought about the women I know. Women forced out of jobs or careers. Women who found out the hard way what it was like to work in that world.
And I thought about my mom. When she was just nineteen, my mother worked at a restaurant where her boss sexually harassed her. One time he tried to push her and a friend into a car to go on a date—in the middle of their waitressing shifts.
When we talked about it, though, my mother did not call it “harassment” at the time. She had never talked about that boss or thought her experience unusual. She did not even know what the words “sexual harassment” meant.
“It was not something you even thought about,” she told me. “You did what you were told. Back then, a lot of people felt that if someone complained, it was the woman overreacting.”
She had never had a conversation with her mother, either.
My grandmother was one of two women admitted to her medical school in 1949. That is because she was bright and driven, yes—but also because the school only ever opened two spots for female applicants.
She met my grandfather there, and they had their first big fight when she bought a car—with her own money.
“I think it quite definitely was a man’s world—if there was a problem, it was because you as a woman did something,” my mom said. “I don’t think it was very often thought that the man had overstepped his line.”
Even when she graduated, my grandmother only worked part-time in an evening clinic. Her income paid for children’s school uniforms and camp vacations.
When I asked her about my mother’s time at the restaurant, and then about her own experiences with sexual harassment, she barely blinked.
She said something like that had never happened to her.
“I think harassment happens more nowadays,” she said. I did not press her.
When I told my mother about that conversation, she rolled her eyes. What had I expected an eighty-nine-year-old grandmother to say?
“Look at the difference in generation that you and I can talk about this,” my mother said. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of even mentioning it with my mother.”
But I grew up in a different world.