L’dor V’dor: From Generation to Generation

Growing up, the Hebrew phrase and Jewish value “l’dor v’dor”, literally translated as “from generation to generation”, was deeply ingrained in me. It represents our duty to pass down our history, knowledge, and values through generations. I remember my grandmother reading a passage with this phrase on Passover, and referring to it over the years whenever she imparted wisdom on my cousins, sister and me. 

As a mother, the phrase has taken on even deeper meaning. What experiences, learnings, and narratives have I inherited from all the mothers in my family that came before me? How have they influenced my own sense of self and experiences as a mother? What am I passing down to my own children and future generations? 

Lessons from three generations of mothers

This past month I had the privilege of sitting down with the mothers in my family across three generations to connect, pass down our histories and experiences, and reflect on the ways that they have shaped our narratives and choices as mothers. 

Here is what I learned.

We are our mother’s daughters

Our narratives about who we are and who we can be as mothers have been largely influenced by how we perceive our own mothers. For my grandmother this meant staying at home when her kids were little, after watching her own mother work both in and out of the home and feeling like those were impossible shoes to fill. For my mom it meant the opposite - feeling like she couldn’t stack up to her “balaboosta” (highly competent homemaker) mother and (in her own words) deciding to become a lawyer instead. And for me, it meant watching my own mom fight for what she needed from her employers to be able to be present for her children, and feeling empowered to do the same.

We are our own harshest critic

What we are most hard on ourselves about, future generations often admire. As we spoke, the phrase “a tough act to follow” came up time and time again - my grandmother using it to describe her own mother, my mom and I using it to describe my grandmother and other mothers we watched around us who seem to be able to do it all. And with that, came my own realization that while we look to other mothers as having figured it all out, and compare ourselves as never being able to stack up, we are truly our own harshest critics. While my mom spoke about her regrets of not being around as much as she should have been because she was working, I remembered fondly my mom fighting with her law firm to have Fridays off so she could pick us up after school and get ice cream sundaes.

Employers can make a difference

What employers can do to make work sustainable for mothers hasn’t changed as much as we think. My grandmother opened our conversation by channeling her own mother, as a working mother that she looked up to. As we unpacked my great grandmother’s experience, we realized that while at first glance she sounded superhuman, she had actually carved out a career that allowed her to have the flexibility so many of us seek. She worked remotely before remote work was a thing, and created the schedule flexibility she needed by working as a self-employed bookkeeper in the business that she and my great grandfather shared. 

As we went on to the next generation, and heard from my aunts and mother - they shared their own quests for workplace flexibility, finding a culture that was understanding of the realities of working parents, and the importance of representation of mothers in leadership roles within their workplaces. All of these themes are what my cousins, myself, and my Listen to Your Mothers Co-Founders also need.

>> See Listen to Your Mothers’ 2023 Working Mothers Speak report

While the things that we need from employers hasn’t changed over the years, what we’ve gotten from employers has changed and so have societal circumstances - sometimes for the worse, sometimes for better. We were able to collectively acknowledge the wins that have been made over time - increased access to paid leave, expanded options to work remotely, decreased gender pay gaps - and recognize areas where there is still a great deal of work to do - access to affordable childcare, cost of living and pay, universal paid leave expanded to fields historically dominated by women (e.g. teaching).

The push and pull for working moms

Working moms are not a monolith, even if society wants us to be. Our narratives and choices are complicated. One of my cousins has chosen to set aside some of her career aspirations until her daughter is older. Another left her job to make more time for her daughter, but is now feeling bored and ready to enter into a new more ambitious position. My grandmother opened our conversation stating that she didn’t have any career aspirations beyond having kids, but later spoke about the long, fulfilling career she had as an educator which began once her youngest child went to school. 

My aunt and mom both faced a push and pull as they balanced career goals with family, making career sacrifices to have more time with their children, and feeling at times like they weren’t able to spend as much time with their family as they would have liked because of their career. I left my job to work for myself and gain more flexibility, but still grapple with whether I am missing out by interrupting the career trajectory I was on before I had kids. 

>> Check out - The First Working Mothers: Black Women and Forced Labor

All this is to say, any solutions and supports for working mothers need to be designed with the individuals in mind, and with a recognition that wants, needs, hopes, dreams, and life circumstances vary not just person to person, but by specific  moments in time. The key to all of this is in our name, Listen to Your Mothers…they’ll tell you what they need. 

Happy Mother's Day!