Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the June 11, 2003
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Teena Long Cahill, a 57-year-old psychologist,
was born nine months after the end of World War II. She is the eldest
of the baby boomers, the generation of emancipated women who pioneered
in balancing career and family.
Mia Cahill, a 36-year-old attorney, is Teena’s daughter. She
and her peers were raised to expect to juggle career and family with
ease.
They will present a joint lecture, “Mothers and Daughters: Working
Women and the New Old-Girl Network,” on Friday, June 13, at 7
p.m. at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital Wellness Center in Hamilton.
They will discuss how baby boomer mothers and their daughters support
one another, and whether the realities of the mothers’ lives apply
to the realities of the daughters’ lives. The lecture is free; call
609-584-5900.
“I’m of the first generation that went into the professions en
masse,” says Teena Cahill, “and our daughters are following
us. For me there weren’t that many expectations.” When baby boomer
women managed to “have it all,” to successfully juggle family
and career, it was an accomplishment above the norm. Now one-fourth
of today’s women make more money than their husbands and 30 percent
of the women are the head of their household. “Now we have
tremendous
expectations.”
If expectations have changed, so have circumstances. “When we
baby boomers were young, families didn’t usually move away, and the
community and extended family were available to a large number of
our mothers,” says Cahill. “Young women today work to create
communities. Many of them travel, and they band together to create
a community of support for one another.”
On June 13 the daughter will tell about her peer group’s parenting
communities, and the mother will discuss intergenerational
communities.
They come from an unusual perspective, because they all live in the
same house — grandmother, grandfather, daughter, son-in-law, two
children, two dogs, and sometimes the babysitter. “Now that both
ma and grandma are still working, we need to learn how to help one
another,” says Teena Cahill. “My daughter and I work very
hard to create a community that enriches everyone.”
Teena Cahill grew up in a traditional community, a Midwest farming
town, where her family lived with her grandmother and three aunts.
Her grandmother was twice widowed by the time she was 34, so she
worked
as a hotel cook and raised five daughters by herself. “My
grandmother
had lots of friends, had status, and was a lot of fun. Grandma taught
me the joy of her community — the hotel, her church, her senior
citizens group — and she worked until her eighth decade. She
taught
me never to give up, and I learned you could have a great life, no
matter what.”
“I come from a family of great tough women,” she says,
“and
I was nurtured by `the village.’” Teena’s mother, the youngest
of five girls, worked for the state, and her father had a factory
job. Teena was the perennial winner of public speaking contests, and
she won a scholarship to Ohio State at the county fair. Then she
married
and had a daughter and two sons (both married, one living in Alberta
with two children and the other in Denver). She was divorced, went
for her doctorate in psychology at Florida Institute of Technology
in Melbourne, had various teaching jobs, and remarried. She maintains
a private practice on Spring Street.
A cognitive behavioral psychologist, she holds the theory that stress
isn’t necessarily bad. “We were made with the emotions to handle
stressful situations,” she says, “and we know that the more
we tackle problems, the more self esteem goes up. We need to validate
children’s feelings and reframe how we look at world. Thoughts affect
our feelings, and feelings affect our behavior.” She contributed
these ideas to a post 9/11 book published pro bono by the New Jersey
Psychologists’ Association (“Shocking Violence II,” edited
by Rosemarie Moser, Charles Thomas Publishers). Her advice:
Learn new coping strategies. Some people have availableonly the ultra feminine or ultra masculine styles of responding.”Thebest style for mental health is to have an androgynous style ofresponding,because it gives you so many more strategies to take on theworld,”says Cahill. “But a new skill set has to be learned.”New skill sets are needed in the practical arts as well. Today’sprofessionalmothers want to pass on different skill sets from the traditionalones. “I was determined that my daughter would learn to writea dissertation,” says Cahill. “As joyful for me as it wasto help her learn to make chocolate chip cookies, it was even morewonderful to watch her — and help her in a very small way —to write her dissertation.”The skill set for boys has expanded too. Cahill notes that, as asinglemother in graduate school, she was very busy indeed, so her sonslearnedto cook (they are gourmet cooks now). “And as soon as they weretall enough to reach the washing machine, I taught them how to useit, and they all did their own laundry from the age of 10 or 11. Ibelieve that is a wonderful gift I gave my daughters in law. That’show having a working mom trickles down and helps futuregenerations.”Find old solutions to new problems. When Teena Cahill’shusband became disabled, and he needed to live in a place withoutstairs, the two families bought a house that can serve them both.Cahill notes that, in 1880, 46 percent of the people over the ageof 65 were living with their children and thus able to serve asbuilt-inbabysitters and cooks. In 1990, it was just five percent. Thoughlivingtogether is helpful to both generations, she believes she and herhusband are the big beneficiaries. “Financially and emotionallythe children don’t need us. They can hire the services we can provide,but we could never hire what they provide.”Of course not every family could do this, and Teena Cahill’s jokingis only partly in jest: “I am not sure that anyone other thanmy daughter would want me. I love my daughters-in-law but I don’tthink they would want to live with me. It works best with a motherand a daughter. We have the same ideas about child rearing, but Ihave a lot of opinions, and my daughter is very strong. If we havean argument, the men take off, and it ends up with us crying andhugging.”The blended living arrangement not only gives grandparents accessto their grandchildren, but also some exposure to their daughter’sfriends and their grandchildren’s friends. “From my perspective,successful aging is defined as being involved and feeling part ofthe whole life process,” says Cahill.”One of my husband’s jobs is to do the spelling words with ourgranddaughter, and this exercise is really not about the words, itis about developing good study habits,” says Cahill. “Thinkabout her memories. She has this memory of Grandpa spending time withher every week. And Grandpa, who is very bright, has the weeklyjoy.”Build and/or increase your community. Young women needto set up extended family relationships that can be tapped in timesof need. Older women need to “live wide” — adding youngerpeople to their pool of friends, perhaps by doing volunteer work —in order to live long. “A study at Harvard, the longestprogressivestudy of mental health ever done, very clearly shows that as you getolder, you need to increase your community. At any age, butparticularlyas we get older, we have to grow past ourselves, and find a way tocontribute to the community,” she says. “Ninety percent ofthe people who are getting older are living alone, and I say, youmight want to think about that.”Change your thoughts, which will change your behavior.She tells of how, when her husband had a cerebral hemmorhage andstroke,the hospital gave him no chance to live. She went into a panic.”Finally,I realized that 10 hours ago they said he would die, five hours agothat he would die, and five minutes ago, but he hasn’t died yet, soI decided not to wait for him to die but to plan on him living. Andthe minute he died I would deal with it then. I went from despairto hope, and that affected my behaviors, and I ultimately got himto a hospital where they had some hope.”When daughter Mia takes her turn to tell how the newnetwork might work for the younger generation, she will emphasizehow to create community by helping each other out. Women who areactiveschool volunteers, for instance, help each other both in traditionalways (recommending good summer camps and pinch-hit babysitting) andin professional ways (such as helping each other make connectionsin the corporate world). Many mothers who have had professionalcareersare looking for part-time and contract work and they network withtheir friends to accomplish this.An example of how a community can work: A school volunteer group hada newsletter to publish. Someone they knew was looking for work inpublishing. “Women were saying, if we give it to thisperson,she can put it on her resume, and that might help her get anotherjob,” says Mia.Broaden your outlook in terms of what you can do to helppeople around you, and how they might help you access othercommunities,says Mia. “Think of your relationships as a source ofstrength.”Raise children to think for themselves. “I hadmiserablesuccess, sometimes, but I had the guts to try new things,” saysMia. Her family lived in West Windsor in the mid 1970s, and sheremembersbeing one of the first girls to play in the West Windsor baseballleague. “I wanted to do it and was incensed that they didn’t wantgirls to do it. And I was such a bad baseball player, like the worstone in the `Bad News Bears.’ It was a miserable experience foreveryone.But other people who came after me who more accepted — and betterplayers than I.”Take traditional networks and use them in new ways.”Ourliving situation is just that taken to an extreme,” says Mia.”Not everyone could — or would want to — live with theirparents, but the idea of reaching out and drawing on yourrelationshipsis something everyone can do.”After graduating from Princeton High, Mia Cahill majored in politicalscience and psychology at the University of Delaware (Class of 1988),earned both a law degree and a master’s in sociology at the Universityof Denver, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Both schoolsare known for using social science research to study law. “It’sa field of professors and economists who look at how law operatesin real life,” she explains.In Colorado she met her future husband, a Romance language major atColorado College. With an LLM degree in international business lawfrom the University of the Pacific, he is an attorney at the UnitedNations. But before that, in the early 1990s, he worked for the U.N.in Vienna, while she commuted between Wisconsin and Austria.Needing to juggle research, the birth of two children, volunteeractivities,and regular commutes to her teaching job in Wisconsin was what startedher on the path to serious networking. In Vienna she headed anexpatriatemothers group, was active in the American Working Women’s Association,and volunteered at the U.S. Embassy with the Vienna Women’sInitiative,which paired Western women with those from former Eastern bloccountriesto teach entrepreneurial skills.Meanwhile, for her thesis, she interviewed European and American CEOsand surveyed their employees. “My area of research is that there’slaw and there is real life, and they are not necessarily the samething. I focus on how ordinary people decide what legal rules applyto them,” says Mia. “Sexual harassment law in the 1990s wasincredibly ambiguous, and I did a cross national study on how peoplein corporations decide what the rules are. I argued that a lot ofwhat plays into it is cultural assumptions.”Upon her return to the United States, Mia Cahill taughtat New York University’s Institute for Law and Society, publishedher book (The Social Construction of Sexual Harassment Law: the Roleof the National, Organizational, and Individual Context (Law, Justiceand Power, $79.95), and worked briefly at Mathematica Policy Research.She also worked at an Alexander Road-based law firm, Maselli Warren,before starting her own law practice in April (5 Independence Way,Suite 300, 609-514-5120; fax, 609-452-8465).Now she does family and employment law, mediations for the court oncivil rights and employment issues, and consults with small andmedium-sizedbusinesses, particularly on how to put fair procedures in place.”I love to go to court because you can be on the side ofright,” says Mia Cahill. “You can stand up and say `This isright — legally, factually, and morally right.’ There aren’t manyopportunities to stand up and make a case for something you believein.”Her sense of justice? “It came partly from my upbringing. Irememberthere was something I wanted and didn’t get, and I screamedindignantly,`That’s not fair.’ And my mother said, `Life’s not fair.’ That wasa hard pill to swallow. There are many reasons why life isn’t fairand I am willing to expect many of them, but anything based on genderis outrageous. Telling somebody that she can’t have a job becauseshe has children is wrong, and in fact, illegal.”What works for one generation may not work for the next.GrandmotherCahill found that out when she tried to show her granddaughter howthe washing machine worked. This smart child had heard the legendsabout how her mother and uncles were taught to do wash. “Shelookedat me and said No,” says Teena Cahill. “She knew what wascoming.”Still, says this grandmother, smarter is better. “My grandmaalwaysthought I talked too much. She thought I had a smart mouth becauseI would speak up. But I hope my daughter has a smart mouth and I hopemy granddaughter has one too. Everyone should own the right to saywhat they think and change the world.”— Barbara FoxPrevious StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
