This is the fifth and final in a series this week from Girlw/Pen writers on Stephanie Coontz‘s new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, which is a biography of Betty Friedan’s iconic book.
I’m obsessed, you could say, with second-wave feminism’s legacy. Questions like “How has feminism’s past shaped its future?” and “Why are battles begun 40 years ago so damn difficult, still, to win?” keep me up at night. So when I first heard that Stephanie Coontz—a pre-eminent social historian, and one tremendously adept at translating feminist research for popular audiences via the New York Times op-ed page no less—was writing a cultural history of The Feminine Mystique, I nearly peed in my pants.
Foremost on my mind was the question I hoped would be addressed: “What’s the relevance of The Feminine Mystique—book and concept—today?” Coontz’s book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, did not let me down. But I’m finding that in the wake of finishing it, I’m more than a little depressed.
As ever, the personal is political. And vise versa. I can’t help but read this social history through personal history—my own. Last week, after a year and a half of equally shared parenting with both of us working part-time from home, my paid hours were cut back and my husband Marco, who got an unexpected offer, went back to a full-time, on-site job. Overnight, I became Primary Parent, Emergency Contact, and Master Coordinator for our beloved 15-month old twins. I wrote—bitterly, I now confess—about the first day of the new arrangement at my other blog. The source of my knee-jerk bitterness? Though still a working woman, I feared being swallowed by the feminine mystique. Is this feminism unfinished, or undone?
The feminine mystique. I’m here to report that its ghost is alive and kicking in the psyches of a generation whose mothers knocked down doors so that we could walk through them. I won’t go so far as to say we’re haunted the way children of Holocaust survivors are (Betty Friedan wrote about the home as a “comfortable concentration camp”–she also, of course, and as Coontz expertly rehearses, wrote SO much more), but let’s just say that the term “feminine mystique” conjures up a vortex that women like me—highly educated, high-earning potential—dread.
Granted, to cut back momentarily (and temporarily) on paid work is not exactly the same as embracing the feminine mystique, but mentally it’s a slippery slope. I think back to Charlotte from Sex and the City at the very moment she quits her job at the art gallery to stay home: “I choose my choice! I choose my choice!” she doth protest–too much. That first shakey day at home, I spewed the opposite: “I didn’t sign up for this.”
After whining to my mother and counting my many blessings–battling the feminine mystique mirage in my head is a luxury compared to the real and punishing demons many single women with kids, for instance, face–I came to my senses and realized that not much in my life had changed from the one day to this next. Except that it had. Because I had this revelation: it only took one day as Primary Parent for me to realize how tenuous the so-called battle lines between “Stay-at-Homes” and “Working Moms” really are. At one point or another, we are each other. And the reason for our resentment-filled (and highly media-fueled, let’s face it) fighting, apparently, is that we are largely unsatisfied ourselves.
As Coontz notes in the final chapter (“Women, Men, Marriage, and Work Today: Is the Feminine Mystique Dead?”), a chapter in which I found myself underlining every other word, wives who work paid jobs and those who don’t say they’d like to switch roles (according to a study conducted 10 years ago that is). “In 2000 25% of the wives who worked full-time said they would prefer to be homemakers. On the other hand, 40 percent of all wives without paying jobs said they would rather be employed.” Those who work wish they could be working less—and that applies to men as well as women.
Why are so many men and women with families unhappy with their lot?
Because the job of feminism is far from done. Blinded, now, by the workforce ideal that “defines the ideal employee—male or female—as having no familial or caregiving obligations that compete with work” (some call it, as Coontz points out, the “career mystique”), our culture replaced one mystique with the next. And no one, so far, has had the power to take this new mystique down.
The moment for Career Mystique warriors has come. They are out there already, rattling our collective cage. Conversations at places like Role/Reboot and Daddy Dialectic and The Council on Contemporary Families and work+life fit and Viva la Feminista and Pundit Mom and The Motherlode lead us in the charge. And in the meantime, books like The Feminine Mystique remain relevant—all the more so—because their missions remain incomplete.
*Title inspired by the last line of Lisa Belkin’s recent post, “New Fears of Flying” over at The Motherlode.
Comments 9
Lori — February 8, 2011
If I've learned one thing in my ongoing efforts to combine feminist ideals with the demands of mothering two boys (now ages 9 and 12), it's to try to separate the practical realities of parenting (which include and the needs of my children to have at least one parent ready and waiting to absorb--or if I'm lucky, to fend off the consequences of--all manner of snow days, sick days, early dismissal days, cancelled playdates, cancelled babysitters, and countless other situations that wreak havoc on my best laid plans to accomplish my own personal and professional goals) from buying into a contemporary version of a "feminine" or "motherhood mystique" that mythologizes, sentimentalizes, or glamorizes the role of a female parent to stand by or provide care at all times of the day or night. There's a difference between accepting the fact that the decision to have children will entail endless practical and logistical tasks required to produce healthy, thriving human beings, and swallowing cultural ideologies that glorify mothers (and mothers alone) as the "best" or most suitable people to provide most of those hands-on caregiving "services" themselves. Friedan was right about a lot of things, but when she blew the lid off the myth that waxing the floors was the route to female fulfillment in the early 1960s (not that many women ever believed that anyway) people were still left with the fact that floors still need to be swept and mopped, or perhaps even waxing from time to time. Floor waxing can be procrastinated indefinitely, but feeding hungry kids, or picking them up at school when the nurse calls, cannot. It IS a feminist imperative to keep asking questions about why mothers pick up this kind of slack more often than fathers (even if both parents work outside the home and contribute evenly to family income), but it helps me to remember that just because I'm the parent who shoulders the heaviest parenting load (at least on weekdays), it doesn't mean I'm being "swallowed" by a Friedan-esque mystique or falling prey to an anti-feminist backlash. One of Friedan's main exhortations was for mothers who were primary caregivers of their children to resist--psychologically, intellectually, and vocationally--putting all their eggs in the domestic basket, while their children were little and as they grew up, so that they would have a place in the larger world to call their own. On my worst days--days when my frustration, stress or anxiety levels run high--I sometimes call to mind something I heard Anna Quindlen once say in a speech I heard sometime during the mid 1990s, which went something like "Yes, women CAN have it all, but not always all at the same time." Not on a snow day, anyway.
Marina DelVecchio — February 9, 2011
Friedan's book is in my bookcase -- has been for years -- ever since I became a mom. Before becoming a mom life was all about me and finding myself -- as a woman and as a writer. When I quit my job, it was to write, not to be a mom. Three years, one book, and three years into my feminist Doctoral studies, I was a mom for the first time -- and my feminist ideologies often conflict with my mothering. To be a mother -- still today -- means that women are unnatural if they don't give up on their dreams 00 or at least place them on hold -- just like Quindlen's quote above. I can have it all and I will. Although I am home with the kids, I HAVE to work, because when you do not work, you are not productive -- and I do believe that men tend to overpower us when they make money and we don't -- it's their nature -- or at least the nature of patriarchy. For the past seven years, I have been mothering, writing, and teaching. To do only one -- just the mothering -- would make me miserable, and in turn make me a bad mother. Women should not have to sacrifice themselves for children and family. Men don't. They have it all -- but women always end up having to sacrifice their desires for the desires of those they love. Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Gilman believed that women would be happier, more fulfilled individuals, mothers, wives if they worked. I don't know about other women, I can't talk for them, since I know many women who don't work -- they mother full time -- and they're not too happy -- I just know for me, I am better, happier, more fulfilled as a woman and as a mother when I can work, achieve, and make money at the same time.
Heather — February 9, 2011
I really agree with Marina on this point:
"my feminist ideologies often conflict with my mothering"...mine are in a slightly different way though.
I felt very dismissive of a mother's role, yet it is one that has been just as fulfilling for me as my professional and personal pursuits.
I think we need to give some respect to this role in our society so that women can do both well. So that we can plan properly and look forward to our lives as moms and so that they fit with our other desires and accomplishments.
I think it is imperative that children see their mothers as productive, independent citizens. I also think it's important for women to bask in all of motherhood's glory and to be proud of that role, too.
Lori — February 9, 2011
Just wanted to clarify that when I think about Anna Quindlen's quote about not "having it all" at the same time, I apply it on a "micro" level: I don't interpret to mean that women should sacrifice their careers or put them off for
for a couple of decades until the kids are launched.
Rather, it helps me psychologically to accomplish the kind of balance that Heather is referring to above: between being a productive, independent teacher and scholar and being present in the moments that I am busy "being" a mother (either by choice or in some cases, even when I would rather, quite frankly, be focusing on my work.) Multi-tasking and the techologies available today allow us to tack back and forth between these roles with some measure of fluency--but sometimes that results in a stress overload and then it helps to just slow it all down for a few hours (or sometimes days) until I can gear up again. Raising kids is often joyous--something to "bask" in, and sometimes, well, it isn't. Same goes with work, too! Sometimes it helps me to analyze my situation with a broad social / cultural /historical / feminist lens, and other times, I just have to suck it up and do what needs to be done on a practical level. Ulimately we all need to find what works for us to maintain our families, our selves , our careers, our relastionhips, the "whole nine yards" of life.
Jenny — February 9, 2011
Lori,
I love your final statement about just doing what needs to be done. In my opinion and by my understanding, the goal of feminism is equality. Equal access to opportunities, which includes giving men the option to be stay at home parents as well as women, and without judgement or stigma.
There are two major blocks to successful integration of the concepts of feminism into our culture. One was mentioned earlier, the perceived division between not only working Moms and Stay at Home Moms, but also between class , race and generation. This illusion is fed and perpetuated by the media and for good reason. If women were to truly unite...well let your imagination wander.
The second obstacle is our country's lack of support for families in general. Most other industrialized countries offer ample, paid family leave, for men and women. Many cultures make accommodations in the workplace, job sharing, flextime or work from home options for men and women. There are many men who wish they had more opportunity to raise their children. Conversely when men or women do abandon their children, the remaining parent should have the support systems available to be able to care for their children, have a job, get an eduction without having to live in abject poverty.
This is the world I imagine to be possible if we women can unite.
Jenny
Heather — February 10, 2011
Lori & Jenny, well-said! It seems to me like feminism has not found the proper fit for motherhood in it's messaging. Attempts to gain family benefits like maternity leave seem like exceptionalism which goes against the message of equality. It's a internal conflict in the movement.
I think we can unite men and women to support policies that allow for extended personal leave (sabbaticals) for any reason. I have a more detailed plan. I think this model would get more support than maternity leaves. It's shameful that in America we are far behind the curve on valuing this in our culture.
Policies that affect the independence and self-determination of mothers directly correlate to the quality of lives in their countries. The best place to be a mom: Norway. The worst: Afghanistan. Where is U.S. on this list in 2010? 28th! And falling!
Jenny — February 10, 2011
Heather,
I'm glad you mentioned broadening the conditions of "leave" or "sabbatical". Whether to care for an ailing parent, fix a house damaged by a flood or to take some mental health time, there needs to be adequate provisions in place so employees can care for our families and ourselves.
Jenny
Andrea Doucet — February 10, 2011
Great discussion on feminism and mothering from Heather, Lori, Jenny, and Marina- and , of course, from Deborah who writes beautifully about the unfinished work of feminism in relation to mothering. Deborah, as you know our current writing projects have some wonderful overlaps and I look forward to some good lines of connection and conversation in the year(s) ahead.
Even before I knew that the brilliant Stephanie Coontz had taken on this exciting and timely piece of historical and feminist research, I went back and read Freidan’s books last year as her work seemed relevant to the stories I’ve been hearing from mother breadwinners across three generations. There is a long shadow of the feminine mystique that hangs over women’s lives, now entangled with the feminist mystique, a ‘career mystique’, and many feminist mistakes on underestimating the the meanings of mothering to women.
This also keeps me awake at night.
I agree that there are many paths that women take in trying to balance and juggle mothering and paid work - and that the role of men and supportive public policy are critical. (Canada seems to be doing slightly better on the latter, at least in regard to parental leave; I plan to ‘pen’ about that here in the near future).
gwp_admin — February 18, 2011
Thank you, Andrea, Jenny, Heather, Lori, and Marina, for such a poignant and honest discussion off this post! I feel like your comments could be a post of their own and as always, you've given me much food for thought (and for my next Mama w/Pen post!) There's SO much to say. Meanwhile, my latest, picking up a bit on this thread, is posted today over at She Writes: http://bit.ly/PinkBlue5Steps