Though I do have some problems with some choices my mother has made that has directly affected the rest of the family, I have a lot of admiration for her and her parents. Her mother was born in the early part of the 20th century, and was an Ojibwe woman who had survived missionization and Haskall. (Both very abusive environments.) She pursued training beyond high school and worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was a secretary to people like Joe Albertson. She was an intelligent, very capable woman. My grandfather was an accountant, and he too was very good at his job.

My mother was premature and, as a result of receiving too much oxygen upon birth, is blind. She is also Ojibwe. The only school that would accept her as a child was the local Catholic school. My mother was Salutatorian of her graduating class, missing out on being Valedictorian by something like a thousandth of a point. She went on to pursue a degree in speech pathology. She received her Master's in the 1970's and her doctorate in 1984. She always worked as a speech therapist, and was good at her job. Really good -- because of her handicap she could hear problems with her students' speech that was often missed by those who were using their sight to diagnose.

My mother always worked. My dad stayed home with me for the first few years while he worked on his doctorate. He was also better equipped to take care of the household chores. He always did his own laundry, did a lot of the cooking, most of the grocery shopping and much of the cleaning until his job got busy (when I was five) and he hired someone to do the cleaning once a week.

When I was growing up there was never any doubt from my family that I could do whatever I wanted to do -- have a career, have a family, or not. It was up to me -- my future was wide open.

I also have a lot of admiration for my dad's parents. Grandpa was primarily a farmer in small town Idaho. He, too, was born in the early part of the century, and there was never any doubt for his children that they, too, could do whatever they wanted to do. All of his daughters went to college to pursue whatever interested them, and my grandparents helped them the best they could. There was never any assumption that they'd just get married and have babies and get a man to take care of them.

My grandfather always helped my grandma around the house, especially after retirement. It was his job to dry the dishes. He was often ridiculed by other men, but he didn't care. She was more suited to performing the tasks like cooking, but he wasn't above making me a peanut butter sandwich if I stopped by and she wasn't there.

When Rice and I decided to have a family we wanted one of us to stay home and rear the kids. We decided it would be best if I were to do this -- computer scientists will always make more than anthropologists and my abilities and personality is more suited to rearing kids and cooking and so on than his is. I have always known that if I wanted to go out and get a job that I could. Unlike some husband's I know, Rice isn't going to make me stay home and take care of the house. (As if he could if I had such a notion. But if he were that sort we wouldn't be married.)

Rice is better at some things than I am and I'm better at some things than he is. And it's not because he's male and I'm female -- it's because people have different talents and are better suited to different tasks. He's a coding wizard and I can take a bunch of stuff lying around and make a meal. Now, it's true that he's physically stronger than I am and I can bear children, and of course that is related to our sex. But all of this together just makes us a better team and more capable than if we were separate.