A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (30 page)

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WRITE A BOOK COVERING SUCH AN IMPORTANT ERA IN the history of women and families without relying heavily on the work of many other researchers. I list the most important books and articles in my bibliography, but I owe a special thank-you to Daniel Horowitz, whose work on Betty Friedan’s political and intellectual history is a must-read, and who also offered me advice in personal conversations and commented on an early draft of Chapter 8. I also want to acknowledge the hundreds of other researchers, both professionals and amateurs, who have worked since the 1960s to uncover women’s long-hidden history, and the tremendous contributions of women’s studies departments, teachers, and centers around the nation—many of them inspired directly by Friedan’s ideas.

My biggest debt is to the 188 women and men who responded to my surveys about
The Feminine Mystique
and then, in many cases, shared details of their lives with me in extended follow-up interviews. I also thank the scores of students who over the years have taken oral histories of their own families and neighbors as part of their work with me. I am particularly grateful to the students in my 2006 program, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” who read and participated in many lengthy seminar discussions of
The Feminine Mystique
and also interviewed older family members about whether they had read the book when it was first published. I hope they will recognize the many ways their comments and questions in class enriched my thinking.

I am very grateful to Ellen Shea and the librarians at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, for helping me navigate the Betty Friedan Papers. Thanks also to Nancy Cott for facilitating my research visit there, as well as for her inspiring and voluminous work on the history of women and family life.
Tara C. Craig, the reference services supervisor at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University’s Butler Library (and also an Evergreen alum), helped me locate the relevant parts of the W. W. Norton Collection for my research into the publishing history of
The Feminine Mystique
. Lorraine Glennon and Diane Salvatore, then at the
Ladies’ Home Journal
, took time from their busy schedules to discuss the history of that magazine with me, and Jill Jerabek, Lorraine’s research assistant, tracked down an enormous number of hard-to-find back issues for me.

Portions of Chapter 9 first appeared in my article “Sharing the Load” in a joint report of the Center for American Progress and the Maria Shriver Foundation: Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary, eds.,
The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything
(Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2009). Thanks to the Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver for giving me permission to use these.

I would like to thank Ruth Rosen both for the wonderful historical work she has done on the history of American women and for her advice and encouragement on this project. Although we had never met in person, she responded warmly and at length to my questions. Elizabeth Long’s intelligent observations and questions about the publishing history of
The Feminine Mystique
first stimulated me to do the research on that topic. Betsey Stevenson, Justin Wolfers, and Heather Boushey provided invaluable information about contemporary trends in marriage, divorce, and women’s work patterns. I stand in awe of their research skills and appreciate their willingness to answer my sometimes naive questions about data.

The library staff at The Evergreen State College has always gone way beyond that extra mile for me. Reference librarians Paul McMillan, Liza Rognas, Sarah Pedersen, Randy Stilson, Sara Huntington, Jules Unsel, and Jenny DeHaas, and government documents librarian Carlos Diaz, were always there to help. Equally vital to my work have been the patience and kindness of the circulation staff: Mindy Muzatko, Jason Mock, Joel Wippich, and Jean Fenske. Thanks also to my successive research assistants, Alex Bertolucci and Valerie Adrian, for tracking down sources and
hard-to-find magazine articles. I am grateful to the deans and provost at The Evergreen State College, who allowed me extra leaves of absence, despite the inconvenience to their curriculum scheduling, when this book took much longer than I’d originally estimated. I would also like to thank my program secretaries at TESC, Sherri Willoughby, Marcia Zitzelman, and Sheila Sawyer.

My colleagues at the Council on Contemporary Families have been extremely helpful with their time and resources. I especially thank Paula England for suggesting sources, providing data, and allowing me to pester her with questions and ideas. Virginia Rutter was unfailingly generous with ideas, sources, and encouragement, as were Barbara Risman, Mignon Moore, Steven Mintz, and Joshua Coleman. The briefing papers and press releases on the council’s Web site,
www.contemporaryfamilies.org
, are an excellent source for new research on trends in gender relations and family life. Andrew Cherlin, Arloc Sherman, Suzanne Bianchi, and John Schmitt were also especially gracious in providing references and answering queries.

JoAnn Miller of Basic Books first suggested I take on this project, and although there were times in the early stages of research and writing when I regretted saying yes, I am now immensely grateful for the learning opportunities she opened up for me. Lara Heimert shepherded the book through its actual writing, making astute suggestions for changes but gracefully allowing me to make my own mistakes when I got bullheaded about some of my passages. Thank you, Lara. Finally my agent, Susan Rabiner, is one of the most incisive and insightful critics I could ever have hoped for, and a supportive friend as well.

Lastly, I thank my husband, Will Reissner, who helped me sift through 1960s newspaper ads and magazines, tracked down sources, edited every chapter, and made my work easier and my life happier in so many other ways.

FOR THE QUOTATIONS FROM
THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
IN THIS BOOK, I RELIED on the 2001 Norton edition, which includes an eloquent introduction with personal testimony about the book’s impact by Anna Quindlen (New York: Norton, 2001). The single most important biography of Friedan and her work is Daniel Horowitz,
Betty Friedan and the Making of
The Feminine Mystique (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).

Other sources on Friedan and
The Feminine Mystique
include: Judith Adler Hennessee,
Betty Friedan: Her Life
(New York: Random House, 1999); Jannan Sherman, ed.,
Interviews with Betty Friedan
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002); Rachel Bowlby, “‘The Problem with No Name’: Rereading Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique
,”
Feminist Review
27 (September 1987): 61-75; Sandra Dijkstra, “Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan: The Politics of Omission,”
Feminist Studies
6 (Summer 1980): 290-303; Susan Oliver,
Betty Friedan: The Personal Is Political
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2008); Betty Friedan,
“It Changed My Life”: Writings on the Women’s Movement
(1976; New York: Dell Publishing, 1991); Justine Blau,
Betty Friedan: Feminist
(New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990).

On the impact and reception of Friedan’s book, see Elizabeth Long, “Mobilizing Texts: A Consideration of
Silent Spring
and
The Feminine Mystique
,” keynote address, “Beyond the Book” Conference, Birmingham, UK, September 1, 2007, and Patricia Bradley,
Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003). For a comparison of
The Feminine Mystique
and modern self-help books, see Wendy Simonds,
Women and Self-Help Culture
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992). For an analysis of the hostile responses Friedan received from readers of
McCall’s
, see Jessica
Weiss, “‘Fraud of Femininity’: Domesticity, Selflessness, and Individualism in Responses to Betty Friedan,” in
Liberty and Justice for All?: Rethinking Politics in Cold War America 1945-1965
, ed. Kathleen G. Donohue (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, forthcoming).

On how the mass media has misread the central tenets of
The Feminine Mystique
, see Kathryn Cady, “Labor and Women’s Liberation: Popular Readings of
The Feminine Mystique
,” in
Women’s Studies in Communication
32 (2009): 348-379. For an article celebrating Friedan’s contributions after her death, see Marlene Sanders and Lorraine Dusky, “Betty Friedan Woke Women from Mystique of Sleep,”
Women’s E-News
, February 7, 2006,
www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2628
, retrieved March 15, 2008. For conservative assessments of Friedan, see: Kate O’Beirne,
Women Who Made the World Worse
(New York: Sentinel, 2006); Betty Steele,
The Feminist Takeover: Patriarchy to Matriarchy in Two Decades
(Gaithersburg, MD: Human Life International, 1987), p. 3; Jane Crain, “The Feminine Mistake,”
Chronicles
, March 1990, p. 36; Christina Hoff Sommers, “Reconsiderations: Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique,’”
New York Sun
, September 17, 2008.

The most important primary sources I use in this book come from the 188 interviews I did with women and men who read
The Feminine Mystique
shortly after its publication, the oral histories my students and I have taken over the years, and the letters and personal papers in the Friedan archives in the Schlesinger Library. All references to letters received by Friedan and written by her, unless otherwise noted, come from the Betty Friedan Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. Information about the book’s publishing history came from the W. W. Norton and Co. Inc. papers; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; and from back issues of
Publishers Weekly
.

Aside from the 1959 classic study of the women’s suffrage struggle, Gerda Lerner,
Century of Struggle
(1959; Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), most of the sources for my historical discussion of women are drawn from the rich and extensive literature on women’s history and gender issues that has blossomed since the mid-1960s,
much of it written by women who were inspired by Friedan. Among the many useful overviews of U.S. women’s and family history are: Nancy Cott and Elizabeth Pleck, eds.,
A Heritage of Her Own
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979); Nancy Cott, ed.,
No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); S. Jay Kleinberg, Eileen Boris, and Vicki Ruiz, eds.,
The Practice of U.S. Women’s History
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007); Nancy Woloch,
Women and the American Experience
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984); John Modell,
Into One’s Own
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Claudia Goldin,
Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Jordan Stanger-Ross, Christina Collins, and Mark Stern, “Falling Far from the Tree: Transitions to Adulthood and the Social History of Twentieth-Century America,”
Social Science History
29 (2005): 625-648; Francesca Cancian,
Love in America: Gender and Self-Development
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Glenna Matthews,
“Just a Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Mary Ryan,
Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). More references are available in the endnotes of three of my own works:
The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families
(London: Verso, 1988);
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
(New York: Basic Books, 1992); and
Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage
(New York: Viking Press, 2005).

For the history of women from the suffrage struggle though World War II, see Nancy Cott,
The Grounding of Modern Feminism
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Lois Banner,
Women in Modern America
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974); Susan Ware,
Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s
(Boston: Twayne, 1982); Glen Elder,
Children of the Great Depression
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Susan Hartmann,
The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s
(Boston: Twayne, 1982); Karen Anderson,
Wartime
Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981).

Jessie Bernard,
American Family Behavior
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), was a useful source into the sociological thinking of the early 1940s, while William Graebner’s
The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s
(Boston: Twayne, 1990), provided excellent background on the cultural changes that occurred during and after the war. For a little-known feminist polemic from the 1940s, a book that Friedan knew but never cited, see Elizabeth Hawes,
Why Women Cry, or Wenches with Wrenches
(Cornwall, NY: Reynal & Hitch-cock, 1943).

The literature on postwar culture and gender roles is immense. For a fascinating year-by-year study of a family whose history and dynamics illustrate many of the wartime and postwar trends described in this book, see Donald Katz’s five-decade saga of the Gordon Family,
Home Fires
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992). The now-classic critique of Friedan’s characterization of the postwar era as uniformly quiescent is found in Joanne Meyerowitz, ed.,
Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). See also Kate Weigand,
Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), and the many sources I cite below on the history of labor-union women.