The Feminine Mystique

  30. Ernest Jones, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 446.

  31. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Woman—A Psychoanalytical Interpretation, New York, 1944, Vol. I, pp. 224 ff.

  32. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 251 ff.

  33. Sigmund Freud, “The Anatomy of the Mental Personality,” in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 96.

  Chapter 6. THE FUNCTIONAL FREEZE, THE FEMININE PROTEST, AND MARGARET MEAD

  1. Henry A. Bowman, Marriage for Moderns, New York, 1942, p. 21.

  2. Ibid., pp. 22 ff.

  3. Ibid., pp. 62 ff.

  4. Ibid., pp. 74—76.

  5. Ibid., pp. 66 ff.

  6. Talcott Parsons, “Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States,” in Essays in Sociological Theory, Glencoe, Ill., 1949, pp. 223 ff.

  7. Talcott Parsons, “An Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification,” op. cit., pp. 174 ff.

  8. Mirra Komarovsky, Women in the Modern World, Their Education and Their Dilemmas, Boston, 1953, pp. 52—61.

  9. Ibid., p. 66.

  10. Ibid., pp. 72—74.

  11. Mirra Komarovsky, “Functional Analysis of Sex Roles,” American Sociological Review, August, 1950. See also “Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles,” American Journal of Sociology, November, 1946.

  12. Kingsley Davis, “The Myth of Functional Analysis as a Special Method in Sociology and Anthropology,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 24, No. 6, December, 1959, pp. 757—772. Davis points out that functionalism became more or less identical with sociology itself. There is provocative evidence that the very study of sociology, in recent years, has persuaded college women to limit themselves to their “functional” traditional sexual role. A report on “The Status of Women in Professional Sociology” (Sylvia Fleis Fava, American Sociological Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, April, 1960) shows that while most of the students in sociology undergraduate classes are women, from 1949 to 1958 there was a sharp decline in both the number and proportion of degrees in sociology awarded to women. (4,143 B.A.’s in 1949 down to a low of 3,200 in 1955, 3,606 in 1958). And while one-half to two-thirds of the undergraduate degrees in sociology were awarded to women, women received only 25 to 43 per cent of the master’s degrees, and only 8 to 19 per cent of the Ph.D.’s. While the number of women earning graduate degrees in all fields has declined sharply during the era of the feminine mystique, the field of sociology showed, in comparison to other fields, an unusually high “mortality” rate.

  13. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, New York, 1935, pp. 279 ff.

  14. Margaret Mead, From the South Seas, New York, 1939, p. 321.

  15. Margaret Mead, Male and Female, New York, 1955, pp. 16—18.

  16. Ibid., p. 26.

  17. Ibid., footnotes, pp. 289 ff:

  I did not begin to work seriously with the zones of the body until I went to the Arapesh in 1931. While I was generally familiar with Freud’s basic work on the subject, I had not seen how it might be applied in the field until I read Geza Roheim’s first field report, “Psychoanalysis of Primitive Culture Types” “I then sent home for abstracts of K. Abraham’s work. After I became acquainted with Erik Homburger Erikson’s systematic handling of these ideas, they became an integral part of my theoretical equipment.

  18. Ibid., pp. 50 f.

  19. Ibid., pp. 72 ff.

  20. Ibid., pp. 84 ff.

  21. Ibid., p. 85.

  22. Ibid., pp. 125 ff.

  23. Ibid., pp. 135 ff.

  24. Ibid., pp. 274 ff.

  25. Ibid., pp. 278 ff.

  26. Ibid., pp. 276—285.

  27. Margaret Mead, Introduction to From the South Seas, New York, 1939, p. xiii. “It was no use permitting children to develop values different from those of their society…”

  28. Marie Jahoda and Joan Havel, “Psychological Problems of Women in Different Social Roles—A Case History of Problem Formulation in Research,” Educational Record, Vol. 36, 1955, pp. 325—333.

  Chapter 7. THE SEX-DIRECTED EDUCATORS

  1. Mabel Newcomer, A Century of Higher Education for Women, New York, 1959, pp. 45 ff. The proportion of women among college students in the U.S. increased from 21 per cent in 1870 to 47 per cent in 1920; it had declined to 35. 2 per cent in 1958. Five women’s colleges had closed; 21 had become coeducational; 2 had become junior colleges. In 1956, 3 out of 5 women in the coeducational colleges were taking secretarial, nursing, home economics, or education courses. Less than 1 out of 10 doctorates were granted to women, compared to 1 in 6 in 1920, 13 per cent in 1940. Not since before World War I have the percentages of American women receiving professional degrees been as consistently low as in this period. The extent of the retrogression of American women can also be measured in terms of their failure to develop to their own potential. According to Womanpower, of all the young women capable of doing college work, only one out of four goes to college, compared to one out of two men; only one out of 300 women capable of earning a Ph.D. actually does so, compared to one out of 30 men. If the present situation continues, American women may soon rank among the most “backward” women in the world. The U.S. is probably the only nation where the proportion of women gaining higher education has decreased in the past 20 years; it has steadily increased in Sweden, Britain, and France, as well as the emerging nations of Asia and the communist countries. By the 1950’s, a larger proportion of French women were obtaining higher education than American women; the proportion of French women in the professions had more than doubled in fifty years. The proportion of French women in the medical profession alone is five times that of American women; 70 per cent of the doctors in the Soviet Union are women, compared to 5 per cent in America. See Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women’s Two Roles—Home and Work, London, 1956, pp. 33—64.

  2. Mervin B. Freedman, “The Passage through College,” in Personality Development During the College Years, ed. by Nevitt Sanford, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XII, No. 4, 1956, pp. 15 ff.

  3. John Bushnel, “Student Culture at Vassar,” in The American College, ed. by Nevitt Sanford, New York and London, 1962, pp. 509 ff.

  4. Lynn White, Educating Our Daughters, New York, 1950, pp. 18—48.

  5. Ibid., p. 76.

  6. Ibid., pp. 77 ff.

  7. Ibid., p. 79.

  8. See Dael Wolfle, America’s Resources of Specialized Talent, New York, 1954.

  9. Cited in an address by Judge Mary H. Donlon in proceedings of “Conference on the Present Status and Prospective Trends of Research on the Education of Women,” 1957, American Council on Education, Washington, D.C.

  10. See “The Bright Girl: A Major Source of Untapped Talent,” Guidance Newsletter, Science Research Associates Inc., Chicago, Ill., May, 1959.

  11. See Dael Wolfle, op. cit.

  12. John Summerskill, “Dropouts from College,” in The American College, p. 631.

  13. Joseph M. Jones, “Does Overpopulation Mean Poverty?” Center for International Economic Growth, Washington, 1962. See also United Nations Demographic Yearbook, New York, 1960, pp. 580 ff. By 1958, in the United States, more girls were marrying from 15 to 19 years of age than from any other age group. In all of the other advanced nations, and many of the emerging underdeveloped nations, most girls married from 20 to 24 or after 25. The U.S. pattern of teenage marriage could only be found in countries like Paraguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Egypt, Iraq and the Fiji Islands.

  14. Nevitt Sanford, “Higher Education as a Social Problem,” in The American College, p. 23.

  15. Elizabeth Douvan and Carol Kaye, “Motivational Factors in College Entrance,” in The American College, pp. 202—206.

  16. Ibid., pp. 208 ff.

  17. Esther Lloyd-Jones, “Women Today and Their Education,” Teacher’s College Record, Vol. 57, No. 1, October, 1955; and No. 7, April, 1956. See also Opal David, The Education of Women’ signs for the Future, American Council on Education, Washington, D.C., 1957.

  18. Mary
Ann Guitar, “College Marriage Courses—Fun or Fraud?” Mademoiselle, February, 1961.

  19. Helen Deutsch, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 290.

  20. Mirra Komarovsky, op. cit., p. 70. Research studies indicate that 40 per cent of college girls “play dumb” with men. Since the ones who do not include those not excessively overburdened with intelligence, the great majority of American girls who are gifted with high intelligence evidently learn to hide it.

  21. Jean Macfarlane and Lester Sontag, Research reported to the Commission on the Education of Women, Washington, D.C., 1954, (mimeo ms.).

  22. Harold Webster,’ some Quantitative Results, “in Personality Development During the College Years, ed. by Nevitt Sanford, Journal of Social Issues, 1956, Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 36.

  23. Nevitt Sanford, Personality Development During the College Years, Journal of Social Issues, 1956, Vol. 12, No. 4.

  24. Mervin B. Freedman,’ studies of College Alumni,” in The American College, p. 878.

  25. Lynn White, op. cit., p. 117.

  26. Ibid., pp. 119 ff.

  27. Max Lerner, America As a Civilization, New York, 1957, pp. 608—611:

  The crux of it lies neither in the biological nor economic disabilities of women but in their sense of being caught between a man’s world in which they have no real will to achieve and a world of their own in which they find it hard to be fulfilled…. When Walt Whitman exhorted women “to give up toys and fictions and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent, stormy life,” he was thinking—as were many of his contemporaries—of the wrong kind of equalitarianism…. If she is to discover her identity, she must start by basing her belief in herself on her womanliness rather than on the movement for feminism. Margaret Mead has pointed out that the biological life cycle of the woman has certain well-marked phases from menarche through the birth of her children to her menopause; that in these stages of her life cycle, as in her basic bodily rhythms, she can feel secure in her womanhood and does not have to assert her potency as the male does. Similarly, while the multiple roles that she must play in life are bewildering, she can fulfill them without distraction if she knows that her central role is that of a woman…. Her central function, however, remains that of creating a life style for herself and for the home in which she is life creator and life sustainer.

  28. See Philip E. Jacob, Changing Values in College, New York, 1957.

  29. Margaret Mead, “New Look at Early Marriages,” interview in U.S. News and World Report, June 6, 1960.

  Chapter 8. THE MISTAKEN CHOICE

  1. See the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, New York, 1960, pp. 99—118 and pp. 476—490; p. 580. The annual rate of population increase in the U.S. in the years 1955—59 was far higher than that of other Western nations, and higher than that of India, Japan, Burma, and Pakistan. In fact, the increase for North America (1.8) exceeded the world rate (1.7). The rate for Europe was .8; for the USSR 1.7; Asia 1.8; Africa 1.9; and South America 2.3. The increase in the underdeveloped nations was, of course, largely due to medical advances and the drop in death rate; in America it was almost completely due to increased birth rate, earlier marriage, and larger families. For the birth rate continued to rise in the U.S. from 1950 to 1959, while it was falling in countries like France, Norway, Sweden, the USSR, India and Japan. The U.S. was the only so-called “advanced” nation, and one of the few nations in the world where, in 1958, more girls married at ages 15 to 19 than at any other age. Even the other countries which showed a rise in the birth rate—Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Chile, New Zealand, Peru—did not show this phenomenon of teenage marriage.

  2. See “The Woman with Brains (continued),” New York Times Magazine, January 17, 1960, for the outraged letters in response to an article by Marya Mannes, “Female Intelligence—Who Wants It?” New York Times Magazine, January 3, 1960.

  3. See National Manpower Council, Womanpower, New York, 1957. In 1940, more than half of all employed women in the U.S. were under 25, and one-fifth were over 45. In the 1950’s peak participation in paid employment occurs among young women of 18 and 19—and women over 45, the great majority of whom hold jobs for which little training is required. The new preponderance of older married women in the working force is partly due to the fact that so few women in their twenties and thirties now work, in the U.S. Two out of five of all employed women are now over 45, most of them wives and mothers, working part time at unskilled work. Those reports of millions of American wives working outside the home are misleading in more ways than one: of all employed women, only one-third hold full-time jobs, one-third work full time only part of the year—for instance, extra saleswomen in the department stores at Christmas—and one-third work part time, part of the year. The women in the professions are, for the most part, that dwindling minority of single women; the older untrained wives and mothers, like the untrained 18-year-olds, are concentrated at the lower end of the skill ladder and the pay scales, in factory, service, sales and office work. Considering the growth in the population, and the increasing professionalization of work in America, the startling phenomenon is not the much-advertised, relatively insignificant increase in the numbers of American women who now work outside the home, but the fact that two out of three adult American women do not work outside the home, and the increasing millions of young women who are not skilled or educated for work in any profession. See also Theodore Caplow, The Sociology of Work, 1954, and Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women’s Two Roles—Home and Work, London, 1956.

  4. Edward Strecker, Their Mother’s Sons, Philadelphia and New York, 1946, pp. 52—59.

  5. Ibid., pp. 31 ff.

  6. Farnham and Lundberg, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, p. 271. See also Lynn White, Educating Our Daughters, p. 90.

  Preliminary results of the careful study of American sex habits being conducted at the University of Indiana by Dr. A. C. Kinsey indicate that there is an inverse correlation between education and the ability of a woman to achieve habitual orgastic experience in marriage. According to the present evidence, admittedly tentative, nearly 65 per cent of the marital intercourse had by women with college backgrounds is had without orgasm for them, as compared to about 15 per cent for married women who have gone no further than grade school.

  7. Alfred C. Kinsey, et al., Staff of the Institute for Sex Research, Indiana University, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Philadelphia and London, 1953, pp. 378 ff.

  8. Lois Meek Stolz, “Effects of Maternal Employment on Children: Evidence from Research,” Child Development, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1960, pp. 749—782.

  9. H. F. Southard, “Mothers” Dilemma: To Work or Not?” New York Times Magazine, July 17, 1960.

  10. Stolz, op. cit. See also Myrdal and Klein, op. cit., pp. 125 ff.

  11. Benjamin Spock, “Russian Children Don’t Whine, Squabble or Break Things—Why?” Ladies” Home Journal, October, 1960.

  12. David Levy, Maternal Overprotection, New York, 1943.

  13. Arnold W. Green, “The Middle-Class Male Child and Neurosis,” American Sociological Review, Vol. II, No. 1, 1946.

  Chapter 9. THE SEXUAL SELL

  1. The studies upon which this chapter is based were done by the Staff of the Institute for Motivational Research, directed by Dr. Ernest Dichter. They were made available to me through the courtesy of Dr. Dichter and his colleagues, and are on file at the Institute, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

  2. Harrison Kinney, Has Anybody Seen My Father?,, New York, 1960.

  Chapter 10. HOUSEWIFERY EXPANDS TO FILL THE TIME AVAILABLE

  1. Jhan and June Robbins, “Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped,” Redbook, September, 1960.

  2. Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy and Social Research, “Women During the War and After,” Bryn Mawr College, 1945.

  3. Theodore Caplow points out in The Sociology of Work, p. 234, that with the rapidly expanding economy since 1900, and the extremely rapid urbanization of the United States, the increase in the employment of women from 20.4
per cent in 1900 to 28.5 per cent in 1950 was exceedingly modest. Recent studies of time spent by American housewives on housework, which confirm my description of the Parkinson effect, are summarized by Jean Warren, “Time: Resource or Utility,” Journal of Home Economics, Vol. 49, January, 1957, pp. 21 ff. Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein in Women’s Two Roles—Home and Work cite a French study which showed that working mothers reduced time spent on housework by 30 hours a week, compared to a full-time housewife. The work week of a working mother with three children broke down to 35.2 hours on the job, 48.3 hours on housework; the full-time housewife spent 77.7 hours on housework. The mother with a full-time job or profession, as well as the housekeeping and children, worked only one hour a day longer than the full-time housewife.

  4. Robert Wood, Suburbia, Its People and Their Politics, Boston, 1959.