The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan - Part 5

The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 100

  April 10, 2017 

Book 31 - The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan (1997)
 Part 5 - pages 150-181
Reading Time - 1 hour

Part of the responsibility for the rush back to the home has to be laid squarely at the feet of educators. They took the theories of Freud and Mead and ran with them. High schools and colleges started educating women to be wives and mothers. College, instead of being a place to get educated, became the place to find a husband. Women didn't want to graduate with a diploma but rather with a diamond ring on their finger.

Men went to college for the intellect while women went to college to fulfill their sexual role. They ended up looking for their identity in their husband rather than themselves. You just know that this is not going to end well though! The thing was... it wasn't smart for a girl to be smart. God help you, your husband might feel threatened by your superior intellect. So women ended up arresting their intellectual growth. They didn't want to stand out as the Brainy Smurfs, so they conformed. Better to shy away from the growing pains of identity... better to just stop growing. Sooo... this image of infantile women became kind of a vicious cycle... if women are seen as being infantile... and then they drop out of college... they essentially become even more infantile... what a self-perpetuating sell-job... does make me wonder what sort of kids were raised by such women.