My grandmother came to the United States from Ireland as a young woman in 1911. She was already married with five children, my mother two years into her future, when women got the right to vote in 1922. She worked her entire life and everything she worked for – her money, her home, her children, even her own body – was owned by her husband.

My mother was born in 1924. The youngest of six living children, she was expected to become a nurse so that she could care for her parents as they aged. Her older sister had taken the Nun option, so her choices were nurse, teacher, or wife. She ran away and married a young man in the Army Air Corps in the middle of World War II, and was promptly disowned by her family for a decade.

She gave birth to three children in the first…