The Feminine Mystique

Would you enjoy reading a book whose author denigrated your life choices? Who called you a burden on society because of those choices? Who said you lived in a concentration camp and acted like one interred there?  Who intimated you were not a productive citizen or a contributing member of society?  Who said that your college education was wasted because you were a mere housewife?  Who called you "over-productive" for having several children?  Well, that book would be The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which has been one of THE MOST difficult of our WEM books to read.   I'm a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom so I certainly felt, very often, while reading this book that my choices would not make Ms. Friedan happy (but I guess we are even because her life choices didn't make me too glad either!).  So many times I wanted to put it down this book and never pick it up.  I did not finish it on schedule with my WEM group.  Yet, I have to also admit this has been one of the most fascinating books I've ever read.  

Before I begin, know that this book is the cornerstone of women's studies departments in universities all over the US.  I would go so far as to even say feminists consider it their bible.  I get that.  I get that this book was life-changing and culture-changing when it came out. Mary Kassian has captured this spirit, this alive-and-wellness of Ms. Friedan's book:  "Over the past decade, the ideas of feminism have been popularized and integrated into societal thought.  Consequently, it has become difficult to distinguish feminism as a philosophy from mainstream thought" (p. 12).   The intermingled nature of feminist thought with the mainstream showed up when I recently opened a cookbook and found these words: "The most irksome decisions I faced as an adult and working mother seemed to be made at the grocery store.  Fundamentally trivial, they were nonetheless maddeningly fraught, involving questions of time, quality money, First World guilt, maternal guilt, gender, meaning, and health" (p. 2).  Then Jennifer Reese, the author of this cookbook writes this about her mother canning: " . . . my young mother - a math major, one of three women to graduate from her law school class in 1964 . . . .  When they were in their early forties, my parents divorced.  I never saw my mother can anything ever again" (p. 238).  Betty Friedan would have been so pleased that Jennifer's mother stopped contributing to the feminine mystique but again, she'd be quite unhappy with me since I've taken up canning!

The genesis for this book came about because Ms. Friedan conducted an "intensive questionnaire of [her] college classmates, fifteen years after [their] graduation from Smith" (p. 49).  While doing this research, she discovered a problem that had no name and this book is her effort to define that problem.  Her conclusion is that: women didn't know who they were; the magazine editors contributed to this by writing  articles focused on home management and dumb housewives; the women themselves didn't want to be anything but wives and mothers; Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead didn't help at all; college education for women was too heavy on the home-ec type courses and didn't encourage women to strive for a career; advertisers thought women's sole function was to buy things for the home; and women made a mistaken choice when they felt they had to pick between being a housewife or having a career and thereby giving up on themselves when they gave up on a career.  Her solution for these women was to make a life plan and become educated, to have the government pay for education and child care for women just like was done for the GIs, and for women to work on finding themselves, creating an identity for themselves.

While I think this book has helped women in many ways by "[drawing] attention to crucial problems that exist for women in society" (Kassian, p. 10), I also think it has had a grave unintended consequence: women are now forever locked in mortal combat with each other - stay-at-home mothers vs. working moms. (Can't we all just get along and be Proverbs 31 women??) This book gave women permission to judge others' choices because they choose to work or be at home.  It is amazing how many times that cultural pendulum has swung back and forth between those two choices.  

I must say, I do understand some of the feelings of the women quoted in the book.  Cooking, cleaning, laundry are all very monotonous and repetitious plus, they are just not plain fun.  My Aunt Carol works magic with a stain remover but not I, who is lucky to catch the stain before the dryer!  Training and educating a little man all day is emotionally draining and tiring, not to mention fraught with certain measures of guilt.  I get that too. And sometimes I feel like my intellect is atrophying but then I join a book club, read hard books, and blog.   This is a choice I made with my husband which we feel is in the best interest of our family.  No where is that kind of choice given any credence in this book.  Every job has drudgery, so get over it and get to work.

This is the real struggle I have with this book.  Betty Friedan urges women to leave the home and to choose to do so.  However, if you choose to be at home, you have made the wrong choice because that choice isn't going to have a positive impact on society.  Excuse me?  Raising well-adjusted, intelligent, educated children doesn't have a positive impact on society?  Only by working outside the home  can women accomplish what Ms. Friedan wants them to, which is really to just stop being a housewife.

Now, I think if this book had been written today, it might have been labeled hack journalism.  While she does have endnotes, so many times her sources are unnamed, vague and frankly, sometimes I wonder if they even exist.  She uses statistics from a single county in New Jersey to try to prove that housewives were committing suicide in disproportional numbers (p. 417).  She disparages Freud but then has no problems using him to prove her point later on.  And let's face it, this entire book rests on the answers of a questionnaire sent out to women like Betty Friedan - women who were in a social and economic position to go to college, roughly 200 respondents.  That is a pretty small statistical sample on which to base a revolution, especially in 1957.  In the epilogue, she relates a personal example of a college professor discouraging her from getting a Ph.D.  That's a pretty convenient and handy anecdote.  I hesitate to go so far as to call it made up, but it sure begs that question.

I would like to suggest you read Heidi's assessment of this book, here and here. Heidi's dread at writing this review was mine own!  She's a member of our WEM book club and is incredibly thoughtful and insightful, presenting some very different observations.

All that said, I would highly recommend you read this book.  I cannot guarantee you will agree with everything but I sure can promise it will make you think and give you a certain measure of enlightenment and understanding!