No one wants to return to the 1950s as Betty Friedan characterized them, where women felt blocked from pursuing interests outside the home. At the same time, to insist that stay-at-home moms are trapped, desperate, and unhappy is naïve, insulting, and even damaging to the roots of society.
Such phrases, uttered by 1950s housewives, fill the pages of Betty Friedan’sFeminine Mystique, released fifty years ago last month. The book famously launched the second wave of feminism and changed the landscape of the American household.
Since 1963, it has sold over three million copies. Reprints are always in demand, and the book lands somewhere on most big-name college syllabi. Beyond its impact on those who have read it, though, the book’s message has seeped into society’s subconscious.
Friedan’s thesis was simple then, and it’s simple now: Personal fulfillment requires pursuits outside the home—usually in the form of a career. Without a career outside the home, housewives lack self-actualization. Hence she described the busy homemaker: “chained to these pursuits, she is stunted at a lower level of living, blocked from the realization of her higher human needs.” [...]
And the facts of the era support Friedan’s vision of the world. In the 1950s, 75 percent of all women were married by age twenty-four. If they did have a job, it wasn’t a job that led to a long-term career. During that decade, women aged sixteen to twenty-four represented the highest female participation in the labor force, at 43 percent. The majority of the white middle classes joined the flight to the suburbs after World War II and stayed there, running the suburban life with its Cub Scouts and PTA meetings.
The Change
If there was a consensus in the 1950s that a woman’s place was in the home, that consensus ended quickly. Today 70.6 percent of all mothers are in the workforce. We live in a society where the majority of households run on the two-working-parent model.
This has completely transformed how Americans marry and have kids. In the 1950s, not only were 75 percent of all women married by twenty-four, but 47 percent of them were married by nineteen. Contrast that with today’s statistics: American women are—on average—married at twenty-seven. After World War II, in the 1950s, the United States peaked at a 3.8 fertility rate. Today, our fertility rate is 1.9, a fifth of a point below replacement level.
The changes have affected education and the workforce. According to Christina Hoff Sommers, women account for nearly 60 percent of associate's, bachelor's, and master’s degrees. They also have surpassed men in PhD programs.
Common Criticisms
While many changes—such as advanced education and technology—played a part, Friedan’s classic was undoubtedly a catalyst that altered how society saw the role of women. There is a reason the New York Times Book Review claims that the book “changed the world so comprehensively that it’s hard to remember how much change was called for.”
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