According to the survey:

• 63% have an adult child living with them now, and most expect them to stay for more than a year
• Only 41% of these women report having returned to live at home as adults themselves
• 27% have grandchildren living under the same roof
• 13% have parents or in-laws living with them as well
• 70% blame the economy as the reason for this outcome.

How do these midlife mothers feel? Well, many are feeling stressed. 39% report that the experience has either strained or worsened their relationship with the adult child living with them. They also continue to make personal sacrifices: 71% report that living in a multi-generational household makes it harder for them to achieve their personal goals.

… when the Convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths … This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities. ….

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom… ”

We invite you to join our global community of women as we come together to engage the most important questions of our time. Participation Is Free. There is no cost to participate in this live, interactive event. Thanks to our generous sponsors and to all the visionary women who have volunteered their time and wisdom, we are able to offer this event for free to the public.

All you need is a telephone or a computer to participate. You can listen live on the phone, online or download the recording to your computer or audio player. We want to make the teleseminars as interactive as possible, so there will be an opportunity to ask questions engage in dialogue with each of the presenters.”

In the first show, Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, talks about taking orders from a younger boss. Her basic advice is: “deal with it”. Learn the language of the boss’ generation, dress cooler, listen to current music and, most important, stay up with technology – and don’t tell your boss how you did it in the old days. A roundtable segment on marriage touches on diverse topics, from professional boomer women who don’t necessarily need a man to support or define them, the new rules of marriage, how the first 37 years are the hardest, and how conflict can lead to a healthier relationship than compromise.

For more depth on what and who are behind the scenes, you can also become a fan on facebook.

On the other side of the mountain she finds a whole new lightness of being, her body quiet, softer, dryer; lighter, as a leaf gets lighter before it falls. Though the far side of menopause feels like a desert on first encounter, she finds it teems with a stark, real, beautiful, and different kind of life. A life of a spirit that drops ever more deeply into her body with lightness and grace.

Her message in Elderwoman is twofold: aging doesn’t have to be dreaded. It’s an adventure where there are few maps. She also believes that elderwomen have an important role to play in inspiring others to live more lightly and co-operatively on the earth, not through guilt, but through a sense of freedom, joy and deepening sensuous delight.

Pictured is Arlene Blum, UC Berkeley chemist, whose research helped remove Tris, a toxic fire-retardant, from children’s sleepwear. She recently won a victory that kept 1.7 billion pounds of chemicals out of electronic equipment made worldwide, and is now pressing California regulators to reduce toxic fire-retardant chemicals in furniture and children’s products in that state. Her Green Science Policy Institute is a new model for engaging industry, scientists, governments and nonprofits to bring unbiased data to facilitate more informed decision-making about chemicals used in consumer products and support healthy communities.

I love awards like this. I feel a desperate need for a new legacy to leave to our children – of new values of purposefulness and giving back to community, as well as a new model of the possibility, leadership and change that arrives in adulthood . Being rewarded for encore careers is a positive story of age and aging – one that gives all of us something to celebrate.

Kudos! Happy a Happy 4th!