RN10

I read the Oral Histories by Oscar V. and Ilona Lany. The thesis of these readings is that a solid support system is crucial for a person to achieve their goals and dreams. The readings tell us that people from various cultures still value the idea of a woman giving birth and caring for her children. Oscar talks about how his sister’s spouse was supportive of her being a stay at home mom. Ilona talks about her interviewee’s ability to cope with being a woman from a traditional family and not having a uterus thanks to her spouses support.

Both Oral Histories display women who were faced with difficult decisions but thanks to their support system they were able to make them without worries of repercussions. Women that want to stay at home and take care of their children are sometimes unable to; the cost of living has increased so much over the past decade that a dual income household has become common even necessary in certain parts of the country. The woman without a uterus was able to cope with her emotional problems thanks to her spouse and has realized that she does not want children now but knows there are still options there if she wants to be a mother one day. On a macro level both these cases compare to the struggle of women post World War II; these women had proven that they were a capable workforce yet when the men returned from war they were told to go home. Had the men supported them and encouraged their reentrance into the workforce things may have been much different for the feminist movement and we wouldn’t face a prejudice against a female workforce like we do today.

The conversation that could result from these readings is one of childcare. We could discuss the following questions:

1.Do you think more women would stay at home to raise their children if they had the option to?
2.Do you think women are indeed better caretakers then men? Would a child be better off if their mother raised them?

If I were going to expand this into a large project I would do some research on women without uterus’s to find out the emotional impact of such news. Also I would do some research on how many women stay at home to take care of their children and if there is any correlation between that and kids that do well initially in school. Finally, I would like to interview some teenagers who had stay at home parents and those that didn’t and see what their experience was like and what they thought of having a parent at home all the time when they were growing up.

Unknown Words
1.Vitro fertilization- fertilization of an egg in a laboratory dish or test tube