Girls Having Fun is Complicated

And not a path to a goodlife.

Some boys take a beautiful girl And hide her away from the rest of the world. I wanna be the one to walk in the sun. Oh girls they wanna have fun. Oh, girls just wanna have…

The 1983 song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was the cry of Gen X. The Cindy Lauper tune was bouncy and light and great to dance to. The idea wasn’t original to her. Of course, she merely articulated an idea born with second-wave feminism. And the advent of the birth control pill. There was a freedom in the idea that we [young women] could choose who we might have sex with and when. We didn’t understand, not really, how different this made our generation.

The song wasn’t salacious. And in fact, it wasn’t explicitly sexual. But none of my friends assumed it meant just dancing, and none of us had our virginity intact by the time of legal maturity. One of my friends didn’t finish high school, and the other married the day after graduation with a generously sized wedding dress.

Fun for girls had consequences, even in the age of the pill. Another of my friends had more self-control and made use of that old standard, oral sex. I was the only one who managed to go on the pill, although it was years before the actual fun part materialized. I never had children, something that in my late fifties, I regret.

Indeed, my recollection of being raised as a feminist was the idea that parenting was drudgery. My entire educational structure revolved around the idea that I would be going to college and there was never any discussion of anything else. The idea of being trapped in the house with children was apparently soul-crushing, at least according to entertainment media. I can’t recall a single portrayal of a woman being happy about doing what women are built for: bearing children.

My mother discouraged me from having children by informing me when I was a teenager that if I had any kids, she wasn’t going to be doing any babysitting. I think she regrets my not having children. At 92 she was happy to cuddle her nephew’s baby. But she has no memory of her dismissive attitude. And she never talked about me getting married when I was a teenager.

The problem is that having fun is nice in the short term but doesn’t necessarily lead to a goodlife in the long term. And this is true for men as well. The picture of the happy playboy dissolves under closer examination.

In an essay written in 1974 by George Gilder, titled In Defense of Monogamy, The author cites statistics about single men. Bachelors tend toward lower income, and at least in 1970s, being single correlated more closely with poverty than did race. Single men were also more prone to mental disorders than any other large group of Americans. Single men either never married, or divorced, were much more likely than married men, or even single women, to be depressed. They were more likely to have nervous breakdowns, and sleep disorders, not to mention nightmares

But the biggest problem with single men was [and still is] crime. Men are more aggressive and commit the vast majority of criminal acts. That is true across cultures. Hormones matter. It’s not that men can’t control themselves. But control takes practice, and that requires motivation. It turns out that having a wife and children is an excellent motivation for self-control. Men who have wives are far less likely to be violent and much more likely to be productive citizens who are invested in their communities.

I wanted to have fun. But no one told me, least of all my mother, that the best fun comes from a committed partner. I’m not sure she knew that. Sex wasn’t something anyone talked about, and my father was…. complicated.

I had a whole pile of bad ideas about what would make me happy, and no notion of how to choose a good partner. I finally chose one that ran contrary to what I thought I’d been looking for, and I’ve been married for 22 years.

There’s nothing simple about my marriage, but I definitely have my fun.

Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; four boyz and one cranky gurl. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy, and the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.