Peggy on Mad Men and the Choices of Women Today

Have you seen the show Mad Men on AMC?  It’s about an ad agency in the 1960s and has just received 16 Emmy nominations.  One of my favorite story lines on Mad Men is about the junior copywriter Peggy.  (The actress that plays Peggy is shown above, along with a poster from the show.)

Peggy has me thinking a lot about working women.  The character had a child out of wedlock from a guy in the office where she works, and when she went into the hospital to have the child she didn’t even realize she was pregnant.  (A bit of denial there.)

She’s kept her baby, but it is clearly being raised by her sister.  The child might even grow up to think the sister is his actual mother.  Since I was born in the mid 60s and was given up for adoption, this storyline has really made an impact on me. 

The character of Peggy wants nothing to do with her baby and seems lacking in any motherly instincts when she is forced to hold him.  She’s all about her career as a junior copywriter.  Peggy is making huge strides in the world for working women, and perhaps because of her “career focus” she doesn’t even want to think about children.

But I’m reminded by Mad Men just how many choices women really did have once upon a time.  It isn’t just the character of Peggy that is making a choice of career versus kids, it’s every woman on the show. 

I mentioned in an earlier post that it really bugged me when people called me a “career woman” just because I hadn’t gotten married until later in life.  You’d be suprised how many people made that assumption about me.  Whenever someone found out I wasn’t married they’d say, “Ah… a career girl.”  As if I had given up the choice to have children because I had “a career.”

I can see how far we’ve come with respect to young women.  No one asks a girl leaving high school if she’s going to be a mom OR go to work.  But what about women who are older?  Is it just assumed that when a woman is older she’s made the choice NOT to have children?