Recently I finished Betty Friedan's classic, "The Feminine Mystique", which came out nearly 50 years ago and marked the rebirth of the American feminist movement. "The Feminine Mystique" is the name Ms. Friedan gave to the idea that women were not to have a life or mind of their own but were to live through their husbands and children. Large numbers of American women after WWII bought into this myth with disastrous consequences to themselves and their families.
Sad to say, the "Feminine Mystique" is still alive today. It is especially alive in conservative Evangelical churches like the one I attend. While it is accepted now that women have to work, the idea that a woman has a life of the mind that needs to be nurtured and developed isn't even brought up. I just have to look at the books that the mens' study group are reading compared to the ones the womens' study group are reading.
Over and over again Ms. Friedan speaks of education, the life of the mind, having an identity of one's own, as being absolutely crucial if a woman is to develop and grow as a person. The "feminine mystique" leaves her stunted. It leaves her a princess, never a queen. There is still a lot of pressure in 2012 to not be interested in intellectual things if one is female. But as Ms. Friedan says, to give in to the feminine mystique is to take the easy way out. It is a lot easier, she says, to have a baby than to get an "A."
Over and over again I had to turn to the front of the book and ask when was this written, because it is still sadly all too true of many of the women I know today. Girls that are more interested in having babies than inventing or discovering things. It seems sometimes that the only message that has sunk in after 40 years of feminism is that you don't have to wait until marriage to have sex or babies and the sooner you start having both the more worth you have. This is definitely NOT what Ms. Friedan had in mind as she was speaking out against such attitudes back in 1963.
But what really got my attention was when she said that infantile mothers produce infantile children, children that seem to have no aims or goals in life--and I've certainly seen a lot of that. And then. on page 198, in the middle of the chapter entitled "Progressive Dehumanization", she specifically mentions the increase in autism rates (in 1963)!
This is what she wrote:
"At its most extreme, this pattern of progressive dehumanization can be seen in the cases of schizophrenic children: 'autistic' or 'atypical' children, as they are sometimes called. I visited a famous clinic which has been studying these children for almost twenty years. During this period, cases of these children, arrested at a very primitive, sub-infantile level, have seemed to some to be on the increase. The authorities differ as to the cause of this strange condition, and whether it is actually on the increase or only seems to be because it is now more often diagnosed. Until quite recently, many of these children were thought to be mentally retarded. But this condition is being seen more frequently now, in hospitals and clinics, by doctors and psychiatrists. And it is not the same as the irreversible, organic types of mental retardation. It can be treated, and sometimes cured.
"These children often identify themselves with things, inanimate objects--cars, radios, etc., or with animals--pigs, dogs, cats. The crux of the problem seems to be that these children have not organized or developed strong enough selves to cope even with the child's reality; they cannot distinguish themselves as separate from the outside world; they live on the level of things or of instinctual biological impulse that has not been organized into a human framework at all."
She goes on to say that one of the doctors she talked to said that "it's one of the things we've always known, if the parent has a fragile ego, the child will" and that many of the mothers of these children were extremely immature and dependent on on others even though they seemed on the surface to be well-adjusted.
Now, granted, she was writing 50 years ago and much more is known about the autism spectrum and its possible causes than was known back then. And back then a very fashionable theory was that autism was caused by so-called "refrigerator mothers"--mothers who were distant, cold. I am sure that it caused my own mother much grief to hear herself characterized that way.
But if I understand Ms. Friedan correctly, she is not saying "blame the mother," she is saying "blame the system." That it is society that has as much to do with creating a culture of autism as it is genetic factors or chemical exposure. It would be very interesting to look at the families of autistic children and see what kind of dynamics are at play. That if you are in a culture that encourages withdrawal from the "world" at the expense of developing the mind--for example, the rise of homeschooling among evangelicals--a rise in autism or autistic-like symptoms might very well be the result. I have often thought that we are inadvertently developing an autistic culture by the fact that so many are addicted to things like computers at the expense of face-to-face socializing.
In short, at 50, "The Feminine Mystique" remains a provocative (and prophetic) book.
Sad to say, the "Feminine Mystique" is still alive today. It is especially alive in conservative Evangelical churches like the one I attend. While it is accepted now that women have to work, the idea that a woman has a life of the mind that needs to be nurtured and developed isn't even brought up. I just have to look at the books that the mens' study group are reading compared to the ones the womens' study group are reading.
Over and over again Ms. Friedan speaks of education, the life of the mind, having an identity of one's own, as being absolutely crucial if a woman is to develop and grow as a person. The "feminine mystique" leaves her stunted. It leaves her a princess, never a queen. There is still a lot of pressure in 2012 to not be interested in intellectual things if one is female. But as Ms. Friedan says, to give in to the feminine mystique is to take the easy way out. It is a lot easier, she says, to have a baby than to get an "A."
Over and over again I had to turn to the front of the book and ask when was this written, because it is still sadly all too true of many of the women I know today. Girls that are more interested in having babies than inventing or discovering things. It seems sometimes that the only message that has sunk in after 40 years of feminism is that you don't have to wait until marriage to have sex or babies and the sooner you start having both the more worth you have. This is definitely NOT what Ms. Friedan had in mind as she was speaking out against such attitudes back in 1963.
But what really got my attention was when she said that infantile mothers produce infantile children, children that seem to have no aims or goals in life--and I've certainly seen a lot of that. And then. on page 198, in the middle of the chapter entitled "Progressive Dehumanization", she specifically mentions the increase in autism rates (in 1963)!
This is what she wrote:
"At its most extreme, this pattern of progressive dehumanization can be seen in the cases of schizophrenic children: 'autistic' or 'atypical' children, as they are sometimes called. I visited a famous clinic which has been studying these children for almost twenty years. During this period, cases of these children, arrested at a very primitive, sub-infantile level, have seemed to some to be on the increase. The authorities differ as to the cause of this strange condition, and whether it is actually on the increase or only seems to be because it is now more often diagnosed. Until quite recently, many of these children were thought to be mentally retarded. But this condition is being seen more frequently now, in hospitals and clinics, by doctors and psychiatrists. And it is not the same as the irreversible, organic types of mental retardation. It can be treated, and sometimes cured.
"These children often identify themselves with things, inanimate objects--cars, radios, etc., or with animals--pigs, dogs, cats. The crux of the problem seems to be that these children have not organized or developed strong enough selves to cope even with the child's reality; they cannot distinguish themselves as separate from the outside world; they live on the level of things or of instinctual biological impulse that has not been organized into a human framework at all."
She goes on to say that one of the doctors she talked to said that "it's one of the things we've always known, if the parent has a fragile ego, the child will" and that many of the mothers of these children were extremely immature and dependent on on others even though they seemed on the surface to be well-adjusted.
Now, granted, she was writing 50 years ago and much more is known about the autism spectrum and its possible causes than was known back then. And back then a very fashionable theory was that autism was caused by so-called "refrigerator mothers"--mothers who were distant, cold. I am sure that it caused my own mother much grief to hear herself characterized that way.
But if I understand Ms. Friedan correctly, she is not saying "blame the mother," she is saying "blame the system." That it is society that has as much to do with creating a culture of autism as it is genetic factors or chemical exposure. It would be very interesting to look at the families of autistic children and see what kind of dynamics are at play. That if you are in a culture that encourages withdrawal from the "world" at the expense of developing the mind--for example, the rise of homeschooling among evangelicals--a rise in autism or autistic-like symptoms might very well be the result. I have often thought that we are inadvertently developing an autistic culture by the fact that so many are addicted to things like computers at the expense of face-to-face socializing.
In short, at 50, "The Feminine Mystique" remains a provocative (and prophetic) book.
