It’s no surprise that young adults increasingly support gay marriage and think it’s just fine for two moms to have kids.  Young people grew up with gay friends. They may have a gay stepbrother or a lesbian minister.

But the part that’s bothered me all along in the debate over marriage equality is why older people are assumed to be against same sex unions. When old people were young people they too had gay friends and most likely a gay relative, teacher or neighbor, but they either didn’t know it, refused to accept it or were part of keeping it a secret.

But since then have come decades of changes in societal thinking and real life experiences. It baffles me how you can get to be 60, 70, 80 or whatever age one is considered an old person and not revise some of your thinking, too.   One advantage to living a long life is to have participated in a great span of human history and to evolve with it.

It’s called wisdom, one of the promised perks of old age. And if you’re anywhere near old you’ve experienced some pretty amazing advances in gay equality.  There are now six openly gay and lesbian members in the House of Representatives and the first open homosexual in the U.S. Senate. The wedding pages of the New York Times and other papers routinely include same sex nuptials. Who didn’t weep watching Brokeback Mountain? Who doesn’t love Ellen?

Yet, the gay lifestyle has an image of being flat-out resisted by the older generation.

But look at this. As the Supreme Court took on same sex marriage,  opinion polls reported that approval of gay marriage has increased over the last 10 years in all generations. Including boomers and older.

There are several reasons why opponents switched their thinking, say researchers for the Pew opinion poll. First big reason is personal connection. You have friends or family who are gay and  lesbian, not strangers whose lifestyle you don’t get but people you love and respect.

The second reason people gave for reconsidering their opposition was they became more aware, studied the issue and grew older.

There it is. Pollsters didn’t say which age group attributed their change of heart on getting older, but the hope is that the longer we live the more we learn. The more kinds of people we get to know.  Differences disappear. The heart opens. They become us.

Anyone who is 65 today and defends his prejudice on what the church and Readers Digest told him as a kid gave up on life as a learning process.

As for me,  I prefer to think of my brain still expanding, not shrinking to fit what most people thought in the 1950s in rural Pennsylvania.

Don’t lump me in your stuck generation.

As an older person I know many things can threaten my happy heterosexual home. But it’s not the two fathers living down the street.

And the claim that every child needs a mother and a father? Well, biologically speaking that’s true. But in my experience it seems that what children need once they’re in the world are parents who love them and love each other. Who will keep them safe, make sure they eat their greens, go to their basketball games and teach them to be kind and brave and think for themselves.

To worry about same sex marriage redefining family doesn’t wash either. We long-time straights redefine family when we remarry, become step parents and give the grandchildren four sets of grandparents.

If you have been on this earth a while and have been paying attention, it seems pretty obvious that opposite sex couples are no better at loving and parenting than same sex couples. Or visa-versa.

He comes running at me with open arms and I bend down for a nuzzle, for who would refuse a three-year-old’s embrace? But then I see he is puckering up and is aiming for the lips and I start to panic. This may not be the nicest response from a grandmother for I do love my grandchildren. I love them on the changing table. I love their stinky socks. I love their shoes full of sand they dump on the rug.

I love their messes, but I fear their juices. Especially this time of year when every grandparent knows that even the most adorable of creatures are made of mucous.

That got me to thinking that maybe we need to teach small children to air kiss, to go cheek to cheek, kiss-kiss, like the French and other Europeans, which might limit our exposure to germ central.

Problem is I never can remember if you’re supposed to start on the right or the left when doing the two-cheek peck.  My California friend Caitlin who runs an inn in the Dordogne part of France says she tends to aim left, but finds it often a random and individual decision. She opts to lean forward and tries to sense where the other is heading.   Following the other’s lead, like in ballroom dancing.

She said little French kids adapt the two- cheek kiss early, but she’s not sure if that has any impact on the French flu and cold season.

I grew up in a family which pretty much limited hugs and kisses to a few friends and relatives. But I’m a Californian where everyone is a liberal when it comes to hugging. Our grandkids are natural born huggers and kissers. They get together and trade slurpy kisses, piling on each other like puppies. In fact the 16-month-old kind of kisses like a dog, sticking out his tongue to lick a favorite face.

They are a delight but in winter I must think of them as Sneezy, Wheezy and Drippy.

I was encouraged to read lately that cold and flu experts say the nose is deadlier than the mouth in terms of germ passing. The quantity of virus on the lips and mouth is less than the nasal juices. That actually makes kisses safer than sneezes.

In this department there has been progress. Many adults grew up being told only to “cover your mouth” when hit by a sneeze or cough, which is fine but then you have to do clean-up on your hands.  Today’s kids are trained to go one better. They use their elbow to capture the spray. This is known as the Dracula sneeze, the sleeve sneeze and the elbow sneeze.

This avoids blasting everyone in close range and is hygienically superior to exploding into your hand.  Two of our three grandkids have mastered this, probably because their mother, an elementary school teacher, pretty much spends the cold season reminding all people, small and big, to go for the elbow.

The toddler grandkid is too young for that lesson and still delivers his ka-choos with abandon. But he has good role models and hopefully will soon be sneezing into his sleeve.  We grandparents are also trying to remember to use our elbows. And keeping our hands and mouths to ourselves. With all that, plus hand sanitizer and a flu shot we all may make it to spring and the kissing season.

My daughter sat down in a coffee house, opened up her laptop and said, “Oops, milk on the keyboard.”  No surprise there. With a 10 month old baby, she often pumps while working in her home office.  I smiled and said, “The new working mother.”

She is not exactly like those controversial working mothers who have been so much in the news lately but she understands them. You know, Marissa Mayer, the pregnant and brand new Yahoo exec who said she will work through her maternity leave. And Anne- Marie Slaughter who gave up her state department job to spend more time with her kids and wrote in the Atlantic that working women still can’t have it all.

My daughter Sam, a freelance writer, went back to work within days of giving birth. Her book deadline had been pushed up and she had to get writing. Before I could protest, she said, “I know it’s crazy but please don’t tell me I can’t do this. ”

And she did, scheduling postpartum conference calls with her editor and co-author from her hospital bed and meeting her deadline not three months after delivering a baby boy. But no, she doesn’t go along with the idea that working women should keep pushing right after delivering. In fact she’d advise new mothers to take their three months maternity leave and sit back.

As she says, “the only time working mothers get permission to take time off is during maternity leave.”

I need to add that her husband also thought it a bit ambitious to jump back into the job but she was determined. Too much time off might put her at risk for losing the next project. Now when I ask her when she intends to take a genuine maternity leave, she says, “Soon, maybe 2013.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the one who found it impossible to continue her government job and be at home for her teenage boys, wrote in the Atlantic that younger professional women are right to resent the expectations set by older working mothers. The ones who gave the impression that you could have both super career and super kids.

In the 1970s when I was a new mother I took three months off my reporting job, worried I might be losing career ground, made sure I read the newspaper every day and continued to write  freelance until I went back to the office.

My generation of working mothers felt we had to prove we could do it all – to our bosses, ourselves, society, our own mothers. We didn’t dare relax. Our assignment was to get one high heel in the door and hold it open so others could follow. And we knew if we failed to show we could handle our jobs as well as our kids without complaining we’d mess it up for the next pregnant professional.

Things have improved for working mothers. Better day care. Family sick leave. Some progressive employers offer flexible work hours. More women, like my daughter, work from home and are self employed. That gives them more freedom to juggle their time. But they know the same guilt, exhaustion and worry of every working mama that the baby or the job is getting short shrift.

A nanny has made it work for my daughter. She can write in her home office, take breaks to nurse and pump and check in with her baby who’s in the care of a loving honey-haired Montessori-trained Texan who likes making organic baby food. My generation would have considered a nanny a luxury for rich women. My not-rich daughter set up a nanny budget as soon as she knew was pregnant. It’s a big financial chunk but she says it’s a cost of doing her job.  And staying sane. And being down the hall from her baby.

We both agree with Anne Marie Slaughter that the best thing that could happen for working mamas is to elect a woman president and 50 women senators.  Women with children who know in their tired bones what it really means to put family first.