It is Sunday Night

To the left is the 1960s actress Brigitte Bardot.

Sexiest Icons of the 1960s (click here)

I remember these women. I was born in 1955. They made an impression on me as I grew up. So did the women marching for equality and asking for an Amendment to the USA Constitution that would bring about equality for women. My value system grew out of the 1960s and the movement to change in the USA. I was thirteen when my mother decided to find her first job. She was 33 years old. She had been married 14 years to my father and wanted more. Imagine that. She was looking at the women marching for equal rights alongside me, and she decided she wanted more out of life than my father's paycheck would bring.

Her first job was ironing clothes at a small factory. She was good at ironing clothes and never thought in her wildest imagination it would bring her a paycheck. It did. She would work from 6 PM to 10 PM, Monday - Friday so she could get dinner ready before she left for work. Being 13 years old, I was expected to see my sisters were in pajamas and with my father's authority would be in bed before she returned home.

My mother's move to work and earn a paycheck was not received well by my father. There were many arguments and as time went by he accepted it because she actually improved the quality of life of the family. Eventually, we would move to a nicer apartment with a really nice neighborhood and from there my parents purchased their first home. I was married by then. My mother was 42 years old when she and my father received Veteran Benefits and bought their first home. 

By the time my parents purchased their first home, my mother had worked in several different jobs, including as a saleswoman in a gift and card store. She blossomed and she eventually would interview for a small company called "Jelco," which would, soon after she was hired into the accounts payable office, become a member of the Johnson and Johnson family of companies.

She retired at the age of 62 from Johnson and Johnson from their accounts payable department with a very nice retirement package of benefits and a pension payment every month.

The women's movement provided a new kind of "female image" to admire with the ideas of a better life with the beginnings of a career became iconic and still pervades most women's understanding of their own ability even today. 

My mother finished high school with a focus on business but wasn't prepared the same as the men in high school. The men in high school never took shorthand and typing as a business major. She was and still is remarkable. She is 86 now. She survived the pandemic because I helped her during that time to adjust to grocery delivery and pick-up, wearing a mask and accepting the fact even though she felt fine all that could end with a slip-up. 

Women do that with each other. We care for each other and our families, even when we have very demanding careers. I marvel at the young women I know. They are dynamic and so are their families.

When it comes to millennials, which my two sons are, they need to accept the idea that even though "The Boomers" were teens or younger in the 1960s, those are the years we bonded with and profoundly defined our values as we grew into adulthood.