The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan - Part 2

The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 97

  April 7, 2017 

Book 31 - The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan (1997)
 Part 2 - pages 33-79
Reading Time - 1.5 hours

Sooo... the feminist movement got off to a good start in the early 1900s, all the way through the 1930s. Women went out and got careers and things were going good. But then... in the 1940s, something happened, women started retreating back to the housewife role. In the media and elsewhere, housewives were portrayed as fluffy, passive, feminine and gaily content. Editors didn't write "challenging" content for housewives because it would be beyond them. The true role of women was portrayed as being housewife and mother. Was it a backlash against the horribleness of war? That men and women wanted the comfort and security of family? Of a nice home with a flock of happy kids? The thing was... the role of women became so narrow... that it ended up being a mindless housewife. Women were encouraged to take on the role of the "noble" housewife. And if that wasn't found to be satisfying... then it was the issue of the woman. Despite the fact that in being a housewife, and focusing on her role as wife and mother, women were turning their backs on their minds.

Somewhere along the line, women and girls decided that home and hearth was where fulfillment lay and they were hell-bent on finding a husband and having as many kids as early as possible.

But... it wasn't everything that it cracked up to be. Friedan notes that in the 1950s there was a crisis in the identity of women. "Who am I?" was a question that haunted housewives across America. There was a certain safety and security in defaulting to housewife, mother and wife. Girls and women didn't have to face the terror that comes with the freedom to decide one's own life. The thing was... the issue didn't go away. It just came up again when women turned 40, when the kids were out of the house, and there was no possibility of birthing more.

Friedan notes that "our culture does not permit women to accept and gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role". Boys and men face an identity crisis as they grow up... why not women? Because if that urge to grow is not fulfilled... but is repressed, it leads to some serious issues.