Hillary Clinton, left, and Madeleine Albright, both former secretaries of state, in Concord, N.H., on Saturday. (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

Two recent comments by famous feminists have underscored the inevitable and predicted the foregone: The feminist era of Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright has come to a close.

Each heroic in her own way, these three icons of second-wave feminism have reached a pinnacle of sorts, along with the bittersweet recognition that they are sorely out of touch with today’s younger women. The world they knew and helped change has produced a new generation no longer as concerned with the issues that animated their mothers and grandmothers.

So it goes.

Adding possible injury to insult, liberal millennial women are tilting toward Bernie Sanders rather than she who would be the first female president of the United States. What are they thinking?

Albright and Steinem, speaking on different days in different environments, offered comments that are by now familiar: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” said Albright, who was the first female U.S. secretary of state.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem is taking heat for telling Bill Maher that young women who support Bernie Sanders are doing so because "the boys are with Bernie." Here's her entire answer to Maher's question. (HBO)

And, “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie,” said Steinem, co-founder of Ms. magazine and iconic leader of the ’60s feminist movement.

Much bestirring followed on social media. The gist of critics: How dare Steinem insinuate that young women are just chasing boys? And, how dare Albright curse young women for failing to support Clinton!

They have a point.

But they’re missing the bigger point that had these older women not cut a path for others to enter and expect to be treated fairly in the workplace and elsewhere, these same young women would, indeed, be following the boys in hopes of inserting an “r” between the “M” and the “s” in their titles, as their predecessors had to.

But then, this is the irony, isn’t it? For Steinem of all people to suggest that girls just wanna have fun with boys, though not untrue, is rich coming from a woman who has lived a life based on quite the opposite premise. It was she, after all, who said, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Come on, it’s funny. And it is certainly true to women of a certain age.

Albright’s comment, meanwhile, is a well-known and, perhaps, worn-out trope of the former secretary’s. Now 78, she might have imagined that her audience — at a Clinton rally — would have been familiar with it and responded with laughter, as had so often been the case.

Rather than cursing younger versions of herself, she was offering a gift in the spirit of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, “I’ll be back,” or Ronald Reagan saying, “Win one for the Gipper.”

1 of 46 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Clinton on the campaign trail View Photos Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton campaigns in key states in her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president. Caption The former secretary of state, senator and first lady is the Democratic nominee for president. July 31, 2016 Hillary Clinton is seen aboard the campaign bus in Cleveland on the third day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

Asking whether some of the young women who prefer Sanders to Clinton are also interested in boys, a not-dishonorable distraction, was probably a weak stab at humor, for which Steinem, 81, has apologized. Also, she was talking to Bill Maher on his show, hardly the forum for solemn pronouncements.

The more likely explanation, however, is that young liberal women, like their male counterparts, are attracted to the cool old guy because he’s promising a dream in which the rich have less and the poor have more. Robin Hood is so awesome.

And socialism has always appealed to the young, the cure for which isn’t age but responsibility. This usually comes in the form of taxes and children, both of which involve working and sacrificing for the benefit of others, the extent of which forms the axis upon which all politics turns. That Sanders never outgrew his own socialist-rebellious tendencies — We’re going to have a revolution! — is vaguely interesting, but not his best recommendation for commander in chief, among other presidential roles.

Clinton, ever the adult in the room, may be doomed by her own sober momliness. To whom do children run when Mom is no fun? She isn’t helped by the two elder women in the room.

What is obvious, if bittersweet, is that Steinem and Albright, and possibly Clinton by association, have passed the baton, if without realizing it. Through their temerity and hard work, they’ve created a world in which their original purposes have become obsolete through acceptance.

Millennial women and those afterward have never known a world in which they were not treated to daily doses of go-girl power. They’ve never known a time when abortion wasn’t an option. They really can have it all, including the choice to not vote for a woman just because she’s a woman, because, after all, this would be sexist.

And no one would want that.

Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.