Three Generations Going On 30

A multi-generational snapshot of being a woman

LA in the 1960s. Photo Credit: Annie Spratt

Hello Wonderful Readers,

Wow! I am SO excited to share this week’s article with you. It was inspired by a conversation I had with my lovely reader and fellow writer, Wendy Martin. Be sure to check out her work, and I hope you like it!

Love,

Tash

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Introduction

Today, we’re going time-traveling! With my 30th birthday approaching in less than two months, I began to wonder: what was life like for my grandmother and my mother when they were turning 30? How much has changed in the last 60 years or so? Is anything the same?

My grandma is 87, and my mother is 61, and luckily, both of them were available today to answer my pesky interview questions. While these results are anecdotal, I love how staggeringly different our lives have been on the cusp of turning 30. Make sure you’re strapped in, and hold onto the handle if you need to. Enjoy!

Time Travel Destination #1: August 1967

Personal Background

Name: Patricia Weinberg (Nonie)

Birthplace: Walla Walla, Washington State, USA

Current Location: Los Angeles, California, USA

Distance from Birthplace: 830 Miles

Occupation: Caring for a newborn and trying to negotiate with an opinionated, unhappy mother-in-law (I never did learn how). And a difficult husband, but nobody was ready to admit that.  

Education Level: Nursing credentials. I didn’t get a degree in nursing, but I qualified for my license. I could have gone to college, but I was running a hospital at home, and what the hell did I need a college degree for?

Birth Control: Tubal Ligation.

Birth Control Details: I got pregnant accidentally with my third child, so I decided I’m not having any more kids. I was pretty much at the forefront of a lot of this without making big noises because “nice ladies” didn’t make big noises.

Relationships

Relationship Status: Married

Age Difference with Partner: 13 years younger than my husband

Years Married: 6

“Body Count” (number of people I’d had sex with): 1

Number of Children: 3

Housing

Homeowner: Yes

House price at the time: $68,000USD

House price equivalent to today: $642,000USD

Actual house price today: $4,100,000USD

Rent: N/A.

Members of the household: My husband and I, our five-year-old son, our three-year-old daughter, our infant daughter, and Heidi, who was a German Shepherd. I don’t remember having started to collect cats.

Personal Goals

Plans for the future: I didn’t have any. Painting had not really entered my life. The thing I worried about the most was making my children presentable to other people. At that point, I was spending all of my time feeding three small children, having a picky husband who wasn’t that bad compared to most others, sewing clothes for my children, and keeping up appearances. And my son was starting kindergarten. I didn’t care much for that crap. I was trying to furnish this big house, try to make everything the way everyone else wanted it to be so they would approve of it. I didn’t last a long time, but I tried.

Memories of my 30th birthday: I don’t exactly remember it, but I imagine my husband probably took me out to dinner.

Other details about life: I got to buy some interesting clothes, which was fun. But it was unpaid labor and not totally appreciated by anybody. Very thankless. My mother-in-law’s family quite liked me, and I’m still close to them. But essentially, she never accepted me because I was a shiksa (a non-Jewish woman).

Society in 1967

President of the United States: Lydon B. Johnson

Health recommendations: You made sure to get vaccinated or have chicken pox so you wouldn’t get it again. There wasn’t a flu vaccine yet, and there certainly wasn’t anything about AIDS. The biggest health recommendation was don’t screw around because you’ll probably catch something. But it was never said in those terms.

News Sources: We had a television that was black and white, so I’d get prime-time news. Very few people had a color TV. The first one I ever saw was when I was in nursing school, and one of the dirty old men who came to the hospital would take us out while his wife fixed dinner. And we would watch their color TV, which was like whoopie ding-dongs for me. It was a big thing. That would have been in 1960.

Other current affairs: We went to LBJ’s inauguration in Washington, DC. Kennedy had been assassinated, so that was a big deal. We met Governor Brown Sr. (Gerry Brown’s father). The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published in 1963, and I think I read the first paperback when it came out.

Status of women: I couldn’t get a credit card in my own name. You had to keep up appearances, or your husband would get criticized. My husband told me what I could not wear when I visited him to have lunch at the commissary. It was that kind of shit. Interesting, yeah. It was an interesting time because women were just beginning to say: “Hey, wait a minute. That’s bullshit.” A quote from a slightly later movie was, “Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining” [The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976]. That was the feeling. It was to stop giving me crap. But the first problem was figuring out what that was crap. And that took a while.

Comments on general social attitudes to women: The woman that I really admired was Gloria Steinem. She was doing what I wanted to be doing. Yet, I wanted to have these three kids and a husband because that’s what everybody did. And it was tough. But we lived through it, and we are stronger for it!  

As I look back on that whole period, I always felt that my generation got sort of screwed over because we were not out of the “Father knows best” and Father is God attitude. We were still hanging onto that because that’s what we knew. But there was all this new stuff going on that was scary as hell, and we didn’t have any guidelines while we were all rejecting the rules from the last generation. So, it was a very transitional generation. By the time my kids got into school in the 1970s and 1980s, it was changing a lot. But I remember thinking that, somehow, this whole system was not set up properly.

Time Travel Destination #2: September 1993

Personal Background

Name: Karen (Mum)

Birthplace: Glendale, California, USA

Current Location: London, UK

Distance from Birthplace: 5,433 miles

Occupation: News Producer

Education Level: Master’s Degree

Birth Control: The Pill

Relationships

Relationship Status: Married

Age Difference with Partner: 3 years older than my husband

Years Married: 3

“Body Count” (number of people I’ve had sex with): I do not want to comment.

Number of Children: 0

Housing

Homeowner: Yes

House price at the time: I do not want to comment. Public data for that neighborhood at that time shows £185,000

House price equivalent to today: Estimated at £387,000 [$500,000USD]

Actual house price today: Estimated at £1,166,000. [$1,505,000USD]

Rent: N/A

Members of the household: Husband and myself

Personal Goals

Plans for the future: We were thinking we’d have a family. I thought at that time that I wanted to continue working and have children, but it didn’t happen. We really felt like the world was full of promise and opportunity.

Memories of my 30th birthday: We had a really lovely dinner in a private room at Mosimann’s in London.

Other details about life: We used to go to San Lorenzo for lunch, eat at Harvey Nichols, and shop at Harrods. We enjoyed life, working and traveling a bit.

Society in 1993

President of the United States: Bill Clinton

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: John Major

Health recommendations: Back in that time, people weren’t supposed to eat fat. Sugar was fine, but everyone was very against eating fat. Eating pasta might have been encouraged, and eating eggs was discouraged because of cholesterol. I did a lot of Jane Fonda aerobics videos.

News Sources: I was working in the news, so I had newspapers, and we had the wires. Also, stuff was printed out in the newsroom. We were members of the Associated Press and Reuters. I was surrounded by the news. I didn’t have a mobile phone, though. I didn’t get a mobile phone until around 2000 or a little later.

Other current affairs: Princess Diana was very popular. She was huge. (My Dad’s input) British had just come out of the exchange-rate mechanism, so we were in a free-flowing exchange.

Status of women: I was very surprised when I came to the UK. I felt that women were far more respected in the United States, and UK society was way behind. If I needed some work done in the house, the men would immediately assume that I was an idiot. My education level, compared to theirs, was much higher, but they would not listen to me. I would have to get my husband to call and get things done, like plumbing. They were terribly patronizing. They would just assume that I had no idea what I was talking about. Apart from that, I was treated nicely. Obviously, things have changed a lot.

Time Travel Destination #3: Present Day (November 2024)

Personal Background

Name: Tash (me)

Birthplace: London, UK

Current Location: Mexico City

Distance from Birthplace: 5,548

Occupation: Writer, Author & SEO Consultant

Education Level: Bachelor's Degree

Birth Control: Liletta Hormonal IUD, i.e., the coil

Birth Control Details: I’ve had my Hormonal IUD for 8 years, the maximum allowed time, so I’m going to get it replaced soon. I hope to have children in the next 8 years naturally, so I may not use my next IUD for the whole duration.  

Relationships

Relationship Status: Single, in the early stages of seeing someone

Age Difference with Partner: 3 years older than him

Years Married: 0

“Body Count” (number of people I’ve had sex with): 44

Number of Children: 0

Housing

Homeowner: No

Cost of your house at the time: N/A

Equivalent cost of your house today: N/A

Actual cost of your house today: N/A

Rent: $18,750MXN pesos per month (currently $932USD per month)

Members of the household: Just me and my plants. I want to get a cat, but pets aren’t allowed in my building.

Personal Goals

Plans for the future: I hope to keep writing, publishing books, creating content, and doing public speaking to make a career out of it.

Memories of my 30th birthday: It hasn't happened yet, but for my 30th birthday, I am taking myself on a writer’s storytelling retreat to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then I am going to celebrate with some friends in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Other details about life: I just resigned the lease on my apartment, where I live alone. More of my friends in Mexico City have moved into my buildings, so my friends are now my neighbors, which is really fun. I feel like I have a strong community, and I love being able to work remotely while using the technical data skills I learned from my business degree and from working in tech.

Society in 2024

President of the United States: Joe Biden

Health recommendations: People exercise a lot and know how to eat healthily. The other major trends I’m seeing are a lot of people getting lip fillers from a young age and other types of plastic surgery.

News Sources: I read the New York Times and the BBC online way too much. I also get a lot of news through Instagram, where major news outlets haven’t been covering issues like conflict in the Middle East.

Other current affairs: Donald Trump was recently elected President again. Other key global issues include the crises around migration and climate change, which are making natural disasters a lot more frequent, and war in the Middle East.

Status of women: Women in the United States have been unable to access abortion in some states recently because they overturned Roe vs. Wade, and a few women are starting to die because of access to this medical procedure. Women initiate 70% of divorces. There is still a wage gap. White women earn 83% of what white men earn, while Black women earn 70%, and Hispanic women earn 65% of what white men earn. Asian women earn 93% as much as white men.

Analysis

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this time-traveling adventure and didn’t get too queasy! My favorite detail was the stark contrast between my grandmother and me. At this exact age, my grandmother had already had three kids and a tubal ligation, while I’m still single and wondering if I can count my single houseplant as a member of my household, lol.

What were your favorite details from these stories? Comment below!

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