The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan - Part 6

The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 101

  April 11, 2017 

Book 31 - The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan (1997)
 Part 6 - pages 182-205
Reading Time - 1 hour

Right... so here's the thing... no one would willing take on this feminine mystique thing if it was sold on a store shelf unless it fulfilled some need. Clearly women weren't being forced to return to the home... they were doing it willingly... but why? After the war, there was a pent-up hunger for marriage, home and children... both on the part of returning soldiers and women. But while other countries had the Baby Boom... they didn't end up with the same feminine mystique.

In the US though, it was like the nation fell into a sleep and stopped growing up. Maybe it was easier to think about love and sex than to face the threat of Communism and the Bomb. There was also though, an inwardness that put American women under a Freudian microscope. Because the American soldiers had, by and large, been identified as being rather immature. Their moms were blamed.... because they hadn't raised their boys right. Because, of course, immature moms raise immature children. There you go... it was career moms who were to blame for immature boy soldiers. Except... the moms who raised the soldiers were not career moms... they were stay at home moms. They were women who had devoted too much to their children. But there's that same thing again... "don't confuse me with facts when my mind is made up".

Studies have shown that educated women have a greater chance of sexual fulfillment. Working mothers are generally more mature and raise more mature kids. Maternal over-protection, where the mom lives through her kids and for her kids, is not a good thing... not good at all. Housewives ended up smothering their sons and daughters which led to a lack of independence and individuality.

Which makes sense... if kids are never given the freedom to go out and stumble in life... what kind of adults are they going to grow into. Makes me wonder about the kids today who are shuttled around from ballet to soccer to play dates and never get to go out into the world and catch a frog or run through the forest unhindered... What kind of kids are we raising today?