(I wrote this book review one year ago for another blog)
I have just finished reading the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. This book was written in 1962 and has been referred to as the book that “pulled the trigger on history”.
Today there is a war raging- the so-called “mommy wars” between working and SAHMs (stay-at-home mothers). However, many women who have chosen a career in precedence to family are now finding that the choice they made hasn’t necessarily fulfilled them. Why did they think that it would fulfill them in the first place? This was the question I hoped to answer by reading this book. I wanted to see where today’s views of womanhood and motherhood had come from. Why was it that, in the early 60’s and 70’s, so many women left the sphere of the home, leaving their children to be raised by others?
Ms. Friedan made the basic assumption from her “research” that American housewives were not happy in the late 50’s. Even though today we may look back at the 50’s as a time where the nuclear family was thriving and happy, she tries to prove that the picture of that time was deceiving. In her view, women weren’t actually happy at home – it was all a façade. In fact, they were “tired”, “unfulfilled” and “desperate”. She called it “the problem with no name” for millions of American housewives. Her book became enormously popular as women all across America read it and identified with this “problem”. Why was it that “Occupation: Housewife” was not fulfilling these women?
Well, Friedan gives us the answer – at least the one that made the most sense to her at the time. It was because these women weren’t contributing something meaningful to society. They weren’t growing to their full potential as human beings. They were instead, trying to find happiness by living through their children and husband.
After many chapters of depicting housewives as sorry, pathetic, depressed creatures who are manipulated very wrongly by society (i.e. men), she gets to the crux of the matter: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—Self Actualization. She stipulates that as human beings, we have moved beyond the point where all of our time need be focused on the basic needs of food, clothing and s*x. We are free to move on to the “higher” levels of being.
She saw the American housewife as stuck in the endless cycle of trying to fulfill those basic needs. These women are doing the tasks that could be done by the “feeble-minded” and in so doing, were staying on the bottom rung of life. She believed that women were trapped in a “comfortable concentration camp” (her very words). In addition to not being a meaningful part of society, she believed that these housewives were actually contributing to all sorts of problems with children in the society. She makes outrageous claims about autism, homos*xuality, and childhood delinquency – linking these problems to the fact that too much motherly love (smothering) causes such problems in children.
Her solution to the problem of unhappy housewives? Educate yourself. By doing so, you free yourself to become a useful member of society. All of those unhappy feelings will magically go away. All of the desperation, depression and anger will subside as soon as you begin to contribute to the world around you.
How many women have bought into this line of thinking since this book was first published?
It was quite interesting to read The Feminine Mystique right on the heels of another book Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes by Mary Eberstadt (2004). In HAA, Eberstadt goes through several problems with today’s children – obesity, deficit disorders, violence, early s*xuality, etc – and tries to show how these problems stem from mothers being absent from the home.
These books are similar in that they both try to make mothers feel like they are unfulfilled in some respect. Friedan tries to convince women that if only they work and be part of society will they be fulfilled. Eberstadt tries to convince women that if only they stay home and raise the family they have, will they be fulfilled by taking good care of their children.
I offer that both women are wrong.
It’s amazing that through the decades since the 1920’s, women have been on this pendulum of “finding fulfillment”. Today we are seeing more career women who are finding that they are not really fulfilled with being the CEO of a company or making great advancements in education. They have left those positions, hoping to find more fulfillment at home. But once they go home, what if they don’t find the fulfillment there, either? What is a woman to do?
The search for happiness and fulfillment is a universal feeling. (Ironically, Friedan says that someone can “feel” happy, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean that person is fulfilled. Huh?) Friedan thought she had found the end to this search in her own life and wanted to lead other women to this path of self-actualization. The women who bought into her book thought they, too, could finally answer the question of happiness. Today we are seeing the result of women leaving the home in ways that I’m not sure that Friedan could anticipate.
My question is: How does one truly find happiness and fulfillment?
Is it found in the serving and building up of one’s self or of others?
Is it found by simply changing from one sphere (the home) to another (the workplace) or vice versa?
We were amazed that we found someone willing to watch not only our 3 children, but also to take care of the chickens, turkeys, baby chicks, dog, cat and milk the goats! My parents did a great job of taking care of everything so that I did not have to worry at all (barely). 
