According to The Lancet medical journal, the life expectancy of a baby born today in the U.S. could be close to 104 years. If this baby is born female, perhaps she will reach 109, considering most life expectancy research since 1960 shows women living five years longer than men.
A healthy, long lifeline, however, will only be part of her “good news” story.
In the professions, for example, the barriers once faced by this baby’s grandmothers, and perhaps even by her mother, have been broken down, and myths about female “inability” blown wide open.
Due to the feminist movement and various economic forces, women right now occupy 50 percent of the seats in law schools and 50 percent in medical schools. They dominate positions in schools of pharmacology and veterinary medicine. They have reached 40 percent in dental schools, and a small but significantly increased 20 percent in engineering schools.
Compare all that to the fact that when my husband graduated from law school at the University of California-Berkeley in 1961, there was one woman in his class; that during my father’s 33-year career (1936 to 1969) teaching civil engineering at New York University and Stanford, he perhaps saw four female students a decade; that in the 1970s, a University of Texas Dental School dean infamously proclaimed that women could not become dentists because “girls aren’t strong enough to pull teeth.”
And suppose this girl born today wants to be a police officer or a firefighter. No problem. Or if her passion is the military, she will be increasingly welcome in all the armed forces, no matter her sexual orientation. If she chooses to marry and have children — and I emphasize “chooses,” as marriage is no longer a social mandate or an economic necessity for a young woman — she will not face as many work-family conflicts as her mother or grandmothers did.
Even if we stay in our 19th/20th century negative mentality about providing child care, America right now is becoming a world leader in flex-time policies and new work schedules that benefit both moms and dads.
Will this female child born today and her partner enjoy a marriage which will last “til death do us part”? Maybe. Maybe not. Most of us, married or unmarried, would wish for a strong, unbroken love relationship for our children and grandchildren. “Someone important to share one’s life with,” as my husband would say.
And although the divorce rate has been steadily going down since the mid-’70s, let’s again consider the increased life span. Can we actually expect a marriage to last 70 or 80 years of a 100-year life?
Suddenly I am pulled “off message” from this column as I glance at the op-ed page of a recent issue of The Post. The opinions — all of four of them — are pessimistic about the future on the crucial topics of education, land conservation, presidential leadership, and growing tensions in the Middle East.
And these warnings don’t even touch on the bigger challenges looming: America’s debt and deficit, the growing wealth gap between our rich and our poor, global warming, nuclear war, the constant threat of terrorism, the potential for a worldwide pandemic.
So, yes, a girl baby born today may not face many barriers to her happiness and productivity because of her gender. But she may very well face innumerable barriers and crises simply as a member of the human race.
For me, the “hypothetical” baby girl has suddenly become reality. Our daughter recently gave birth to our long-awaited fourth grandchild and first granddaughter!
Eat, sleep and dream, precious one. The world, for now, can wait.
Dottie Lamm, former first lady of Colorado, is a feminist activist, a recovering politician and a grandmother of four.
