The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan [143]
Other doctors, finding that such mothers get as much or more sleep than they need, claimed the basic cause was not fatigue but boredom. This problem became so severe that the women’s magazines treated it fulsomely—in the Pollyanna terms of the feminine mystique. In a spate of articles that appeared in the late 1950’s, the “cures” suggested were usually of the more-praise-and-appreciation-from-husband variety, even though the doctors interviewed in these articles indicated clearly enough that the cause was in the “housewife-mother” role. But the magazines drew their usual conclusion: that is, and always will be woman’s lot, and she just has to make the best of it. Thus, Redbook (“Why Young Mothers Are Always Tired,” September, 1959) reports the findings of the Baruch study of chronic-fatigue patients:
…Fatigue of any kind is a signal that something is wrong. Physical fatigue protects the organism from injury through too great activity of any part of the body. Nervous fatigue, on the other hand, is usually a warning of danger to the personality. This comes out very clearly in the woman patient who complains bitterly that she is “just a housewife,” that she is wasting her talents and education on household drudgery and losing her attractiveness, her intelligence, and indeed her very identity as a person, explains Dr. Harley C. Sands, one of the co-heads of the Baruch project. In industry the most fatiguing jobs are those which only partially occupy the worker’s attention, but at the same time prevent him from concentrating on anything else. Many young wives say that this mental gray-out is what bothers them most in caring for home and children. “After a while your mind becomes a blank,” they say. “You can’t concentrate on anything. It’s like sleep-walking.”
The magazine also quotes a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist to the effect that the major factor which produces chronic fatigue in patients was “monotony unpunctuated by any major triumph or disaster,” noting that this “sums up the predicament of many a young mother.” It even cites the results of the University of Michigan study in which of 524 women asked “what are some of the things which make you feel ‘useful and important,’” almost none answered “housework” among the women who had jobs, “the overwhelming majority, married and single, felt that the job was more satisfying than the housework.” At this point the magazine interjects editorially: “This, of course, does not mean that a career is the alternative to fatigue for a young mother. If anything, the working mother may have more troubles than the housebound young matron.” The magazine’s happy conclusion: “Since the demands of housework and child-rearing are not very flexible, there is no complete solution to chronic-fatigue problems. Many women, however, can cut down fatigue if they stop asking too much of themselves. By trying to understand realistically what she can—and, more important, what she cannot—do, a woman may, in the long run, be a better wife and mother, albeit a tired one.”
Another such article (“Is Boredom Bad for You?” McCall’s, April 1957) asked, “Is the housewife’s chronic fatigue really boredom?” and answers: “Yes. The chronic fatigue of many housewives is brought on by the repetition of their jobs, the monotony of the setting, the isolation and the lack of stimulation. The heavy household chores, it’s been found, aren’t enough to explain the fatigue…. The more your intelligence exceeds your job requirements, the greater your boredom. This is so to such an extent that experienced employers never hire above-average brains for routine jobs…. It is this boredom plus, of course, the day-to-day frustrations which makes the average housewife’s job more emotionally fatiguing than her husband’s.” The cure: “honest enjoyment in some part of the job such as cooking or an incentive such as a party in the offing and, above all, male praise are good antidotes for domestic boredom.”
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