The Feminine Mystique

While I didn't agree with everything she wrote (didn't really touch low-income women who couldn't afford the one income household, said housewives deserved their own version of the GI bill, and when she did touch on race and homosexuality it was pretty cringe-worthy) I still think this is an important piece of literature that transcends its time period.

I had no idea the amount of women that got married so young to be housewives in the US in this time period. The mixture of the history and psychology lessons make this book very engrossing. I found what she wrote about what basing your entire identity on your children can do to both the mother AND the child to be especially insightful and important. I also enjoyed her exploration about how marketing campaigns exploit this lack of identity found in housewives.

I've read that Betty Friedan was rather brusk in person but this book lays out her ideas well and I would definitely recommend it.

Girls growing up in small towns or religious families or girls soon becoming women facing that question about what to do with love and life–read this book. I believe we haven't yet overcome the Feminine Mystique. And though Friedan writes from a different era, though some of the things she says about sexual orientation and preference seem downright ignorant (they are!), the meat of this book proclaims woman=human. Perhaps we are long overdue a man=human book (see “Metamorphosis: Two Generations Later”), too. . .

Seriously stunning how relevant about 2/3 of this book still seems. The other 1/3 has some missteps, like where she compares suburbia to Nazi concentration camps, or all the zings at gay men. BUT seriously, the rest of it... good, good stuff.