The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan [233]
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Fisher Davidoff and May Elish Markewich, “The Postparental Phase in the Life Cycle of Fifty College-Educated Women,” unpublished doctoral study, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1961.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,