The Feminine Mystique (60 page)

35.
Sidney Ditzion,
Marriage, Morals and Sex in America, A History of Ideas
, New York, 1953, p. 277.

36.
William James,
Psychology
, New York, 1892, p. 458.

Chapter 14. A NEW LIFE PLAN FOR WOMEN

1.
See “Mother's Choice: Manager or Martyr,” and “For a Mother's Hour,”
New York Times Magazine
, January 14, 1962, and March 18, 1962.

2.
The sense that work has to be “real,” and not just “therapy” or busywork, to provide a basis for identity becomes increasingly explicit in the theories of the self, even when there is no specific reference to women. Thus, in defining the beginnings of “identity” in the child, Erikson says in
Childhood and Society
(p. 208):

The growing child must, at every step, derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience (his ego synthesis) is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan.

In this children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but their ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment—i.e., of achievement that has meaning in the culture.

3.
Nanette E. Scofield, “Some Changing Roles of Women in Suburbia: A Social Anthropological Case Study,” transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 22, 6, April, 1960.

4.
Polly Weaver, “What's Wrong with Ambition?”
Mademoiselle
, September, 1956.

5.
Edna G. Rostow, “The Best of Both Worlds,”
Yale Review
, March, 1962.

6.
Ida Fisher Davidoff and May Elish Markewich, “The Postparental Phase in the Life Cycle of Fifty College-Educated Women,” unpublished doctoral study, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1961. These fifty educated women had been full-time housewives and mothers throughout the years their children were in school. With the last child's departure, the women suffering severe distress because they had no deep interest beyond the home included a few whose actual ability and achievement were high; these women had been leaders in community work, but they felt like “phonies,” “frauds,” earning respect for “work a ten-year-old could do.” The authors' own orientation in the functional-adjustment school makes them deplore the fact that education gave these women “unrealistic” goals (a surprising number, now in their fifties and sixties, still wished they had been doctors). However, those women who had pursued interests—which in every case had begun in college—and were working now in jobs or politics or art, did not feel like “phonies,” or even suffer the expected distress at menopause. Despite the distress of those who lacked such interests, none of them, after the child-bearing years were over, wanted to go back to school; there were simply too few years left to justify the effort. So they continued “woman's role” by acting as mothers to their own aged parents or by finding pets, plants, or simply “people as my hobby” to take the place of their children. The interpretation of the two family-life educators—who themselves became professional marriage counselors in middle age—is interesting:

For those women in our group who had high aspirations or high intellectual endowment or both, the discrepancy between some of the values stressed in our success-and-achievement oriented society and the actual opportunities open to the older, untrained women was especially disturbing. . . . The door open to the woman with a skill was closed to the one without training, even if she was tempted to try to find a place for herself among the gainfully employed. The reality hazards of the work situation seemed to be recognized by most, however. They felt neither prepared for the kind of job which might appeal to them, nor willing to take the time and expend the energy which would be required for training, in view of the limited number of active years ahead. . . . The lack of pressure resulting from reduced responsibility had to be handled. . . . As the primary task of motherhood was finished, the satisfactions of volunteer work, formerly a secondary outlet, seemed to be diminishing. . . . The cultural activities of the suburbs were limited. . . . Even in the city, adult education . . . seemed to be “busy work,” leading nowhere. . . .

Thus, some women expressed certain regrets: “It is too late to develop a new skill leading to a career.” “If I had pursued a single line, it would have utilized my potential to the full.”

But the authors note with approval that “the vast majority have somehow adjusted themselves to their place in society.”

Because our culture demands of women certain renunciations of activity and limits her scope of participation in the stream of life, at this point being a woman would seem to be an advantage rather than a handicap. All her life, as a female, she had been encouraged to be sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Her life, at strategic points, had required denials of self. She had had ample opportunities for “dress rehearsals” for this latest renunciation . . . of a long series of renunciations begun early in life. Her whole life as a woman had been giving her a skill which she was now free to use to the full without further preparation . . .

7.
Nevitt Sanford, “Personality Development During the College Years,”
Journal of Social Issues
, 1956, Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 36.

8.
The public flurry in the spring of 1962 over the sexual virginity of Vassar girls is a case in point. The real question, for the educator, would seem to me to be whether these girls were getting from their education the serious lifetime goals only education can give them. If they are, they can be trusted to be responsible for their sexual behavior. President Blanding indeed defied the mystique to say boldly that if girls are not in college for education, they should not be there at all. That her statement caused such an uproar is evidence of the extent of sex-directed education.

9.
The impossibility of part-time study of medicine, science, and law, and of part-time graduate work in the top universities has kept many women of high ability from attempting it. But in 1962, the Harvard Graduate School of Education let down this barrier to encourage more able housewives to become teachers. A plan was also announced in New York to permit women doctors to do their psychiatric residencies and postgraduate work on a part-time basis, taking into account their maternal responsibilities.

10.
Virginia L. Senders, “The Minnesota Plan for Women's Continuing Education,” in “Unfinished Business—Continuing Education for Women,”
The Educational Record
, American Council on Education, October, 1961, pp. 10 ff.

11.
Mary Bunting, “The Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study,”
Ibid
., pp. 19 ff. Radcliffe's president reflects the feminine mystique when she deplores “the use the first college graduates made of their advanced educations. Too often and understandably, they became crusaders and reformers, passionate, fearless, articulate, but also, at times, loud. A stereotype of the educated women grew up in the popular mind and concurrently, a prejudice against both the stereotype and the education.” Similarly she states:

That we have not made any respectable attempt to meet the special educational needs of women in the past is the clearest possible evidence of the fact that our educational objectives have been geared exclusively to the vocational patterns of men. In changing that emphasis, however, our goal should not be to equip and encourage women to compete with men. . . . Women, because they are not generally the principal breadwinners, can be perhaps most useful as the trail blazers, working along the bypaths, doing the unusual job that men cannot afford to gamble on. There is always room on the fringes even when competition in the intellectual market places is keen.

That women use their education today primarily “on the fringes” is a result of the feminine mystique, and of the prejudices against women it masks; it is doubtful whether these remaining barriers will ever be overcome if even educators are going to discourage able women from becoming “crusaders and reformers, passionate, fearless, articulate,”—and loud enough to be heard.

12.
Time
, November, 1961. See also “Housewives at the $2 Window,”
New York Times Magazine
, April 1, 1962, which describes how babysitting services and “clinics” for suburban housewives are now being offered at the race tracks.

13.
See remarks of State Assemblywoman Dorothy Bell Lawrence, Republican, of Manhattan, reported in the
New York Times
, May 8, 1962. The first woman to be elected a Republican district leader in New York City, she explained: “I was doing all the work, so I told the county chairman that I wanted to be chairman. He told me it was against the rules for a woman to hold the post, but then he changed the rules.” In the Democratic “reform” movement in New York, women are also beginning to assume leadership posts commensurate with their work, and the old segregated “ladies' auxiliaries” and “women's committees” are beginning to go.

14.
Among more than a few women I interviewed who had, as the mystique advises, completely renounced their own ambitions to become wives and mothers, I noticed a repeated history of miscarriages. In several cases, only after the woman finally resumed the work she had given up, or went back to graduate school, was she able to carry to term the long-desired second or third child.

15.
American women's life expectancy—75 years—is the longest of women anywhere in the world. But as Myrdal and Klein point out in
Women's Two Roles
, there is increasing recognition that, in human beings, chronological age differs from biological age: “at the chronological age of 70, the divergencies in biological age may be as wide as between the chronological ages of 50 and 90.” The new studies of aging in humans indicate that those who have the most education and who live the most complex and active lives, with deep interests and readiness for new experience and learning, do not get “old” in the sense that others do. A close study of 300 biographies (See Charlotte Buhler, “The Curve of Life as Studied in Biographies,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
, XIX, August, 1935, pp. 405 ff.) reveals that in the latter half of life, the person's productivity becomes independent of his biological equipment, and, in fact, is often at a higher level than his biological efficiency—
that is, if the person has emerged from biological living
. Where “spiritual factors” dominated activity, the highest point of productivity came in the latter part of life; where “physical facts” were decisive in the life of an individual, the high point was reached earlier and the psychological curve was then more closely comparable to the biological. The study of educated women cited above revealed much less suffering at menopause than is considered “normal” in America today. Most of these women whose horizons had not been confined to physical housekeeping and their biological role, did not, in their fifties and sixties feel “old.” Many reported in surprise that they suffered much less discomfort at menopause than their mothers' experience had led them to expect. Therese Benedek suggests (in “Climacterium: A Developmental Phase,”
Psychoanalytical Quarterly
, XIX, 1950, p. 1) that the lessened discomfort, and burst of creative energy many women now experience at menopause, is at least in part due to the “emancipation” of women. Kinsey's figures seem to indicate that women who have by education been emancipated from purely biological living, experience the full peak of sexual fulfillment much later in life than had been expected, and in fact, continue to experience it through the forties and past menopause. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Colette—that truly human, emancipated French woman who lived and loved and wrote with so little deference to her chronological age that she said on her eightieth birthday: “If only one were 58, because at that time one is still desired and full of hope for the future.”

Metamorphosis: TWO GENERATIONS LATER

1.
New York Times
, February 11, 1994. U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by F. Levy (MIT) and R. Murnane (Harvard).

2.
“Women: The New Providers,” Whirlpool Foundation Study, by Families and Work Institute, May, 1995.

3.
“Employment and Earnings,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, January, 1996.

4.
U.S. Census Bureau data from current Population Reports, 1994.

5.
National Committee on Pay Equity, compiled U.S. Census Bureau data from Current Population Reports, 1996.

6.
“The wage Gap: Women's and Men's earnings,” Institute for Women's Policy Research, 1996.

7.
Washington Post
, September 27, 1994. Data released from “Corporate Downsizing, Job Elimination, and Job Creation,” AMA Survey, 1994. Also
The Downsizing of America: The New York Times Special Report
. New York: Random House, 1996.

8.
“Women's Voices: Solutions for a New Economy,” Center for Policy Alternatives, 1992.

9.
“Contraceptive Practice and Trends in Coital Frequency,” Princeton University Office of Population Research,
Family Planning Perspectives
, Vol. 12, No. 5, October, 1980.

10.
Starting Right: How America Neglects Its Youngest Children and What We We Can Do About It
, Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred J. Kahn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Index

abolitionism, 87, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97

abortion rights, 465, 467, 473, 487, 488, 503

Abraham, Karl, 522
n

abstract expressionism, 218–19

abstract thinking, 183, 184, 195, 343, 376

Abzug, Bella, 472

accidents, 129

acting out, 346

actresses, women's magazine articles on, 48

Addams, Jane, 103, 387

Adler, Alfred, 136–37, 373

adolescence:

in consumer culture, 258–62, 274

identity development in, 78, 188–91, 335, 339

IQ decreases in, 202

juvenile delinquency in, 228–30, 341, 356–57

sexual promiscuity in, 329–30, 331, 338–39, 341, 346, 360

see also
boys; child care; children; girls

adult education, 436–37

advertising:

of cigarette companies, 504

feminine ideals promoted in, 3

feminist themes used in, 504

magazines' editorial content vs., 273–75

of male fashion, 508

personal identity vs. images from, 70–71

psychological appeal of, 265

of sex-segregated employment opportunities, 467

sexuality in, 267–68

women as primary focus of, 248

see also
consumers, consumerism

affirmative action, 473

AFL-CIO, 502

aggression, 232, 309, 521
n

against children, 363–64

aging, 455

acceptance of, 434

fear of, 328

housewives' experience of, 207–9, 442, 460, 537
n
–39
n

sexual satisfaction and, 389–90, 541
n

Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 502

airline employees, sexist policies toward, 466

alcoholism, 54, 299

Alcott, Louisa May, 101–2

Allport, Gordon Willard, 373

“Almost a Love Affair,” 40

ambition, 429–30

America as a Civilization
(Lerner), 525
n,
528
n

American College, The,
188–90

American Medical Association (A.M.A.), 364

American Revolution, 87

American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 473

American Women
(Cassara, ed.), 168–69

anal development phase, 115, 139–40

anatomy, as destiny, 12, 80, 82, 133, 151, 154, 157–58

Anderson, Clarence, 341–42

Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 124

anger:

displacement of, 363–64, 368–69, 371

free expression of, 386

Angyal, Andras, 348–49, 373

animals:

love of, 364–65

time sense of, 377

Anthony, Susan B., 83–84, 94, 100–101

anthropology:

biological factors vs. cultural context in, 157–59

feminine mystique bolstered by, 160–62, 168

Freudian sexual focus applied to, 140, 154, 156–58, 160, 165, 522
n

as male profession, 168

anxiety, 374, 375

Apartment, The,
325

Arapesh culture, 152, 522
n

architects, female, 186

Aristotle, 393–94

arts, dilettantism in, 418, 420–21

athletes, women, 487, 508–9

atomic weapons, 45, 212–13

Aurthur, Robert Alan, 530
n

Austrian empire, decline of, 114

authority, parental, 234–35

autism, 357–60

autonomy, 203, 204

college students' development of, 339–40

high dominance vs., 385–86

baby boom, postwar, 214, 285

babysitting services, 451, 540
n

baking mixes, 249–51

Bali, sex-based cultural differences in, 159, 160, 162

bargains, 265

Barnard College, 18, 449, 477

battered-child syndrome, 363–64

“Battle Hymn of the Republic” (Howe), 98

beatniks, 74, 218, 220, 340–41

beauty industry, 3, 530
n

Beauvoir, Simone de, 6, 469

“Bedding Down in the Colonies” (Muggeridge), 530
n

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 388

behavioral science, 115, 128, 387

Beijing, 1995 UN World Women's Conference in, 492–93

Belgium, family-friendly policies in, 497

Bell Telephone Company, 447

Benedek, Therese, 541
n

Benedict, Ruth, 238, 431, 530
n

Bergson, Henri-Louis, 373

Bernays, Minna, 124

Bettelheim, Bruno, 367, 371–72, 373

“Between the Dark and the Daylight,” 31

birth control, 3, 167, 465, 502

birth rates, 3, 18, 21–22, 214, 474, 526
n

bisexuality, 520
n

Blackwell, Alice Stone, 94

Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, 93–94

Blackwell, Elizabeth, 94, 102

Blackwell, Henry, 93

Blanding, Sarah Gibson, 539
n

Blatch, Harriet, 103

Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 99

bloomers, 90, 99

Bly, Robert, 507

“Body Ego During Orgasm” (Keiser), 535
n
–36
n

body image, 536
n

body size, 3–4

bomb shelters, 45

Bonaparte, Marie, 123, 124

Boone, Pat, 62–63

boredom, 317

chronic fatigue vs., 20, 297, 299

sexual, 310, 313–14, 322

of youth, 338, 339, 341

bowling, 451

boys:

apathy developed by, 342–43

creative ambitions promoted for, 155–56

family-minded education of, 185

functionalist view of, 147

identity development of, 188, 189, 191, 210, 348

initiation rituals of, 160

mothers' relationships with, 125, 127, 232–33, 235, 237–38, 239, 326, 328, 329

in primitive cultures, 160, 162

in suburban mental-health clinics, 354

see also
adolescence; child care; children

brain injuries, 376

brassieres, 162

Breakfast at Tiffany's
(Capote), 322

breast:

cancer of, 504

primitive cultures' baring of, 161–62

size of, 310

breastfeeding, 3, 22, 53, 157, 167, 279, 409

breast implants, 508–9

Brown, Antoinette, 93–94

Brownmiller, Susan, 478

Brown University, 199

Bryn Mawr College, 102, 201

Buchanan, Pat, 501

Buhler, Charlotte, 540
n

Bunting, Mary, 443, 539
n
–40
n

Burgess, Ernest W., 397

Caplow, Theodore, 527
n
–28
n

Capote, Truman, 322

careers:

celibacy linked with, 143–44

decisions on, 67–68

educational preparation for, 171–72, 173, 191, 192–93, 206–7, 450, 523
n

former housewives and, 419–27

housekeeping as, 284, 286

individuality expressed through, 30–33, 143

jobs vs., 4, 146–47, 148, 149, 179, 182, 288, 416, 460

as male sphere, 144–45, 451, 539
n

in medicine, 53, 102, 454, 523
n,
539
n

motherhood vs., 3, 5, 37–40, 51–52, 53–56, 143, 197, 227–31, 412–13, 434, 453, 454, 460–61, 540
n

see also
working women

career women:

in academic positions, 181–82, 443–44

consumer research on, 246–48, 251

denigration of, 54, 66

as magazine-story heroines, 29–33, 37, 48, 49, 518
n

male competition with, 149, 216–17, 451, 539
n

as role models, 74, 108, 444–45

ultra-feminine attire adopted by, 182

see also
working women

Carswell, G. Harrold, 468

Carver, George Washington, 387

castration complex, 125, 126, 133, 393, 534
n

Castro, Fidel, 27

Catholic Church, 35, 78, 424–25, 474

Catt, Carrie Chapman, 104

Ceballos, Jacqui, 467–68

Celler, Emanuel, 473

Century of Struggle
(Flexner), 518
n

Chapman Report, The
(Wallace), 314

childbirth, 91

depressive reactions to, 320, 321, 351–52, 529
n
–30
n

natural, 22, 167, 279, 409

as paramount feminine fulfillment, 59

child care:

authoritarian style of, 234–35

dehumanization process in, 347–48, 356–60, 439

emotional symbiosis in, 345–48, 355

by fathers, 286, 294, 495

nursery facilities for, 216, 290, 451, 465, 497, 540
n

overnurturance in, 19–20, 231–33, 235–38, 294, 343–47, 350, 354, 413–14

parental dreams projected in, 346–47, 361

permissiveness in, 116, 344–45, 357, 531
n

self-preoccupation vs., 354–55

urban resources in, 290

for working mothers, 215–16, 290, 451, 465, 540
n

Childhood and Society
(Erikson), 537
n

child labor, 104, 192

children:

abandoned, 227

autistic, 357–60

emotional passivity of, 337–44, 353–54, 359, 481

exceptional, 198

Freudian developmental theory on, 114, 115–16, 125–27

identity growth in, 537
n

physical abuse of, 363–64

psychological problems of, 227–38

China, foot-binding practices in, 108

China, People's Republic of, UN World's Women's Conference held in, 492–93

Chisholm, Shirley, 473

chivalry, 284

chronic fatigue, 22, 296–99

cigarette smoking, 504

Citadel, 505

cities:

population shift to, 288, 528
n

suburban life vs., 290

Civil Rights Act (1964), xviii, 461–62, 467, 487

Civil War (1861–1865), 101–2

Clad, Noel, 518
n

Clarenbach, Kay, 462

cleaning methods, consumerist psychology on, 255–58

Clinton, Bill, 498, 500, 502

Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 479, 493, 498, 499

clothing:

of career women, 182

laundering of, 256, 286–87

in primitive societies, 157

Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle, 541
n

college education, xiii, 171–211

as career preparation, 171–72, 173, 191, 192–93, 206–7, 450, 523
n

drop-out levels in, 172, 187, 215

as end of women's personal development, 69

evening courses in, 290, 438

female life-adjustment curricula in, 182–86, 193–99

graduate studies after, 435, 522
n,
523
n,
539
n

homosexuality and, 329

identity development fostered through, 188–91, 201–6, 210–11, 441–42

life purpose vs., 67–68, 69, 442, 444–45, 539
n

on marriage and family life, 137, 140, 142–45, 180, 182, 184, 193–99, 444

marriage vs., 2, 16, 18, 190, 192, 194

of older students, 437–39, 443, 446–50

shift to sex-directed goals in, 179–86, 191, 193–201, 207–11, 440–41, 539
n

in single-sex schools, 505, 523
n

in sociology, 137, 194, 522
n,
523
n

spinster faculty members in, 181–82, 444

tuition costs of, 438, 439

in typically female fields, 178, 184–85, 523
n

women's access to, 87, 92, 94, 95, 440

women's decreased commitment to, 172–79

women's enrollment levels in, 2, 185–86, 187, 288, 523
n

women's studies departments in, 468, 505

colonial women, xv

Columbia University, 180, 457

Coming of Age in Samoa
(Mead), 152

commitment:

to college education, 172–79

to professional employment, 418–27, 453–54

reluctance toward, 348, 349, 361, 365, 418–19

communism, 183

community organizations, 291–92, 417–18, 419, 422, 433, 435–36, 528
n,
538
n

competition, 119, 424

in children, 337–38

human need of, 451–52

with men's careers, 149, 216–17, 451, 539
n

Conant, James B., 186

concentration camps, prisoner psychology in, 367–69, 370–71

conformity:

in fashion, 263–64

to feminine norms, 72–74, 409

life-adjustment education and, 197–98

suburban, 22

Congress to Unite Women, 468, 469

Conroy, Katherine, 462

consciousness-raising sessions, 473–74

Constitution, U.S.:

Equal Rights Amendment, 467, 472, 473, 475, 479

Nineteenth Amendment, 11, 105

consumers, consumerism, xii, xiii, 242–76, 478

deeper personal needs obscured by, 244, 264, 265, 266–67, 270, 271–73

depth interviews in research on, 244–45, 248–49, 255–57

desexualizing effect of, 267–68

family-oriented strategies in, 262–63

feminine mystique perpetuated by, 270–76

of home-appliance products, 245–48, 255–56

as life purpose, 244, 258

luxury market of, 260–62

market research in, 245–48

new products promoted by, 254–55, 257, 269

peer pressure on, 260–61

price considerations of, 265

sexuality of, 267–68, 322–23, 529
n

social status expressed through, 265, 322, 480

teenage market cultivated in, 258–62, 274–75

women's percentage of, 245

see also
advertising