I am a young professor of sociology teaching classes on gender, marriage and social change -- and I have never read Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique." Like many women of my generation, I thought I had. I must have, I told myself. Perhaps in college? No. And it turns out that very few of my well-educated, feminist-leaning friends have either.
When I bring up "The Feminine Mystique" (1963) in passing in lectures, I ask my students if they've heard of that phrase, or have heard a reference to "the problem that has no name." The majority of them raise their hands, but few can tell me what the book was about. They certainly haven't read it. With professorial authority, I tell them that "The Feminine Mystique" was a battle cry for housewives everywhere that they could put down their dishrags and demand equality. But since reading "A Strange Stirring," Stephanie Coontz's excellent new social history of the impact of Betty Friendan's landmark book on American women, I'm not quite sure.
I associate Betty Friedan with metaphorically lighting the match that burned all those bras in the 1960s and 1970s, yet Coontz demonstrates that Friedan was pretty conservative by today's standards. She didn't tell women to divorce their husbands. Nowhere in "The Feminine Mystique" does she say women should pursue careers. And she certainly wasn't anti-marriage.
At core, writes Coontz, "Friedan asked us to imagine a world where men and women can both find meaningful, socially useful work and also participate in the essential activities of love and caregiving for children, partners, parents, friends and neighbors." That is neither a radical concept nor one we have achieved in the nearly 50 years since.
Coontz is the rare social historian who knows how to weave meticulous research into a compelling narrative of our not-too-distant past. As the author of several myth-busting books about marriage and family, Coontz does more than simply tell a story of "The Feminine Mystique": She guides readers from the era of "Mad Men" straight through to the present to show us that while things have changed, Betty Friedan's message of equality is still a long way off.
The study of gender is not just about the study of women. It's about the study of men and masculinity, too. Yes, in my classes on the sociology of gender we spend time talking about pink-collar jobs, discrimination against working mothers and the media's sexualization of young girls. But we also talk about attitudes of misandry that permeate popular sitcoms and the restrictive, macho "tough guise" that often prevents men from expressing emotions or pursuing interests not deemed acceptable by current norms of manliness.
"A Strange Stirring" details Betty Friedan's belief that men weren't the enemy -- rather, they must be partners with women in gender equality. Coontz notes that one of the reasons that "The Feminine Mystique" seems dated today is that we live in an era where women are raised to believe that they can be or do just about anything -- a fact that would make Friedan proud. Yet men who don't conform to the manliness codes -- say, a man who wants to be a primary caregiver or a boy who isn't interested in fighting -- are likely to be labeled as "sissy" or "gay." And that, Coontz writes, is a "masculine mystique" that would make Friedan cringe.
"A Strange Stirring" will be a staple of many college reading lists. But it's not an academic book. It's a compelling read for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of our modern ideas about gender. I can see it being devoured by book clubs of women in their 50s and 60s who want to understand their mothers anew. Perhaps the audience in greatest need of this book are women like me; those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it. As women in their 20s and 30s take on the role of wife and mother, we must remember that the quest for gender equality isn't just a women's issue. Those of us who want husbands who will share the joys and burdens of caregiving must fight against restrictive ideas of masculinity and femininity that hold both genders back.
It's unlikely that many of us will rush to our local libraries to check out "The Feminine Mystique." That's fine. "A Strange Stirring" is, in many ways, better than the original. Today the problem has been named, and "A Strange Stirring" offers poignant personal reactions, accessible history and present-day comparisons to give voice to the modern quest for gender equality.
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My doctoral research explored the increasing popularity of the self-help industry and the rise of popular psychology and my current project picks up this thread: I am exploring the benefits of character- and virtue-based self-improvement literature, and asking whether young adults can learn from the best of advice of previous generations. Part of this study includes examinations of self-control, character and morality, affluence and the intersections between religion and psychology. These are issues I raise in the Sociology of Everyday Life and Social Change courses I teach at Pitt.
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Self-help industry around two centuries old with biggest recent boost in new age/me generation (70's when everyone in Marin County was a therapist) outpourings of materialist-spiritual(ha-ha oh yeh kind) individualism focusing upon raising self-esteem by making something of ourselves.
So, does your research offer any evaluation of books published since the seventies? After all how can you study effects on thew young. Unless you are looking for transformational short sharp shock changes which must be very dodgy to measure given the variability in behavior over longer term.
A second and third question. Do you use the words ''mindful'' and ''mindfulness'' more than ten times a day? Are you encountering these terms more and more? I am trying to increase my frequency of usage so others will think more highly of me. Cheers.
Most meaningful dialogue on women's rights died with ERA,
I have a friend who regularly uses the term "femi-nazi" and has no idea that it is offensive...or why.
The 80's gave us "super women", who were determined to "have it all", then ended up burned out and discouraged. Young women were constantly warned about being "selfish" in the same culture that spawned yuppie consumerism to the nth degree.
Men who are threatened by the notion of equality remind me of the people who were opposed to desegregation of the schools. As long as one gender is expected to handle the scut work, there never WILL be equality.
If you skipped Friedan, I'm assuming you also took a pass on Shulamith Firestone...a real pity. The Dialectic Of Sex went deeper into analyzing gender,customs and roles than Friedan did...but it was still an important work. Young women today didn't have to fight for birth control. They don't remember when a woman needed the signature of a male relative to obtain a credit card, a car loan, or a mortgage. They seem not to notice that employers forget that woman are raising families too...and still pay men on a different scale.
Good luck with your teaching...
http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm
In fact, they need to own it, understand, and express it, for it to mean much.When kids are young, we have girls and boys. When they get older, the boys want to be known as men---and to call them boys is considered demeaning, and disrespectful. But if a young woman asked to be called a "woman", she is dismissed as a femi-nazi. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how that works.
Good luck to you, and the young women in your life.
It is quite possible for men and women to both find meaningful, socially useful work and also participate in the essential activities of love and caregiving.
See-Silent Celebration The Generation that Transformed America.
Many boomers think they did things when they really watched other people do them on TV. For example a lot of boomers think our generation sent American to the moon, yet the engineers and scientists who actually did it were overwhelmingly in their 30s-50s which means they were born in the period of WW1->Great Depression.