3 generations of women in one family show how choices on motherhood have changed

"I don't really feel like I got strong messages about what my life should look like beyond college graduation,"

"I was very much under the impression that the world was kind of my oyster."

"I think it was just accepted at that time that girls were going to grow up and be mothers. I mean, careers were not even discussed, so I don't think I ever thought anything except that I would be a mother,"

"But as we got a little older, particularly into my teens, we began being told that we could have it all - and that we should expect to have it all."

American women today are having fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers did, with the U.S. birthrate about half of what it was in the 1960s. Younger women face more educational and career opportunities and broader life choices, and many express uncertainty about whether to have children. Older women commonly followed a traditional model in which motherhood was expected and careers were rarely discussed. The middle generation experienced shifting messages that promised women could have careers and families and should expect to "have it all," creating mixed expectations across generations.

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