This past week you might have noticed something different around here.

In addition to a guest post from Andrea Doucet (author of Do Men Mother? and a forthcoming book tentatively titled The Bread and Roses Project: Breadwinning Moms and the New ‘Problem with No Name’) about whether dads are facing discrimination on the playgrounds and a well-earned celebratory announcement from Veronica Arreola (go SCIENCE GRRL!), a number of regular GWP writers devoted our monthly columns to various aspects of historian Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s.  Coontz’s book is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book.  A forum about book about a book?  Sounds rather…discursive.  So why did we do it?

As “crossover” scholar type peeps, we think the way conversations about feminism play out in public, in this case the cultural conversation about a second-wave feminist text, are important to track.  As a generation, we’re indebted to Betty Friedan for her classic.  And we’re  indebted to Stephanie Coontz for reviving a conversation about the journey this book helped launch–not only for women at the dawn of the 1960s, but for those of us striving for egalitarian marriages and humane workplaces and raising our children here in 2011.

Here’s a recap:

To kick it off, Virgina Rutter (NICE WORK) asked two dear friends, one born in 1935, the other born in 1940, to tell her their experiences around the publication of Friedan’s TFM in 1963. The kicker: they’re both men.

Fueled by Coontz’s analysis, we cleared up some myths about TFM and encouraged readers to Test Your Feminine Mystique Cliche Quotient. In a Review of ‘Stirring’ Reviews, we offered a reading of the initial reviews of Coontz’s book appearing in in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, Salon, Ms., Bitch, and feministing.

Natalie Wilson (POP GOES FEMINISM) asked whether “Housewives” today are just as “Desperate” as in the era documented by Friedan and offers up pop-culture infused Thoughts on Coontz’s A Strange Stirring.

Finally, Deborah Siegel (MAMA W/PEN) waxed intergenerational and mused on How the Choices of Our Generation Are Shaped By the Last. (Your comments on that one are giving me–it’s Deborah here–tons of food for thought…!)

We hope you find the discussion of interest.  We’d love your feedback.  And if you’d like to see more of this kind of group forum, or would like to propose one yourself for the future, please do let us know!