I just wanted to post a comment from the perspective of a practicing traditional Catholic.

The fact that Anita is going to confession would not have seemed unusual for the time. Monthly confession is recommended and weekly confession is not out of the question - all the more so in 1962. Catholics of today don’t go to confession nearly as often - but then there would have been lines at the confessionals every week.

Anita confessing her sisters sins is a common thing. Every guide to confession you read says not to do it - and every priest I know says that it’s common. I know I have done it myself.

I think in addition to the ‘why is it that I am good but everyone loves my sister theme’ there is something else. The fact that this shows that Peggy is envied everywhere she goes. At work because she made it out of the secretarial pool, and at home because she is escaping the path of a ‘good’ girl (marriage and caring for parents and children).

Anita said out loud what Joan never would - ‘Why does this little nothing of a girl get everything when I have been working here for years and get nothing.’

A word about confession. Fr. Gill breaking the seal of confession was shocking to me. Seriously shocking. I don’t think that a priest in 1962 would have driven her alone in his car… but I KNOW he would not have broken the seal of confession in that way. Someone earlier wrote they thought the Church had changed it’s stance on the seal of confession - that is NOT true. A Catholic priest can not reveal the contents of confession (or even if someone went to confession) under any circumstances.

As a Catholic I find the portrayal of Catholicism in 1962 to be fascinating. Some details have been perfect (Can you say *real* grace now Father) and some have been wrong (Mass is not the repetition of the same prayer in Latin again and again). The time period and the inclusion of a Catholic character leaves lots of openings for story arcs with the transitions in the Church in the 60s.

Now Mary had chosen to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn and Peggy has chosen to leave her child with her sister and pursue a glamorous life in Manhattan, so I realize that the parallels end at some point. But I do wonder how the Father Gil story is going to progress and whether, if he ends up on the receiving end of Anita’s complaints, or if he simply gets more information, if he might feel like Mary/Peggy really did make the right choice.

About Peggy–I really don’t think anybody born after 1950, maybe even anybody born during the official “baby boom” can understand how crappy her situation was. Competent young women of legal age routinely got overruled in favor of parents or married older siblings. You weren’t really considered a competent adult until you were married and even then you were subordinate to your husband.

I believe her confidentiality (by our standards) in the hospital was violated–some nurse called her family and said your sister/daughter is here and she just had a baby come deal with it–and then the family rushed in and the doctors decided they were the ones with decision making authority since obviously showing up in the ER in labor is a sign you may not be playing with a full deck.

So she’s screwed–that baby would have been surrendered for an adoption except for her family. So she is angry at her family and angry at herself and trapped and if she were a little braver she should move to San Francisco or LA and start over. I wonder if that’s what will happen with her.

I don’t for one minute think that we are setting up a teenage alcoholic storyline. I think, as Glass said upthread (comment 36), we are perhaps allowing for one at some time in the future, but as has been pretty much covered in this discussion, it could go either way.

I think Weiner was showing us two things. (Probably more, but I’m going with two.) One is, the cavalier attitude towards alcohol. Children didn’t drink because they were children, but they were not kept away from alcohol, because alcohol was not considered a bad thing. As rampant as drinking still is today (and probably always will be), it is held in a different light. Sally pouring drinks and being able to sneak drinks is just one more example of how different it was then, like drinking in the office or everyfreakingwhere and anyfreakingtime.

The other is that this is another example of how unprotected the kids are, and in particular, how little attention Don pays to them. The way he walked past Sally as the Creative department paraded into his office was frankly chilling. He seems to be bonding more with Bobby, and I hope that’s not a direction that they’re taking this (Don not being as loving a father to Sally as he is to Bobby) because I just don’t want to see that, even in the hands of these writers. But it was Bobby that he went to last season, Bobby he woke up and said Ask me anything.

But it doesn’t say anything about what a control group of non-alcoholics would say about mixing drinks as kids, if the percentage is higher or lower. I don’t have an answer for that.

This Monday was bad; next week will be worse. I have been promised.

Deb — great post (#22). You’re right: there is nothing pathological about not wanting a child. Or about changing your mind, once you have one. The beauty of my role in the lives of my stepkids is that it has gotten to expand as their mom’s role has changed. We all change as we get older. We might get more interested in some things (like work), and less interested in others.

Sometimes, a woman’s interest in being a constant presence in the daily lives of her children does change. This has been a huge benefit for me.

If we women can see each other as people who continue to grow and change, long after we have children — see each other without judgment, I guess I’m saying — I think our existence together will be a lot easier. For us and our kids.

As for growing up around things like alcohol use: I think I can speak a little to that. I was a kid with a lot of adult responsibilities, and I remember bringing my dad a beer shandy (beer + lemonade), one day in the backyard. I might have been — what, eight? Nine?

I overdid it with the beer. There was a lot more of that than lemonade, because my siblings (I have a lot of them) had pretty much polished it off. So I filled the glass with mostly beer, thinking, Heck, it’s Dad: he won’t mind.

The drink wasn’t to his taste. I could see it on his face with the first sip. But he’s a nice guy, so he didn’t tell me. “Fine,” he said. “It’s fine.”

Now, I have maybe two drinks a week (three to four if I’m on vacation). I grew up in the Seventies, surrounded by drinking adults. And obviously, I was a little worker, and I knew how to make cocktails. Kids still had to be neither seen nor heard in my era — but we had to be useful, for sure.

So, will Sally Draper grow up to be an alcoholic? I side with Don on this one. Nobody knows why anyone does anything. Least of all me.

I think it’s time for Joss to make the boy the gay one. Not Andrew heavily implied gay, but out and about gay.

Anyhow, with Sally, they can either pick up the drinking thread or let it go. At the end of the series, if Sally is never a heavy drinker, nobody will see this as an unfulfilled plot line, because it didn’t have that much weight. If they do pick it up then the viewer will see it as having been foreshadowing.