Petronella Wyatt (she has the great full name of Petronella "Petsy" Aspasia Wyatt) is an English journalist and author. She is the daughter of a Labour MP, but has been most associated with the Conservative Party.
Two years ago she wrote an article in the genre of feminist regret (Daily Mail, "I'm single, childless and alone. Feminism has failed me and my generation.", 20 May 2024).
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| Petronella Wyatt |
She begins by noting that she is not alone in her predicament of being in her mid-50s, childless and alone:
Every Monday I meet with a group of female friends in a London restaurant. We sit at a table near the window and discuss our lives.
We have many things in common. We are all in our mid-50s and highly educated career women. But there is a vacuum in our lives. We are all single and childless.
She does not do the easy thing of blaming men. Instead, she looks back at how she was formed as a child along feminist lines:
I increasingly feel, as do many of my intimates, that feminism has failed our generation. I grew up with its beliefs. No, strike that. I was force-fed them.
By the age of 13, Christmas presents from my Women's Lib aunt were books by Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir, considered the mother of modern feminism. (My aunt was one of those militants who had famously disrupted the 1970 Miss World contest).
Interestingly, when she was fifteen Margaret Thatcher visited her home and spoke to her personally:
The gist of her address would have been greeted with hosannas by every feminist of the age: in summation, a woman's career superseded by far her relations with the opposite sex.
At my private school, St Paul's, we children of Thatcher were similarly educated out of marriage and femininity.
One of my unmarried school friends recalls: 'My teachers made me feel as if marriage was shameful. My English mistress once teased me for looking at a bridal magazine, but then she was an arch feminist who demonised men.'
But now, in her 50s, the lack of marriage is experienced as something hurtful:
One of the chief causes of unhappiness is the feeling that one is unloved, whereas companionship and the feeling of being loved promotes happiness more than anything else.
One in ten British women in their 50s has never married and lives alone, which is neither pleasant nor healthy.
My friend Sally, a lovely 55-year-old with eyes the colour of Eau de Nil, once said to me: 'I constantly feel unwanted as a woman because feminism taught us that the traditional female was a stereotype invented by men to keep us down. Accordingly, I was anti-men to the point of driving them away. Now, I'm paying for this.'
Petronella Wyatt links being alone as a woman to poor mental health:
According to a recent study by an American medical institute, loneliness is the leading cause of depression among middle-aged females. I should know, as I recently fell prey to the unforgiving maw of mental illness.
Many of my single friends suffer from depression, springing from a solitary existence that would be eschewed by a race of alley cats.
She observes, as well, that for a woman self-confidence is connected to receiving love from a man:
Far from empowering us, feminism has made us insecure. 'My career has stalled, I've never married and I feel worthless as a person,' observes my pretty 53-year-old friend Rachel.
General self-confidence comes more than anything else from being accustomed to receiving love, particularly from the opposite sex. The woman with a husband and children accepts their affection as a law of nature, but it is of great importance to her mental health and success.
She ends with a plea for women not to be locked into a set of expectations that denies them the chance to form family relationships:
The feminism I was spoon-fed in my youth made the error of telling members of my sex to behave and think like men. This error was a grave one, and women like me are paying for it, like gamblers in a casino that has been fixed.
It's time for a cultural reset. It may be too late for me and my friends, but feminism should not be allowed to ruin the lives of future generations as well.
