The Feminine Mystique

The choice that Chapter 8’s title refers to is that between freedom and security. Friedan describes women’s retreat to the home in the post-World War II era; she claims that women returned to letting men protect and provide for them rather than maintaining the momentum toward independence that had been building in previous decades. This trend mirrored the national attitude of the time. After the collective trauma of the Depression, the war, and the atomic bomb, most Americans were eager to turn away from large-scale catastrophes and instead focus on the smaller, more controllable sphere of the home.

While the ideology of the feminine mystique dictates women’s choices, Friedan writes, it also punishes even those women seemingly doing what their society encourages them to do. Mothers almost always shoulder the blame for their children’s neuroses, no matter the context of the individual child’s life. Some mothers receive blame for being an overbearing presence, while others who work outside the home receive blame for spending too much time away from their children. These two criticisms are incompatible and reveal an underlying strain of sexism rather than a valid, consistent critique.

One of the most famous studies on the supposed detriments of education and career ambitions for women was the famous Kinsey Report, a well-known publication that later developed into a series of reports about Americans’ sex lives.