The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  7. Folder 617, Feminine Mystique Letters, Friedan Papers.

  8. Box 21, Folder 739; Box 19, Folder 683; Box 19, Folder 683; Feminine Mystique Letters, Friedan Papers.

  9. The contributions of Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., and the other authors to Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994) are an important corrective to the view that the feminine mystique ruled every woman and permitted no exit. As much as I respect the contribution made by Meyerowitz and the other authors, I believe the power of the feminine mystique was stronger than the undertow that was pulling it down.

  10. Some of the best sources that reveal the making of lesbian and gay subcultures are John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Donna Penn, “The Meanings of Lesbianism in Post-War America,” Gender and History (Summer 1991): 190–203; Kate Weigand, “The Red Menace, the Feminine Mystique, and the Ohio University American Activities Commission: Gender and Anti-Communism in Ohio, 1951–1954,” Journal of Women’s History (Winter 1992): 70–94; Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 130–87. One of the best ethnographies is Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993).

  11. Warren Susman, Culture As History (New York: Pantheon, 1984); William Whyte, The Organization Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956); C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Class (New York: Oxford, 1956). See Glen Elder, Children of the Great Depression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

  12. Dr. Paul Pepenoe, who had been a biologist and founder of the social hygiene movement, became the best-known publicist through the column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”; Benita Eisler, Private Lives: Men and Women of the Fifties (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986), 278.

  13. William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey (New York: Oxford, 1995), 119; Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (New York: Ballantine, 1980), 43; Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (New York: Oxford, 1985); Sylvia Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 38.

  14. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 8.

  15. Marc Richards, “Recruiting in the Nursery,” dissertation, U.C. Davis, 1998; Donna Alvah, “Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and Cold War International Relations, 1945–1961,” dissertation in progress, U.C. Davis.

  16. Elaine May, Homeward Bound (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 25.

  17. “The Two Worlds: A Day Long Debate,” New York Times, July 25, 1959, 1,3; “Setting Russia Straight on Facts about the U.S.,” U.S. News and World Report, vol. 47, August 3, 1959, 36–39, 70–72; “Encounter,” Newsweek, August 3, 1959, 15–19.

  18. J. Warren Kinsman, “The Responsibility of Women in Today’s World,” an address before the Wilmington City Federation of Women’s Clubs and Allied Organizations, in E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Inc., Papers, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware.

  19. Anita Colby, “Ideas from a Woman’s Viewpoint,” prepared for the 1955 Du Pont Advertising Clinic, in the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours, Inc. Papers, series II, part 2, Box 18, Hagley Museum and Library.

  20. Miller, 116; Chafe, The Unfinished Journey, 112; Miller, 107; New York Times, February 14, 1956, 20; September 3, 1956, 14.

  21. For a lengthy discussion of the full impact of McCarthyism on American culture and society, see Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988).

  22. Joseph Veroff, Elizabeth Douvan, Richard A. Kulko, The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976 (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 147–149. Ninety-five percent of Americans of marriageable age made the trip to the altar, 5 percent more than their parents. Jones, p. 15; Susan Hartman, The Home Front and Beyond, 165ff.; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: 1975), part 1, 49, 54, 64; John Modell, Frank F. Furstenberg, and Douglas Strong, “The Times of Marriage in the Transition to Adulthood, Continuity and Change,” in Turning Points: Historical and Sociological Essays on the Family, American Journal of Sociology 84 (supplement, Chicago, 1978:s120–s150); Paul C. Glick, “A Demographer Looks at American Families,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 37: 1 (February 1975), 15–26; Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 22–23. J. Edgar Hoover, “The Twin Enemies of Freedom: Crime and Communism,” address before the 28th Annual Convocation of the National Council of Catholic Women, Chicago, Illinois, November 9, 1956, in Vital Speeches 23:4 (December 1, 1956), 104–107, quote on p. 104.

  23. Such large families were, in fact, the exception, not the norm. Between 1955 and 1959, the average American woman bore 3.7 children during her lifetime. What accounted for the high fertility rate was the fact that two overlapping generations married after the war, creating medium-sized families, and that the postwar years witnessed so few childless couples and single women.

  24. Miller, 238. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (New York: Norton, 1976), 35.

  25. Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983), chapter 13; Hartman, The Home Front, 203; Brett Harvey, The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History (New York: Harper, 1994), xi.

  26. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 52–53. Deborah Rhode, Justice and Gender (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), chapter 4; Ruth Schwartz Cohen and Joanne Vanek, “Time Spent in Housework,” Scientific American 231 (November 1974): 116–20; Helen Zopata, Occupation Housewife (New York: Oxford, 1971), 47–53.

  27. May, 307; Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 206; Eisler, 291.

  28. Eisler, Private Lives, 10.

  29. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby Care (New York: Pocket Books, 1946), 63–64.

  30. Albert Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (New York: Pocket Books, 1953), 292. May makes the same argument in Homeward Bound, in chapter 5.

  31. Eisler, 158; May, 208, 233; Eisler, 124, 129.

  32. Kinsey, 292; Barbara Ehrenreich, Remaking Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Doubleday, 1986), 47; Theodoor H. Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage (New York: Random House, 1961); Eustace Chesser, Love Without Fear (New York: Roy Publishing, 1947).

  33. One reason is that when Masters and Johnson announced in 1966 that clitoral stimulation was the basis for all orgasms, their findings produced a flood of recognition and rage from women of all ages.

  34. Also see May, 226; Case 223, in May, Kellogg Longitudinal Study; May, 220. Also see chapter 8, “Hanging Together,” in May. For a more detailed discussion, see chapter 5, “Hidden Injuries of Sex,” in this book.

  35. May, 226. In May, see Kellogg Longitudinal Study (KLS) in Appendices. KLS respondents.

  36. Eisler, quoting interview, 306; Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1983); George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, vol. 1–3 (New York: Random House, 1972); for 1972–1978 data, see National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey; Abbott L. Ferris, Indicators of Trends in the Status of Women (N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation, 1971), 85–86, 99, 104; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States 1975 (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1975), 346–347; also see Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing Its Growth and Changing Composition (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971).

  37. Chafe, Unfinished Journey, 84–85; Peter Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 167–68; Bureau of Labor Standards, Perspectives on Working Wom
en: A Datebook (Washington, D.C., 1980), Bulletin 2080, 10, 52; Miller, 163; Part Time Employment for Women, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 275 (Washington, D.C., GPO), 40.

  38. William Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920–1970 (New York: Oxford, 1972), 18.

  39. For important work on women and World War II, see the Bibliography. Also, see poll by United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Workers of America—Congress of Industrial Organizations, that showed 85 percent of UAW women planned on working after the war. Women’s Bureau studies found that 80 percent of women in Detroit and Erie Country, New York, wanted to keep their jobs. CIO News 30 (July 1945), quoted in Cynthia Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women’s Issues, 1945–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 242.

  40. Interview with Charlicia Neuman by Sherna Gluck in Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, The War and Social Change, Sherna Berger Gluck, ed., 169.

  41. Ethel Klein, Gender Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 40; Chafe, Unfinished Journey, 84–85; Filene, Him/Her/Self, 167–68; Bureau of Labor Standards, Perspective on Working Women, 10, 52; Miller, 163; Part-Time Employment for Women, Women’s Bureau Bulletin No. 273 (Washington, D.C., 1960), 3; and 1960 Handbook on Women Workers, 40.

  42. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States 1975, 347; Chafe, The American Woman, 218.

  43. Cherlin, Marriage, 51; Klein, 43; Hazel Erskine, “The Polls: Women’s Roles,” Public Opinion Quarterly 35 (Summer 1971): 282–87; and Barbara McGowan, “Postwar Attitudes toward Women and Work,” in Dorothy McGuigan, ed., New Research on Women and Sex Roles (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1976); Leila Rupp, Surviving in the Doldrums (New York: Oxford, 1987), 36.

  44. Letter dated August 4, 1964, from Glen Ridge, Letters, Betty Friedan Papers.

  45. Harvey, 134.

  46. Harvey, 135.

  47. See Pauline Bart, Depression in Middle-Aged Women, unpublished dissertation, UCLA, 1967. Public Health Service, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1968, vol. II, part A, and unpublished data, quoted in Social Indicators, 26; Dorothy Barclay, “After the Children Leave Home,” New York Times Magazine, September 19, 1951; “What Women Want,” Newsweek, May 21, 1956.

  48. Author’s interview with Doris Earnshaw, March 11, 1998, Berkeley, California.

  49. Harvey, 145.

  50. May, quoting one of Kellogg respondents, 226.

  51. Life, January 4, 1954, 42–45. Sidonie M. Gruenberg and Hilda S. Krech, The Modern Mothers’ Dilemma, (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1957), pamphlet No. 247, 18–20. Joanne Vanek, “Household Work, Wage Work and Sexual Equality,” in Sarah Berk, ed., Women and Household Labor (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980); Heidi Hartmann, “The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle,” Signs (Spring 1981): 366–94; Nadine Brozan, “Men and Housework: Do They or Don’t They?” New York Times, April 4, 1980, 52.

  52. This happened to my own mother, Ida G. Rosen, without whose earnings I could not have bought books or clothes during college. Author’s interview with IGR in New York, 1973.

  53. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marya Farnham, The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 370–71.

  54. Quoted in Esquire, July 1962; author’s interview with Alice Quaytman, 1987, Oakland, California; author’s interview with Wendel and Alice Brunner, 1996, Berkeley, California.

  55. Margaret Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (New York: Dell, 1949), 35.

  56. Jennifer Levine, “A Study of the Changing Influence of Societal Attitudes Upon Three Cohorts of Women Veterinary Students,” unpublished senior thesis, U.C. Davis, June 1985. Rhode, Justice and Gender, chapter 4; Lundberg and Farnham, 771; Chafe, The American Woman, 106.

  57. Rupp, Surviving.

  58. Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale, 1987).

  59. Ellen Carol DuBois used the term “left feminists” in her article, “Eleanor Flexner and the History of American Feminism,” Gender and History 3 (Spring 1991): 84. All my information on CAW comes from Amy Swerdlow’s pioneering essay, “The Congress of American Women: Left-Feminist Peace Politics in the Cold War,” in Linda Kerber, Kathryn Sklar, and Alice Kessler-Harris, eds., U.S. History As Women’s History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). The contributions of the Old Left to the women’s movement of the 1960s can be found in the Bibliography.

  60. Harvey, 209–11.

  61. The New York neighborhood was Knickerbocker Village, the California town was El Cerrito, and the preschool was in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the early sixties, some former Communists joined city and state commissions on the status of women in order to focus attention on the problem of women workers and women in minority groups. By then, most were no longer in the party, but were still activists. Author’s interviews with three women in Northern California, former members of the Communist Party, in “The Radical Elders Oral Project,” who do not wish to be identified.

  62. Stella Novicki, “Back of the Yards,” in Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers, Alice and Staughton Lynd, eds., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973; 1981 edition), 83–84.

  63. Betty Millard, “Woman Against Myth,” New Masses, December 30, 1947.

  64. Author’s interviews with Alice Quaytman, April 1985, 1987, and 1997, in Oakland and Hayward, California.

  65. Harvey, 223.

  66. Eleanor Flexner, quoted by Fitzpatrick, xiv. Gerda Lerner, “The Lady and the Mill Girl,” first appeared in Midcontinent American Studies 10:1 (1969).

  67. Klein, 44; “The Girls,” Life, August 1949, 39–40; “An Introduction by Mrs. Peter Marshall,” Life, December 24, 1956, 2–3; Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 44. This included New York Times, Newsweek. Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, Time, and CBS Television, which are cited in Sara Evans, Born for Liberty (New York: Free Press, 1997), 265.

  68. National Manpower Council, Womanpower in Today’s World: A Statement with Chapters by the Council Staff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957); National Manpower Council, Work in the Lives of Married Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958).

  69. Interview with Susan Ikenberry, Washington, D.C., March 8, 1998, the daughter of this mother. The city in which this took place was White Plains, New York, where one young woman was not permitted to visit this home in 1959. Author’s interview with “Barbara Shields,” (not her actual name) July 18, 1998.

  70. Dorothy Thompson, “It’s All the Fault of Women,” Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1960, 11.

  Chapter Two: Female Generation Gap

  A version of this chapter originally appeared in the collection U.S. History As Women’s History, Linda Kerber, Kathryn Sklar, and Alice Kessler-Harris, eds., (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), which was collectively dedicated to Gerda Lerner.

  1. Anna Quindlen, “Mother’s Choice,” Ms., February 1988, 55.

  2. Letter to Betty Friedan, July 23, 1970, from Kansas City, Missouri, Friedan Papers.

  3. Paula Weideger, “Womb Worship,” Ms., February 1988, 54.

  4. For demographic data, see Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage. For an overview of the baby boom generation and its impact on American culture, see Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980).

  5. “The Generation Gap,” Life, May 17, 1968; “TV: Poignant Study of Generation Gap, Fathers and Sons in CBS Documentary,” New York Times, August 13, 1969.

  6. See Richard Flacks, “The Liberated Generation: An Explanation of the Roots of Student Protest,” in Conformity, Resistance and Self-Determination, Richard Flacks, ed., (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973). See, for example, the classic study by Kenneth Keniston, Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth (New Yo
rk: Harcourt Brace, 1968), especially the appendix. Both Flacks and Keniston included young women among the activists they studied, but they based their analyses and conclusions on the male experience.

  7. Susan Griffin, panel discussion on the women’s movement, Berkeley, California, October 1988. For scholarly perspectives on the different ways daughters and sons individuate from their mothers, see Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: The Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), and Jean Baker Miller, ed., Psychoanalysis and Women (New York: Vintage, 1978).

  8. Phyllis Chesler, Letter to a Young Feminist (New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1997), 55. Phyllis Schlafly, “The Right to Be a Woman,” The Phyllis Schlafly Report 6 (November 1972): 4.

  9. Lauri Umansky, Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

  10. Barbara Berg, The Crisis of the Working Mother (New York: Summit, 1986), 40.

  11. Dorothy Thompson, “It’s All the Fault of Women,” Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1960, 11.

  12. Lynn White, Educating Our Daughters (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 77–78, 82, 85, 91. Mary Bunting, “The Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study,” in American Council on Education, The Educational Record, October 1961, 19; Adlai Stevenson, “Commencement Address,” reprinted in Woman’s Home Companion, September 1955, 29–31; Robert Coughlan, “Changing Roles in Modern Marriage,” Life, December 24, 1956, 110–12.

  13. New York Times, June 7, 1945, 1. Quoted in Eugenia Kaledin, Mothers and More: American Women in the 1950s (Boston: Twayne, 1984), 44; Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 145.

  14. Letter to Betty Friedan from Ruth Kelso from Guilford, Connecticut, March 4, 1963, Friedan Papers; Letter to Betty Friedan, September 19, 1964, Friedan Papers; Kaledin, 58; Social Indicators, 90.

  15. Kaledin, 34. See Elizabeth Stone, “Mothers and Daughters,” New York Times Magazine, May 13, 1979, 91.