It's all a matter of self-definition. My mother defined herself as mother and housewife. And I defined myself as professional. The first question my mother would ask after being introduced to a friend of mine was, "Is she married?" In all fairness she would ask this of men as well as women. The person could be an important politician or a dedicated social worker, but she saw them through the prism of family. In contrast, I would try to discover, "What does he or she do?" (I wouldn'tusually ask this outright. I knew that reducing a person to profession is as dehumanizing as reducing them to race or nationality.