The Dreams of Youth

By NANCY GIBBS

A generation from now, if all the dreams of reformers have come true, a special issue devoted to women will seem about as appropriate as a special issue on tall people. This is not to say that by then men and women will have become indistinguishable, their quirks and cares and concerns interchangeable. Rather, the struggles of the last decades of the 20th century will have brought about the freedom and flexibility that have always been the goals of social reform. Issues like equal pay, child care, abortion, rape and domestic violence will no longer be cast as "women's issues." They will be viewed as economic issues, family issues, ethical issues, of equal resonance to men and women. A woman heading a huge corporation will not make headlines by virtue of her gender. Half the presidential candidates may be women -- and nobody will notice.

But what will it take to get there from here? As the century fades, women find themselves at a critical juncture, a moment, perhaps, for reflection and evaluation. The cozy, limited roles of the past are still clearly remembered, sometimes fondly. The future looms with so many choices that the freedom it promises can be frightening.

The opening year of the new decade has richly sketched the dizzying choices of roles and values facing the next generation of American women and men. When Barbara Bush arrived at Wellesley College to celebrate motherhood and wifely virtues, she sparked a national debate among the young about what it means to be a successful woman. That debate was further fueled by the announcement by TV newswoman Connie Chung that she would abandon the fast track at CBS in a last-ditch drive for motherhood at age 44. Meanwhile, male role models are also in flux. Wall Street wonder boy Peter Lynch hung up his $13 billion mutual fund to do good deeds and have more time with his family. What generation in history has enjoyed such liberty to write the rules as it goes along? Over the past 30 years, all that was orthodox has become negotiable.

Young Americans inherit a revolution that has largely been won. One measure of the success of the women's movement is the ease with which it is taken for granted. Few daughters remember the barriers their mothers faced when applying for scholarships, jobs and loans -- even for a divorce. Today's young adults dismiss old gender stereotypes and limitations. They expect equal opportunities but want more than mere equality. It is their dream that they will be the ones to strike a healthy balance at last between their public and private lives: between the lure of fame and glory, and a love of home and hearth.

If there is a theme among those coming of age today -- and a theme for this issue -- it is that gender differences are often better celebrated than suppressed. Young women do not want to slip unnoticed into a man's world; they want that world to change and benefit from what women bring to it. The changes are spreading. Eager to achieve their goals without sacrificing their natures, women in business are junking the boxy suits and one-of-the-boys manner that always seemed less a style than a disguise. In psychology the old view that autonomy is the hallmark of mental health is being revamped. A sense of "connectedness" to others is now being viewed as a healthy trait rather than a symptom of "dependent personality disorder." In politics women candidates are finding that issues they emphasize may carry more weight than ever with voters tired of the guns-not-butter budgets of the 1980s.

In many ways the 16 million or so women between the ages of 16 and 22 are the generation that social scientists have been waiting for. They were born between 1968 and 1974, a tiny but explosive glimpse of history in which the women's movement took hold. Studies of women's changing expectations have found that during those years the proportion of young women who planned to be housewives plunged from two-thirds to less than a quarter -- an astounding shift in attitude in the flick of an apron. Child rearing became less a preoccupation than an improvisation, housework less an obsession than a chore. Young daughters watched as their mothers learned new roles, while their fathers all too often clung to old ones. They were the first generation to see almost half of all marriages end in divorce.

Disheartened by their mothers' guilt during the '70s and their older sisters' exhaustion hauling baby and briefcase through the career traffic of the '80s, today's young women have their own ideas about redefining the feminine mystique. When asked to sketch their futures, college students say they want good careers, good marriages and two or three kids, and they don't want their children to be raised by strangers. Young people don't want to lie, as their mothers did, when a baby's illness keeps them from work: they expect the boss to understand. Mommy tracks, daddy tracks, dropping out, slowing down, starting over, going private -- all are options entertained by a generation that views its yuppie predecessors with alarm. The next generation of parents may be less likely to argue over who has to leave work early to pick up the kids and more likely to clash over who gets to take parental leave.

Wild optimism is youth's prerogative, but older women shudder slightly at the giddy expectations of today's high school and college students. At times their hope borders on hubris, with its assumption that the secrets that eluded their predecessors will be revealed to them. "In the 1950s women were family oriented," says Sheryl Hatch, 20, a broadcasting major at the American University in Washington. "In the '70s they were career oriented. In the '90s we want balance. I think I can do both."

It is not that older women begrudge the young their hopes; rather they recognize how many choices will still be dictated not by social convention but by economic realities. The earning power of young families fell steadily during the '80s, so that two incomes are a necessity, not a luxury, and a precarious economy promises only more pain. When factories cut back, women are often the first to be laid off. As Washington battles its deficits, cutting away at food, health and child-care programs, it is poor women who will feel the hardest pinch.

These prospects are not all lost on young people: there is plenty of room for realism between their dreams and their fears. A TIME poll of 505 men and women ages 18 to 24 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman found that 4 out of 5 believed it was difficult to juggle work and family, and that too much pressure was placed on women to bear the burdens. But among those with the education to enter the professions, the response often comes in the form of demands. "What's different between these women and my generation," says Leslie Wolfe, 46, executive director of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, "is that they say, 'I don't want to work 70 hours a week, but I want to be vice president, and you have to change.' We kept our mouths shut and followed the rules. They want different rules."

And if the economy cooperates, they may just pull it off, with some help from demographics. This baby-bust generation is about one-third smaller than the baby boomers who came before, which means that employers competing for skilled workers will be drawing from a smaller pool. Today's young people hope that that fact, combined with some corporate consciousness raising about the importance of families, will give them bargaining power for longer vacations, more generous parental leaves and more flexible working conditions.

Employers who listen carefully will hear the shift of priorities. Many college students, while nervous about their economic prospects, are equally wary of the fast lane. "We have a fear of being like the generation before us, which lost itself," says Julia Parsons, 24, a second-year law student at Georgetown University Law Center. "I don't want to find myself at 35 with no family. It's a big fear." Big enough, it seems, to account for a marked shift away from 1980s-style workaholism. The TIME poll found that 51% put having a long and happy marriage and raising well-adjusted children ahead of career success (29%).

The men are often just as eager as women to escape the pressure of traditional roles. "The women's movement has been a positive force," says Scott Mabry, a 22-year-old Kenyon College graduate. "Men have a new appreciation of women as people, more than just sex objects, wives, mothers." TIME's poll found that 86% of young men were looking for a spouse who was ambitious and hardworking; an astonishing 48% expressed an interest in staying home with their children. "I don't mind being the first one to stay home," says Ernesto Fuentes, a high school student in Los Angeles' working-class Echo Park district. "The girl can succeed. It's cool with me."

For their part, many women fully expect to do their share as breadwinners, though not necessarily out of personal choice so much as financial need. "Of course we will work," says Kimberly Heimert, 21, of Germantown, Tenn., a senior at American University. "What are we going to do? Stay at home? When I get married, I expect to contribute 50% of my family's income."

When asked how family life will fit into their ambitious plans, young people wax creative. Many want to be independent contractors, working at home at their own hours. Some talk of "sequencing": rather than interrupting a career to stay home with children, they plan to marry early, have children quickly and think about work later. "I'll get into my career afterward," says Sheri Davis, 21, a senior at the University of Southern California. "I'm not willing to have children and put them in day care. I've baby-sat for years and taken kids to day-care centers. They just hang on my legs and cry. I can't do that." Other women claim to be searching for the perfect equal-opportunity mate. Melissa Zipnick, 26, a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles, saw her own working mom wear herself out "catering" to her father and brother. "I intend to be married to someone who will share all the responsibilities," she vows.

But such demands and expectations are accompanied by a nagging sense of the obstacles. The fear of divorce, for instance, hangs heavily over young men and women. Nearly three-quarters of those in the TIME poll said that having a good marriage today is difficult or very difficult. More than half would not choose a marriage like their parents', and 85% think they are even more likely to see their marriages end in divorce than did their parents' generation. "A lot of ^ my friends' parents are divorced," says Georgetown's Parsons. "In most cases it happened when the mother was trying to decide whether to stay home or go to work. And the women were left so vulnerable." Careers become a form of insurance. "I don't want to depend on anybody," says Kellie Moore, 19, a U.S.C. junior who plans to get a business degree. "I have friends who have already set up their own credit structure because they watched their mothers try to set one up after a divorce."

Given this combination of goals and fears, young women would appear to be disciples of feminism, embracing the movement as a means of sorting out social change. But while the goals are applauded by three-quarters of young people, the feminist label is viewed with disdain and alarm; the name Gloria Steinem is uttered as an epithet. Some young people reject the movement on principle: "The whole women's movement is pushing the career women," says Kathy Smith, 19, a sophomore at Vanderbilt, "and making light of being a homemaker."

Others feel that the battle belonged to a different generation, without realizing that the very existence of a debate about family leave, abortion, flextime and affirmative action is the fruit of an ongoing revolution. Minority women seem to be the group least likely to abandon the feminist label, perhaps because they are most aware of how many critical battles remain to be fought. In fact, argues Stephanie Batiste, 18, a black freshman at Princeton, "minority women are almost a separate women's movement . . . You're very alone. You get a lot less support."

Here, then, is a goal for the women's movement: the education of the next generation of daughters in a better understanding of their inheritance, their opportunities and their obligations. And there are lessons to learn in return. Speaking of the new generation, Leslie Wolfe of the Women Policy Studies Center says, "I think they are more savvy than we were, about sexism, about discrimination, about balancing work and family, about sex." They may be wiser, too, about seizing fresh opportunities without losing sight of tradition. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin once wrote of a woman's dream: "The special heritage of values and priorities that have been traditionally associated with women as wives and mothers can be seen as sources of strength to create an enlarged vision of society." A society so enlarged and strengthened will make more room for everyone's dreams.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington, Elizabeth Taylor/Chicago and James Willwerth/Los Angeles