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49 Mommies and Daddies Carol Hall I was thrilled when I got the call. It was a call from my agent. I was brand-new to the experience of having a theatrical agent, not to mention one who made phone calls to me, so this was already good. I was a young mother of two children, in my early thirties, recently separated from my husband as well as recently moved from Boston, the town I’d been a “married lady” in, to New York. I’d left New York City five years earlier, and it still held all my hopes of becoming a songwriter. I’d come there with a clear-eyed dream of writing music and lyrics, and I’d had some encouraging modest success. A young singer by the name of Barbra Streisand had recorded a song of mine, a lullaby called “Jenny Rebecca,” on her second album, My Name is Barbra. Her recording my song was probably the reason I was able to get the agent’s attention . And now he was calling me, and it was about work. Apparently, television star Marlo Thomas had conceived of a new project. She felt passionately about gathering together a group of writers who would create a new kind of album of songs and stories for children, the likes of which had never been done before. It was to be called Free to Be . . . You and Me. It was the 1970s, and the rumble of feminism was being heard loud and clear across the land. Ms. magazine had burst onto the scene.The phrase “nonsexist child rearing” was a major issue on the feminist agenda. Marlo’s album would break down gender-specific stereotypes and clichés of what defined girls’ and boys’ behavior. A girl could be an astronaut. A boy could sew. The agent said they wanted a song about all the different kinds of jobs that mothers and fathers could have, and they were calling me. The song needed to reflect the idea that there was no work that was “man’s work” or “woman’s work.” Work was work. Oh, and by the way, said the agent, this was not to be a polemic. It was for kids, and therefore it had to be funny and bright and clever and joyous and above all entertaining. Could I write this? I was thrilled. Ever since I’d had my two children, Susannah and 50 Carol Hall Daniel, then eight and six years old, I’d thought constantly about my choice of profession and what it meant to give one’s entire life over to being a writer.“Writer” could seem a vague sort of word for something one hoped to support her family by doing. Whoever heard of a woman being a songwriter anyway? I had known of a few women who wrote lyrics, but they almost always wrote in partnership with men. And I had seldom heard of a woman who wrote music. I found the whole idea of a song in which parents do a variety of jobs deeply interesting, and I couldn’t wait to begin. I was calling it “Parents Are People.” It would be easy. I could just start with myself, start with “writer.” But since writing could be a job for either of the parents, which one of those two to choose to give it to? Suddenly an odd moment from the past burned into my memory, a thought I hadn’t remembered in years. When I was about sixteen and in high school, I had been talking to my boyfriend one night about plans for the future. I had suddenly found the courage to confess all my songwriting dreams and secret ambitions and hopes to him. I would go to New York, I had told him. I would write music and lyrics, maybe hear the songs recorded by brilliantly talented people, perhaps see them being sung in the movies or even in a Broadway show. When I finished sharing my triumphant fantasy, what did the boyfriend have to offer in return? He had said, “That’s okay.You can write at home all day and still be there to cook dinner when your kids get in from school.” Hmmm. I imagined Richard Rodgers in the kitchen making sandwiches. I decided to give the job of “writer” to the verse about daddies. “Rancher” was the next profession that I thought of, mostly because I have a cousin who was the only...

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