I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings. After all I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love with its many disappointments, with its tragedies and eternal demands for perfect happiness still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy, fruitless and, in the final analysis, utterly worthless. We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labor power which was dissipated in barren emotional experiences. It is certainly true that we, myself as well as many other activists, and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal ...work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.

We struggled with it in our generation. What were we willing to do to force the country to live up to its ideals, right? There’s this big gap. Talk about gaps. The big gap is between the ideals the country has and the practices it condones. But so, we had to do that in the ’60s, and this generation is going to have to do the same.

My generation fought so hard to give all of you choices. We believe in choices. But choosing to leave the workforce was not the choice we thought so many of you would make.”2 So

Our parents’ generation and our generation grew up under different circumstances. Our parents were born during difficult times and forced into exile at a very young age. They had to fight for their country and identity.

we compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet

We live in the most interesting of times. We're the last generation that will fully have the experience of both the old world and the new era. We're too close to it to really see it, but we have a beautiful station that is pivotal. It is unlike any generation before or that will come after. We are the generation of transformation. It is at once overwhelming and beautiful. We should be joyous and amazed at the extraordinary time we are in and the unparalleled opportunities we have. Efforts expended through the difficulty of this time, for this purpose- for the establishment of universal peace- will be honored and remembered for thousands of years. If we seize the opportunity, we are providing a service to humanity that no other generation could provide — and that's why we're here.

We are the heirs of a Great Generation, the generation of our mothers and fathers who brought this country safely through the Depression and World War II. I can yet recall, as a boy, seeing my father go off to work three jobs, to provide for a family that was growing to nine children – every one of whom he would send to college to get the kind of education he had been denied. I can yet recall my mothers’ four younger brothers stopping by the house on Chestnut Street to say goodbye, as they went off to fight Hitler’s evil empire in Europe. They made their contributions to America’s greatness and glory. And we, too, have contributed. It was our generation, all of us, who stayed the course, persevered, and prevailed in the long twilight struggle against one of the most monstrous tyrannies the world has ever known. But we are not done yet. We have one more contribution to make. Our duty, our challenge is to fulfill America’s promise – to make her one nation, under God, and one people again, where all, regardless of color, creed, gender or national origin, have a fair shot at the American Dream.

I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring.

Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.

I came of age, metaphorically, in the '60's, and have tried to retain the ideals of that period: the hope that we could have a more loving, wise and compassionate world if we would work at it. My feminism, like many others', was born in this period.

The fierce and growing hostility to “plutocracy” at the opening of the twentieth century reflected moral outrage about inequality that had been absent during the Gilded Age with its emphasis on social Darwinism and the rights of ownership. This normative change was temporarily disrupted by the Red Scare of the 1920s, but the utter devastation of the Great Depression gave renewed force to the ideals of social solidarity instead of naked individualism, even among Republicans like Herbert Hoover.120 The widely shared sacrifices of World War II strongly reinforced egalitarian norms among the Greatest Generation, who would then dominate American society and politics for a quarter century after the war.

Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a women, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations were mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes and evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - for an effective family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and i this future age, it was complete.