Yes We Can...Have It All by Simona Taylor

As a girl, bright, arrogant, and having grown up in a family in which the women received college educations and excelled in their professions, I followed the old feminist script.  I took Woman's Studies, rallied and marched with picket signs, and volunteered at feminist organizations.  I turned up my nose at girls my age who longed for marriage and children.  What, were they crazy?  What kind of traitor to the cause would want to waste a good education and a fine brain on a man, a house, and kids?  I remember glaring at pregnant women on campus, bristling with indignation at their betrayal of the sisterhood.

Now, more than 20 years on, wrapped up in my cozy domestic bliss and with two young children of my own, I am shocked and saddened by the self I once was.  Resentful of the fact that throughout that entire period of my life, nobody ever took me aside and explained to me that was okay to want love, to desire a monogamous relationship and to yearn to have children with the man you love.  The only messages I remember getting was that if you embraced domesticity, you were a sell-out.

I'm older now, and while I have no regrets, I look back at the barefooted, brash, wild-haired young woman I used to be, and smile when I think about all the things she didn't know.  She didn't know that we women can have it all.  We want to be successful in our careers, and who can blame us?  We have as many educational opportunities as men do.  As many careers are open to us, and with only a few shards of that shattered glass ceiling left sprinkled at our feet, our careers are limited only by our imaginations.

But the wonderful thing about being a woman today is that we don't have to compromise our hearts to do it.  We as women have learned the delicate art of balancing our passion for success with our passion for our man and our love for children.  More importantly, the message we hear today is that it's okay to want everything.

The great thing about romance novels is that this message rings through them bright and clear.  The modern romance heroine is not being sold to some rogue in settlement of her father's debts.  She's not a doormat, not a ninny, not a commodity.  She's a woman just like me, just like you: smart and passionate and savvy and hungry for life.  She has a zest for love, enjoys good sex, and looks forward to having children and raising them to be worthy inhabitants of this planet, to contribute, to learn, to love, and to make a difference.

Yes, we as women can craft our futures to suit ourselves.  We can choose to have careers -- or not.  We can choose to have lovers -- or not.  We can define family in any way we want.  That, for me, is true feminism.