Forces on the Parents Free-Write

Prompt: What social forces (or other force) affected your parents, that may also have affected you?

My mother and father has very different childhoods with eerie similarities.

For my mother, the force that affected her was most likely the feminist movement. I can't say I have the historical knowledge of whether it was second or third-wave feminism, or some other movement entirely, but the struggle to gain equal rights for women was something that I think really affected my mother. She's always been an incredibly strong woman. She had four kids, took care of them while working constantly from home. Her work would take her once a year to far-away countries where she would broker deals with the local vineyards that would affect global wine prices for the year to come. This didn't stop her from always making a different dinner for each of her four children, spoiling them with their favorites when it would have been far easier to just make the same meal for all of us. Even cancer couldn't stop her. Six months after chemo, she ran a half marathon just to prove she could, putting her two cross-country sons to shame. She wants no one else in her life, preferring to be what is called the 'strong, independent woman', despite the great effort of raising and championing four children. To be fair, this strength can manifest itself in aggravating ways. Many a time have I been sent back to the bathroom to 'put the seat down', silently fuming and constructing an argument that making me do such a thing was actually defeating gender equality everywhere, an argument I never had the guts to make. But it also gives her an incredible acceptance. Despite being a devout Catholic and going to church every Sunday, she accepted it with only mild disappointment when I told her that institution was no longer in harmony with my own spiritual beliefs. In the middle of my long and rambling explanation to her of polyamoury, she mistakenly believed that I was coming out to her, and assured me that she didn't care who I liked or who I brought home. She's never even preached to us about feminism, either. It's always just been our mom, being strong. It's only now as we grow older and familial lies break down that we begin to see her as a real person, a person that has suffered for us. Perhaps it's too late for recompenstation, and I doubt she'd accept any if put like that. But it is time we started appreciating her for everything she does, and letting our hearts appreciation carry to our mouths.