Rory Rocks!

Some parents get tired by the time their youngest starts to come of age. They become lacks, even apathetic. Not my mom. She was so young when my older sister was born that I think the five years it took me to catch up allowed her the time to be more sinister and creative in her parenting process. Dangit.

My sister would disagree as she subscibes to a commonly held belief that the youngest gets by with murder. She felt that she "wore my mom down" or "mellowed her out". While I will say that my mom gradually became a calmer, saner, more rational person with age and wisdom, I hardly attribute any of this to my sister's existence or effort.

What the oldest child can't or won't see is how parents start to realize they may be enabling or coddling their children too much and this may be a detriment to their adult selves. Upon making this realization, they change their methods and the younger children are submitted to strange and unusual rituals such as cleaning up after themselves, making their own decisions and generally being held accountable for their behavior. I know plently of families where the youngest is instead coddled more and accountable for less and becomes generally useless for a spouse or society for that matter, so the opposite can most certainly be true here as well.

Speaking from my perspective, I had to really learn to become a good decision maker at a fairly young age. My sister hated making decisions as a teenager and even after she had she would regret them and immediately fault someone, most usually this someone was our mother. My mom wasn't having it by the time I came around so my bad choices were all mine. Awesome.

My mom taught me to be a strong, independent woman. This can be a good and bad thing. I had to learn to change a flat tire, change my own oil and change a spark plug. These were things I later questioned if either of my parents could do. I had to learn to balance a check book, create a budget, sew a button, iron (a skill I have yet to master), find the sale price of an item, cost check for lower prices, change the inside of toilet (I still have no clue what the pieces are called.. arm? plunger? black stopper thing?). Basically I was being taught that there might not be a man around someday so I should learn to do things outside of stereotypical gender roles.

Probably the first generation on either side of our family to be groomed to become a single adults vs being prepared for married life. What if you never got married? Could you buy a house? A car? Identify a mechanical problem? My mom taught me that good credit was one of the most valuable things I would ever posess and I should take great care of it once I finally established it. I was given a checking account at age 18 which I butchered and my mom helped me out. But it taught me so much and I have grown and become so much smarter about personal finances and where I wanted to be with my own from that lesson.

I remember asking my mom why she had kept her maiden name on her house (she owned it prior to getting married to my dad) and a few of her credit cards. She explained to me that in her generation women still weren't on equal footing with men. They weren't respected in business the same, paid the same, treated the same in society, etc. If a man were to leave his wife or die, a woman could find herself in a financial disaster. No credit of her own with likely nothing in her name and possibly no resume to rely on to find a job. This scared the life out of me.

How did women do it back then? Stay so complacent? Dutiful? I would be resentful and enraged. Makes me realize the importance of Tupperware parties back in the day! A break in the grind.

My mom also taught me to always pay yourself first and keep a hidden safety net somewhere that was your "just-in-case" money. I know, it doesn't seem very trusting of men, although it's not a romantic notion it is a reasonable one. It's something I've always tried to do so I would never find myself in a position of having to be in a situation that wasn't good for me. Being chained to someone financially isn't a reality I would ever like to experience. I think in my youth I overdid it and it caused me to overwork and I paid for myself on way too many dates when it wouldn't have hurt the guy to be a gentleman. But my huband does accuse me of always being the man, so there you go.