The Feminine Mystique
I have always found Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique troublesome. I could never put my finger on why exactly. Of course, I am writing from a privileged position. No one has questioned my desire not to be a housewife or have children. No one has told me that I can’t go to graduate school based upon my gender. The world has changed a lot since 1963 when the book appeared.
Christina Hoff Summers reconsiders this groundbreaking text:
But in building her case, Friedan made a fatal mistake that undermined her book’s appeal at the time and permanently weakened the movement it helped create. She not only attacked a postwar culture that aggressively consigned women to the domestic sphere, but she attacked the sphere itself — along with all the women who chose to live there.
Perhaps, what my issue with the text is that some women did choose to live in the private sphere of that time. However, how many other choices did women have?
Whatever the issue may be, The Feminine Mystique’s influence is still felt over sixty years later.
I’ve felt the same, too. I didn’t actually read the book in its entirety until this past summer, but I’ve had the same concern. And I think that this attack on the domestic sphere - or at least what many have perceived as an attack, including myself - has caused rifts among women. My mom, for example, was the first woman in her family to attend college (in the late 1960s/early 1970s). Her mom stayed at home, and my mom went on to get a master’s, teach at community college for a few years, and then decided to stay at home. I like that women now have that choice, and I think today it’s much more acceptable to make the stay-at-home option, but I think that the tension regarding stay-at-home vs. working mom has been problematic for women in our country.
Sorry, my short rant/commentary for the day.
Have you read “Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminist Mystique” (book authored by…Horowitz, I think?). Really fascinating.
Comment by tanya — September 23, 2008 @ 8:11 am
I haven’t read that book…it sounds interesting.
Comment by Ms. Rose — September 23, 2008 @ 11:57 pm