A Strange Stirring

December 6, 2010
Social historian Coontz (Marriage, a History) analyzes the impact of Betty Friedan's groundbreaking 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, on the generation of white, middle-class women electrified by Friedan's argument that beneath the surface contentment, most housewives harbored a deep well of insecurity, self-doubt, and unhappiness. The Feminine Mystique didn't call for women to bash men, pursue careers, or fight for legal and political rights, says Coontz; it simply urged women to pursue an education and prepare for a meaningful life after their children left home. Coontz contends that Friedan's great achievement was lifting so many women out of despair even if her book ignored the problems of working women, especially blacks, and tapped into concerns people were already mulling over. Friedan synthesized and made accessible scholarly research and personalized it with the stories of individual housewives. Friedan's self-representation as an apolitical suburban housewife, says Coontz, glossed over her 1930s and '40s leftist political activism so as not to be blacklisted or discredited because of prior associations. This perceptive, engrossing, albeit specialized book provides welcome context and background to a still controversial bestseller that changed how women viewed themselves.

November 15, 2010

Coontz (history & family studies, Evergreen State Coll.; Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage) recaptures the impact of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique when it was published in 1963. Although Friedan claimed credit for initiating the modern feminist movement, Coontz places the book more dispassionately in its historical context as one of many factors working against entrenched gender roles. Still, Coontz demonstrates persuasively that women readers from many backgrounds found relief--some called it life-saving--in knowing that they were not crazy and not alone in their need to find some work independent of their family roles. Coontz bases her analysis on her survey of almost 200 men and women in addition to interviews, archival research, and oral histories. While she agrees that Friedan spoke mostly to women in affluent families, she asserts that working-class women of all races and African American mothers, both well-to-do and working class, would find some parts of Friedan's analysis on point. Almost 50 years after the book's initial publication, however, there has been little progress in making it easier for mothers--much less fathers--to meld work life and home life. VERDICT Recommended for general and serious readers interested in the history of women.--Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2010

A sharp revisiting of the generation that was floored by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), and how the book is still relevant today.

In order to understand how Friedan's bestseller affected the World War II generation of women in America, Coontz (History, Family Studies/Evergreen State Coll.; Marriage, a History, 2006, etc.) delved into Friedan's archives at the Schlesinger Library, in Cambridge, Mass., as well as conducted surveys of her own. She taps into the incendiary reaction originally provoked by the book, and thereby is able to elucidate more clearly how the women's movement evolved over the succeeding decades. Having done their part for the war effort, the middle-class, mostly white women of Friedan's late-'50s/early-'60s study welcomed their men back and were safely ensconced in the home, aspiring to an ideal of wifeliness and motherhood perfectly calibrated by Madison Avenue and the popular magazines of the day. Although many of the women were the first in their families to attend college, many of them were "tricked" into believing that their greater purpose in life was to serve husbands and raise children, rather than pursue a career. Ultimately, they succumbed to what Friedan called a "nameless aching dissatisfaction." which was something like emotional paralysis and existential malaise. Psychologists and so-called experts often blamed the problem on the women themselves for their inability to conform, but Friedan diagnosed it presciently as the thwarting of "the need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings." In fact, there was a name for what was ailing American women of the era--sex discrimination--and Coontz examines it with a battery of facts and figures. She traces Friedan's research and some gaps in her argument--e.g., she largely ignored African-American and working-class women--and the creative spin she gave to her own background. Coontz concludes that we still have far to go in achieving Friedan's vision of equality between the sexes.

A valuable education for women and men. For readers looking for a thorough biography of Friedan, check out Judith Hennessee's Betty Friedan: Her Life (1999).

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2010
Nearly 50 years after Betty Friedan transformed the lives of American housewives, Coontz (Marriage, a History, 2005) offers a biography of Friedans seminal book, The Feminine Mystique (1963). Coupling meticulous research with first-person interviews, Coontz challenges a number of Friedans assumptions and exaggerations while also revisiting the climate in which the work appeared and giving voice to women for whom The Feminine Mystique was nothing short of a lifesaver. Though critical of the work on a number of fronts, including its omission of working-class and minority women, Coontz lauds other aspects of The Feminine Mystique, such as its condemnation of mainstream psychiatry, which promoted the notion that women had no need to search for meaning in their lives beyond their roles as wives and mothers. As women continue to struggle with the effort to balance life and work, Coontz argues that The Feminine Mystique remains as relevant today as it when it first appeared. In tracing the roots of current discontents, which Coontz dubs the Supermom Mystique, her book is no less required reading than Friedans trailblazer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)