The Feminine Mystique

Friedan went in search of a real-life example of the happy, modern housewife. In some instances, she found women who had transitioned from housewifery to careers. In other instances, she found women who fit “the new image of feminine fulfillment,” but Friedan wondered if they were truly fulfilled. In one upper middle-class community, “there were twenty-eight wives,” some who had graduated from college and others who had quit. Their husbands were professionals. Only one wife was a career woman, the others were devoted to family life and spent a little time doing community work. Most had had natural childbirths, breast-fed their babies, and were pregnant at or near the age of forty. They were so devoted to the feminine mystique that they encouraged their daughters to become “a wife and mother, like mummy.”

When Friedan looked deeper, she saw that “sixteen out of twenty-eight” of these women were in analysis. Most were taking tranquilizers, and a few had attempted suicide. Others had been hospitalized for depression or psychosis. Twelve of them were having extramarital affairs “in fact or fantasy.” These housewives, who were envied for their homes, marriages, and children, could not find fulfillment in anything. They had a sense of purpose when their children were little. Some, therefore, continued to have children, but they knew that they could not keep having babies just to feel like somebody.

Friedan noted that the housewives in this community were always busy with chores, chauffeuring their children, gardening, or helping with homework. She studied two households in which two wives in their thirties lived. Mrs. W. was a full-time housewife who was busy for most of the day with household duties. Mrs. D. was a microbiologist who did her chores before work. Friedan wonders why Mrs. W. claimed never to have additional time, not even to read in the evenings, when she lived in a house that was the same size as Mrs. D.’s.

Friedan found the same pattern when comparing women who identified as “housewives” to career women, both in the suburbs and in the cities. Housewives always seemed to spend more time on housework—a phenomenon which Friedan attributed to the expansion of housework, “mother-work,” and other household duties to make up for her lack of a function in society. Appliances did not, in fact, save the housewife time. Instead, they compelled her to spend even more time on household chores than her mother did. The boredom and the “empty feeling” that housewives experienced led them to perform more chores than necessary.

Women, Friedan discovered, tended to move to the suburbs after deciding to give up a “job or profession” to become “a full-time housewife.” On the other hand, a woman who pursues a “definite professional goal is less likely to move to the suburbs.” Women in the suburbs tend not to take on interesting community work out of fear that it will take time away from their families. Thus, the interesting volunteer jobs, particularly leadership posts, are filled by men.

Friedan notes the popularity of open-plan houses and how they do not really offer any privacy—they are “one free-flowing room where women can expand their housework and never really be alone.” The housewife convinces herself that she must always watch after her children, lest they be deprived of something in her absence.

The trend of “togetherness” convinced many women that the key to happiness lay in sharing in their husband and children’s lives. They insisted that their husbands share the housework, but that still did not compensate for the feeling housewives had of being “shut out of the larger world.”

A male Minneapolis schoolteacher undermined the notion that a housewife’s work was an “interminable chore” by taking over a suburban home and performing all necessary chores and other household duties within a day. Studies validated his claim that women were working “more than twice as hard as thy should.”

Housewives complained of an incessant “tired feeling” which doctors either dismissed or attempted to treat with pills, vitamins, injections, diets, or tranquilizers. Other doctors found that women got “as much or more sleep than they [needed]” and attributed the feeling to boredom.

Women’s magazines published ideas for “cures” for fatigue, including more praise from husbands, not demanding too much from oneself, and trying to find honest enjoyment in one aspect of the job, such as cooking. For the housewives whom Friedan interviewed, the problem was not having too much to do, “but too little.” Those who had nothing to do passed the time by drinking alcohol or eating excessively.

Some social critics commented that when men performed chores, the chores interfered with their careers. However, Friedan found that men did not allow housework to interfere with their careers. When men did housework, it was because their wives worked or made a career out of housework, which made them unable to complete all tasks. When housework did expand to fill a man’s available time, it seemed to be an excuse “for not meeting the challenge of their own careers.”

Women who could afford servants fired them so that they could dedicate more time to housework, due to an inability to find any other activities that would give them a sense of purpose. Though the housewife expanded her time available to perform housework, it still presented little challenge or stimulation to the adult mind. Some housewives tried to make up for the lack of a challenge by becoming home “experts.” This made the women hard to live with, for the wives sometimes treated their husbands like “part-time servants.”