A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (31 page)

Other sources on postwar America that I found especially useful for this book include: Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1988); Lizabeth Cohen,
A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
(New York: Knopf, 2003); William Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff, eds.,
A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Michael Gambone,
The Greatest Generation Comes Home
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005); Shelley Nickles, “More Is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar America,”
American Quarterly
54 (2002): 582-622; Daniel Horowitz,
The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer
Culture, 1939-1979
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004); Andrea Tone,
The Age of Anxiety
(New York: Basic Books, 2009). I received Rebecca Jo Plant’s
Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), too late to fully incorporate it into my account, but her perceptive analysis of anti-maternalist thought in the United States is worth seeking out.

For the views and influence of psychoanalysis in the postwar era and on into the 1960s, see Mari Jo Buhle,
Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Ellen Herman,
The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Kyle Cuordileone,
Manhood and Political Culture in the Cold War
(New York: Routledge, 2005); Lisa Appignanesi,
Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors
(New York: Norton, 2008); Carol Warren,
Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Richard Levinson, “Sexism in Medicine,”
American Journal of Nursing
76 (1976): 426-431; Herbert Modlin, “Psychodynamics and Paranoid States in Women,” cited in Robert Roth and Judith Lerner, “Sex-Based Discrimination in the Mental Institutionalization of Women,”
California Law Review
62 (1974): 789-815.

Primary sources for this section of the book include Philip Wylie,
Generation of Vipers
(New York: Rinehard, 1955); Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farnham,
Modern Woman: The Lost Sex
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947); Edward Strecker,
Their Mother’s Sons: The Psychiatrist Examines an American Problem
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1946); and Margaret Mead,
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World
(New York: William Morrow, 1949), along with the many popular magazines I cite.

Kristin Celello discusses the advice that twentieth-century “marriage experts,” most of them influenced by psychoanalysis, offered husbands and wives, in
Making Marriage Work
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Rebecca Davis reveals how psychoanalysts reinforced the feminine mystique during and after World War II, but also
how in the late 1960s and 1970s, the clients of marital counselors challenged therapists’ assumptions, gradually forcing them to recognize problems such as domestic violence, in
More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

For more insight into the 1950s in particular, see: Jessica Weiss,
To Have and to Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom and Social Change
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Sherry Ortner,
New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ’58
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Ralph LaRossa, “The Culture of Fatherhood in the Fifties,”
Journal of Family History
29 (2004): 47-70; James Gilbert,
Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); David Kushner,
Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in a Legendary Suburb
(New York: Walker and Co., 2008); Ira Katznelson,
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
(New York: Norton, 2005); Peter Biskind,
Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000); Brett Harvey,
The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Wini Breines,
Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties
(Boston: Beacon, 1992); Lary May,
Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Ann Fessler,
The Girls Who Went Away
(New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Brandon French,
On the Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties
(New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1978); Abigail Stewart, “The Women’s Movement and Women’s Lives,” in
Exploring Identity and Gender
, ed. Amelia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); Andrea Tone,
The Age of Anxiety
(New York: Basic Books, 2009). Many of these works discuss McCarthyism, but see also Elizabeth Pontikes, Giacomo Negro, and Hayagreeva Rao, “Stained Red: A Study of Stigma by Association to Blacklisted Artists During the ‘Red Scare’ in Hollywood, 1945-1960,”
American Sociological Review
75 (2010): 456-478.

An interesting sample of primary sources, illustrating the complexity and contradictions of that decade, would include: Mirra Komarovsky,
Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemmas
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953); Rona Jaffe,
The Best of Everything
(1958; New York: Penguin, 2005); Lena Levine
, The Modern Book of Marriage
(New York: Bartholomew House, 1957); John Keats,
The Crack in the Picture Window
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956); Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein,
Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956); Vance Packard,
The Hidden Persuaders
(New York: D. McKay Co., 1957); Eve Merriam, “Are Housewives Necessary?”
The Nation
, January 31, 1959.

I also read extensively in the
Ladies’ Home Journal
,
Redbook
,
McCall’s
,
Ebony
,
Life
, the
Saturday Evening Post
,
Reader’s Digest
, and
Good Housekeeping
. When I quote specific issues I give the date in the text. The Gallup poll article that opens Chapter 2 is George Gallup and Evan Hill, “The American Woman: Her Attitudes on Family, Sex, Religion and Society,”
Saturday Evening Post
, December 22, 1962. My quotations from Adlai Stevenson come from the reprint of his commencement address, “A Purpose for Modern Women,”
Women’s Home Companion
, September 1955.

A good guide to the women’s magazines of the era can be found in Nancy Walker, ed.,
Women’s Magazines, 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998). See also Kathleen L. Endres and Therese L. Lueck,
Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995). The readership figures for women’s magazines come from Politz Research,
Main Report: 1964 Politz Magazine Study; the Audiences of Eleven Magazines, Advertising Page Exposure of Five Magazines
(New York: Alfred Politz Media Studies, 1965).

Many of the polls I cite can be found in George Gallup,
The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971
(New York: Random House, 1972), and Joseph Veroff, Elizabeth Douvan, and Richard Kulka,
The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976
(New York: Basic Books, 1981).

On the social and legal climate of the 1960s, see Margaret Mead and Frances Kaplan, eds.,
American Women: The Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women
(1963; New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1965); Nancy MacLean,
The American Women’s Movement, 1945- 2000: A Brief History with Documents
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009); Elizabeth Pleck,
Domestic Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Linda Gordon,
Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Susan Douglas,
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
(New York: Times Books, 1994); Leo Kanowitz,
Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969); Lynne Olson,
Freedom’s Daughters
(New York: Scribner’s, 2001); Joan Hoff-Wilson,
Law, Gender and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women
(New York: New York University Press, 1991); Nancy Polikoff,
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law
(Boston: Beacon, 2008); Lis Wiehl
, The 51% Minority
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2007); Victor Brooks,
Boomers: The Cold War Generation Grows Up
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009); Lorraine Dusky,
Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth About Women and Justice in America
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1996); Jack Demarest and Jeanette Garner, “The Representation of Women’s Roles in Women’s Magazines over the Past 30 Years,”
Journal of Psychology
126 (1992): 357- 369; Jennifer Scanlon,
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). The Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Herstory Web site has good information on discrimination against women in the 1960s:
www.cwluherstory.com
. See also
http://feminist.org/research/chronicles
.

Primary sources from the 1960s that illustrate the continued prevalence of what are sometimes thought of as “1950s” ideas about gender include: Edna Rostow, “The Best of Both Worlds: Feminism and Femininity,”
Yale Review
, March 1962; Editorial, “Some Gentle Observations About Women,”
Saturday Evening Post
, March 17, 1962; Helen Andelin,
Fascinating Womanhood
(New York: Bantam, 1965); Helen Gurley Brown,
Sex and the Single Girl
(New York: Random House, 1962). My discussion of the Ridgely Hunt case in Chapter 2 is based on “The Masculine Mystique,”
Chicago Tribune
, July 28, 1963, and Nancy Hunt,
Mirror Image: The Odyssey of a Male-to-Female Transsexual
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978). Due to a misleading set of dates on the copyright page of Eve Merriam,
After Nora Slammed the Door: American Women in the 1960s
(Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1964), this feminist book is often said to have preceded
The Feminine Mystique
. Merriam’s book did not appear until a year after Friedan’s, although it drew on three of Merriam’s previously published articles, of which Friedan was probably aware.

For a lively and wonderfully informative account of how much has changed since the 1960s, see Gail Collins,
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
(New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2009).

My discussion of women’s educational trends and experiences was informed by: Linda Eisenmann,
Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-1965
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Mabel Newcomer,
A Century of Higher Education for American Women
(New York: Harper, 1959); U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau,
Trends in Educational Attainment of Women
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1969); Jessie Bernard,
Academic Women
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964); William Chafe, “The Challenge of Sex Equality,” in
The Challenge of Change: Perspectives on Family, Work and Education
, eds. Matina Horner, Carol Nadelson, and Malkah Notman (New York: Plenum Press, 1983); James Davis,
Great Aspirations: The Graduate School Plans of American College Seniors
(Chicago: Aldine, 1961); Eli Ginzberg and Associates,
Educated American Women: Life Styles and Self-Portraits
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1966); Mabel Newcomer,
A Century of Higher Education for Women
(New York: Harper, 1959); Barbara Solomon,
In the Company of Educated Women
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Marion Cuthbert,
Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate
(1942; New York: Garland, 1987); Jeanne Noble,
The Negro Woman’s College Education
(New York: Teachers College, Columbia
University, 1956); Mirra Komarovsky,
Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemmas
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953); Abigail Stewart and Joseph Healy Jr., “Linking Individual Development and Social Changes,”
American Psychologist
44 (1989): 30-42; Kathleen Hulbert and Diane Schuster,
Women’s Lives Through Time: Educated American Women of the Twentieth Century
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993); Ravenna Helson, “The Mills Classes of 1958 and 1960,” in Hulbert and Schuster,
Women’s Lives Through Time
;
Trends in the Educational Attainment of Women
, U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, January 1965; and Lynn Peril,
College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now
(New York: Norton, 2006). The figures on the educational attainment of parents of entering freshmen came from Alexander Astin, et al.,
The American Freshman: Thirty-Five-Year Trends, 1966-2001
(Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, 2002).

Scores of wonderful books have been written on the origins and history of the “second wave” of the women’s movement. If you have to choose just one, you can’t go wrong with Ruth Rosen,
The World Split Open
(New York: Penguin Books, 2000). But I found many others useful for this book: Toni Carabillo,
Feminist Chronicles, 1953-1993
(Los Angeles: Women’s Graphic, 1993); Rachel Blau DuPlessos and Ann Snitow, eds.,
The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998); Sara Evans,
Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America
(New York: Free Press, 1989); Jo Freeman,
The Politics of Women’s Liberation
(New York: David McKay, 1975); Estelle Freedman,
No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2002); Judith Hole and Ellen Levine,
Rebirth of Feminism
(New York: Quadrangle, 1971); Robert Jackson,
Destined for Equality: The Inevitable Rise of Women’s Status
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Cynthia Harrison,
On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women’s Issues, 1945-1968
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Georgia Duerst-Lahti, “The Government’s Role in Building the Women’s Movement,”
Political Science Quarterly
104 (1989): 249-268;
Sara Evans,
Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
(New York: Knopf, 1979); Pauli Murray,
Song in a Weary Throat
(New York: Harper & Row, 1987); Gael Graham,
Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006); Flora Davis,
Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America Since 1960
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); Marcia Cohen,
The Sisterhood: The True Story of the Women Who Changed the World
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Gerda Lerner, “Midwestern Leaders of the Modern Women’s Movement: An Oral History Project,”
Wisconsin Academy Review
41 (1994): 11-15; Susan Hartmann,
From Margin to Mainstream: American Women and Politics Since 1960
(New York: Knopf, 1989); Blanche Linden Ward and Carol Green,
American Women in the 1960s: Changing the Future
(New York: Twayne, 1993); Barbara Ryan,
Feminism and the Women’s Movement
(New York: Routledge, 1992); Sheila Tobias,
Faces of Feminism: An Activist’s Reflections on the Women’s Movement
(Boulder, CO: West-view, 1997); Lisa Baldez and Celeste Montoya Kirk, “Gendered Opportunities: The Formation of Women’s Movements in the United States and Chile,” in
The U.S. Women’s Movement in Global Perspective
, ed. Lee Ann Banaszak (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution
(New York: Dell, 1999); Mary King,
Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement
(New York: William Morrow, 1987); Sara Evans, “Sons, Daughters, and Patriarchy: Gender and the 1968 Generation,”
American Historical Review
(April 2009): 332-347; Anne Costain,
Inviting Women’s Rebellion: A Political Process Interpretation of the Women’s Movement
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Leila Rupp,
Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Beth Bailey,
Sex in the Heartland
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin,
America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Judith Lorber, “Beyond Gender: The Feminine Mystique,”
Signs
26 (2000): 328; Linda Kerber, Alice
Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds.,
U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Dorothy Shawhan and Martha Swain,
Lucy Somerville Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist from the South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2006); Judith Ezekiel,
Feminism in the Heartland
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002); Beth Bailey,
Sex in the Heartland
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Linda Gordon,
The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).