The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan [79]
Parsons, a highly respected sociologist and the leading functional theoretician, describes with insight and accuracy the sources of strain in this “segregation of sex roles.” He points out that the “domestic” aspect of the housewife role “has declined in importance to the point where it scarcely approaches a full-time occupation for a vigorous person”: that the “glamour pattern” is “inevitably associated with a rather early age level” and thus “serious strains result from the problem of adaptation to increasing age,” that the “good companion” pattern—which includes “humanistic” cultivation of the arts and community welfare—“suffers from a lack of fully institutionalized status…. It is only those with the strongest initiative and intelligence who achieve fully satisfying adaptations in this direction.” He states that “it is quite clear that in the adult feminine role there is quite sufficient strain and insecurity so that widespread manifestations are to be expected in the form of neurotic behavior.” But Parsons warns:
It is, of course, possible for the adult woman to follow the masculine pattern and seek a career in fields of occupational achievement in direct competition with men of her own class. It is, however, notable that in spite of the very great progress of the emancipation of women from the traditional domestic pattern only a very small fraction have gone very far in this direction. It is also clear that its generalization would only be possible with profound alterations in the structure of the family.
True equality between men and women would not be “functional” the status quo can be maintained only if the wife and mother is exclusively a homemaker or, at most, has a “job” rather than a “career” which might give her status equal to that of her husband. Thus Parsons finds sexual segregation “functional” in terms of keeping the social structure as it is, which seems to be the functionalist’s primary concern.
Absolute equality of opportunity is clearly incompatible with any positive solidarity of the family…. Where married women are employed outside the home, it is, for the great majority, in occupations which are not in direct competition for status with those of men of their own class. Women’s interests, and the standard of judgment applied to them, run, in our society, far more in the direction of personal adornment…. It is suggested that this difference is functionally related to maintaining family solidarity in our class structure.7
Even the eminent woman sociologist Mirra Komarovsky, whose functional analysis of how girls learn to “play the role of woman” in our society is brilliant indeed, cannot quite escape the rigid mold functionalism imposes: adjustment to the status quo. For to limit one’s field of inquiry to the function of an institution in a given social system, with no alternatives considered, provides an infinite number of rationalizations for all the inequalities and inequities of that system. It is not surprising that social scientists began to mistake their own function as one of helping the individual “adjust” to his “role,” in that system.
A social order can function only because the vast majority have somehow adjusted themselves to their place in society and perform the functions expected of them…. The differences in the upbringing of the sexes…are obviously related to their respective roles in adult life. The future homemaker trains for her role within the home, but the boy prepares for his by being given more independence outside the home, by his taking a “paper route” or a summer job. A provider will profit by independence, dominance, aggressiveness, competitiveness.8
The risk of the “traditional upbringing” of girls, as this sociologist sees it, is its possible “failure to develop in the girl the independence, inner resources, and that degree of self-assertion which life will demand of her”—in her role as wife. The functional warning follows:
Even if a parent correctly [sic] considers certain conventional attributes