Would this be a wasted life?

[emkana]

I'm still reading that Kate Figes book that sparked off that money thread the other day, and I've come across another thing that made me think. Two of the characters are talking about the grandmother of the family, and one of them says that the grandmother is very unhappy because she feels she has wasted her life by never doing useful, only having children. Now I understand that many women have felt this way, esp. in older generations, but it made me think - from your viewpoint, would you regard a woman who doesn't do anything with her life other than have children as having wasted her life? If it was her choice and she was happy doing nothing other than childrearing and "homemaking" (hate that word)? Does it make a difference what education the woman has, so say she has a medical degree and works for two years and then stays at home for the rest of her days...

would be really interested to hear your thoughts.

I think the definition of a wasted life is at any time in your life looking back and thinking I did the wrong thing, rather than looking forward and thinking what am I going to do next

Looking at it from a modern perspective it's easy to say that there's no excuse for any woman to believe she's wasted her life, but there was a time when women had no choice but to stay at home with their children, and spend their lives looking after the kids and the home, and I think it's probably the lack of choice (and maybe seeing mothers today being given the choice) that can sometimes make older women feel that they have wasted their lives. It's not that they didn't want to be mothers, and didn't enjoy the time they spent with their children; it's the fact that they weren't allowed the choice.

Even as late as the 1960s women in some industries and some companies (my mother amongst them) had to leave their jobs if they got married, and it certainly wouldn't have been allowed to have worked with children.

My MIL is in her late 70s, and she wasn't even allowed to have a hobby of her own chosing - her parents chose for her the things they felt were suitable for her to do, and then when she married she felt that she had to take up her husband's hobbies with him - it wasn't expected that she would have a mind of her own, and might want to chose her own activities. She didn't start picking up hobbies of her own until her dh died, by which time she was quite elderly and many of the things she would have liked to have done were difficult for her to do.

Maybe we're lucky that we have the choice these days; if we don't feel that raising children is the be-all and end-all of everything, we have the freedom to explore other avenues.

I'm glad the majority of you agree that it wouldn't be a wasted life.
Somehow reading this in the book struck a chord with me as I have some (childless) friends who make me feel I'm wasting my life/my education by staying at home, even though it has only (?) been four years and I feel that even if stay at home for another ten years there will still be plenty of years left to do something "useful" (paid or unpaid, and other than rearing children!).