breaking the "women's pact

...that is precisely how I felt about the briefs I wrote for clients...

...The reality I depict rings true enough that women can and do find that courage—the courage to reject the idea that the housewife is a pariah and accept the unfashionable notion that society should respect and support the woman at home...

...This is not to suggest that society interfere with a woman's decision to follow the feminist script...

...But why did feminists think it necessary that housewives join them in the workplace...

...the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else...

...And, no, I don't regret not having children...

...To us, all market work is fungible...

...Thus, when feminists broke the pact in the 1960s by loudly proclaiming their disdain of domesticity and contempt for housewives, women at home faced—and many found intolerable—isolation from female approbation...

...The working woman's lament that what she needs is a good wife reflects this same perception...

...In declining to combine the roles, I concluded that continued career success would require me to hold a substantial part of myself aloof from my husband and children: the invisible "wedge-shaped core of darkness" that Virginia Woolf described as being oneself would have to be too large...

...Feminists have convinced society that domestic activities, once thought valuable, are in fact worthless, degrading, and incapable of satisfying anyone with a brain in her head...

...Decrying the housewife's life as a "waste of a human self," Friedan likened her and her fellow matrons to "male patients with portions of their brain shot away and schizophrenics...

...It compels women to distrust their husbands and fear leaving the work force—by nullifying their bargain with husbands and society when wives stayed home to raise families, no-fault converted marriage into a relationship virtually unilaterally revocable at will, thereby destroying the viability of marriage as a woman's career...

...It may seem ironic that through its divorce policy a women's movement disadvantaged housewives and promoted the interests of their husbands...

...Indeed, every action of contemporary feminism has served this goal, which is why feminists have ardently supported the modern sexual libertinism that has encouraged women to mimic male sexual patterns...

...Thus, as Mary Ann Glendon notes, do our divorce laws tell mothers it is unsafe to devote oneself to raising children...

...Rereading Friedan's book today, one is struck by her refreshing honesty in describing the opportunities we were blithely forgoing...

...This perception was accurate...

...Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one...

...Yet Friedan pleaded that the movement was somehow "trapped" into opposing alimony—an excuse typifying the movement's reluctance to assume responsibility for its actions, as if surprised that society had taken it seriously...

...Because there are some women whose response does make full-time child-rearing enjoyable and rewarding, we should support their lives at home and restore the level playing field feminism destroyed...

...If these maternal yearnings are to influence behavior, they must be powerful enough to overcome the feminist triumph that has entrenched in our society the views of Karen DeCrow...

...But most important, as Jane Mansbridge has made clear, the movement felt it had to discourage homemaking because if even 10 percent of women stayed home, this would encourage others to join them, putting working women "at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis men, particularly men whose wives do all the homemaking and child care...

...The declaration of war against homemakers represented by no-fault divorce has had precisely the outcome feminists sought...

...My teacher asked what I wanted to be...

...in writing them, I first learned the meaning of complete devotion...

...I was a woman, and I was a lawyer, and there was an end of it...

...if adjusted for inflation and real growth in income since 1948, this exemption would now be close to $9,000 for each dependent, instead of $2,500...

...In the struggle between masculine work-oriented values and feminine domestic values, the feminine lost...

...Why did feminists believe we deserved such calumny...

...They should leave their children in surrogates' care to go work at so-called meaningful jobs so that someday, if they tried very hard—and perhaps took enough Prozac—they might possibly be as good as a man...

...A defender of the anti-feminist perspective against these opinion-makers is like a heretic fighting a regnant Inquisition...

...Thus with complete candor, de Beauvoir told us why the threat must be neutralized by depicting this tempting, comfortably married woman as "clinging" and a "dead weight," living like (here it comes again) "a parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism...

...Women care very much what other women think...

...This feminist message came right out of Playboy: Easy sex for men without marriage...

...Our belief was recently confirmed by studies of managerial and professional men showing that traditional fathers received 20 percent higher raises than men with working wives, and "those whose wives were at home...

...Despite the opportunities open to all women now," she laments, even the most able "showed no signs of wanting to be anything more than . . . housewives and mothers...

...That this could be said of women, who literally create life within their wombs, indicates the degree to which feminism has sought to denature women, to reshape them in man's image...

...According to societal consensus, however, my choice can only be judged a "sacrifice...

...But feminists would force this constriction upon us all...

...De Beauvoir later boldly argued that society must prevent women from being homemakers: "No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children...

...a woman," she said, "must be slightly ill mentally" to be happy in her "parasitism" of traditional marriage...

...Friedan described the housewife in The Feminine Mystique as a "parasite" who lives without using adult capabilities or intelligence and lacks a real function when devoting herself to children, husband, and home...

...Those who would dismiss such statements as excesses of trash journalism should know that feminist academics equally disdained traditional women...

...This is the entire corpus of feminist dogma...

...We could opt for approval by abandoning home for workplace, or oppose feminist ideology and defend our choice by depicting a starkly different vision of woman's happiness and fulfillment...

...Admittedly, life at home with their children cannot be a joy—incomparable or ordinary—for women who think this life is a sacrifice, and childrearing simply a burden...

...The great irony of the offensive against homemak-ers is that feminists piggybacked on the civil-rights movement to obtain preferential treatment, while using the strategies of stereotype, bigotry, and contempt for an entire group to degrade the housewife's status...

...But feminists will resist, as does Karen DeCrow, when recently arguing: "No man should allow himself to support his wife—no matter how much she favors the idea, no matter how many centuries this domestic pattern has existed, no matter how logical the economics of the arrangement may appear, no matter how good it makes him feel...

...It requires little foresight to know that a housewife is enormously disadvantaged on reentering the job market...

...It was human beings they derided...

...As G. K. Chesterton said, the housewife "is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes...

...It suited homemakers that the first group did not compete much for men...

...Far from claiming discrimination kept women out of the workplace, Friedan blamed the housewife's belief that "she is indispensable and that no one else can take over her job...

...Our no-fault divorce regime that enables men to abandon and impoverish families is the most profound and enduring legacy of feminism...

...Why did women choose to treat other women in this fashion...

...But it is consistent, for by subverting housewives' social and economic security, no-fault institutionalized within our society feminism's diktat that women abandon homemaking for market production...

...We do not want our unique relationship replaced by the substitute mothering of a nanny or a day-care worker...

...For women like us, moreover, life at home seems a gift of virtually unlimited freedom to create a design for living for ourselves and our families and to direct its performance...

...she has "little, if any, desire for a position outside the home, and if she has one it is through . . . necessity...

...In turn, the first and second groups may have thought themselves intellectually and culturally superior to homemakers, but— keeping faith with the pact—usually avoided stating this view and went quietly down their chosen paths...

...Friedan candidly told us back at the beginning, in 1963...

...Sociologist Jessie Bernard agreed in 1972 that the "housewife is a nobody...

...Why did they not just go to work individually, as women had always done— as I set out to do in 1941 and accomplished in 1954...

...The dogma demands that husband and wife discard the different, complementary roles most likely to produce stable marriages...

...While sometimes strained, the pact had never been shattered as it was by contemporary feminists...

...The Women's Pact recognized that women generally fell into three groups...

...The stereotype of the housewife's inferiority set forth in The Feminine Mystique became a cultural truth...

...Society never rebuked these women for refusing to compromise their literary and artistic achievements...

...Those briefs were like helpless children...

...Feminists told these women basically to "be a man...

...I agree with her...

...Part of women's cultural knowledge was the pact between these groups that they would let one another live peacefully and not attack one another's integrity in following their chosen path...

...earned 25 percent more than those whose wives held jobs of their own...

...Since no strategy yet dictated a claim of discrimination, Friedan openly acknowledged that well-educated women were eschewing careers and devoting ourselves to families simply because we wanted to...

...Even some who support the choice for children's sake consider it a sacrifice...

...In 1965, Cosmopolitan's Helen Gurley Brown extolled the career woman's superiority over the housewife, whom she called "a parasite, a dependent, a scrounger, a sponger, [and] a bum...

...My fear stemmed not from the fact that I was a girl—in the Irish working class of my origins, being female meant you were more F. Carolyn Graglia is an attorney who became a housewife...

...Some of us were very happy in our marriages...

...for married men, working wives to help support the family...

...Featured in Time magazine in 1970 was Gloria Steinem's famous essay describing traditional women as "inferiors," "dependent creatures who are still children" and, yes, again, "parasites...

...Either way, the women's pact was shattered...

...Contemporary feminism's effort to re-educate housewives by disabusing them of this quaint notion pitted the most educated, sophisticated, wealthy, aggressive, and masculine portion of the female population against women who generally possessed less education, wealth, and worldly experience, who were more likely to be docile than aggressive, feminine than masculine...

...The workplace became, in large part, a substitute for family, preempting the bulk of a woman's attention, as she relinquished her child-nurturing role and her home as the primary locus of child-rearing...

...Women in the second group will marry and often bear children but— like the aristocracy or entertainment elite—will leave child-rearing largely to others and pursue careers or other interests...

...Neither should it rebuke other women for refusing to compromise their own artistry of motherhood and domesticity...

...We must now begin to dismantle the regime that puts at profound disadvantage the traditional woman who seeks a very different delight and contentment...

...No, I feared rising above my station, above my class, and to my relief, my teacher only said I must work hard for scholarship money...

...To become a homemaker now, a woman may well need the courage of a heretic...

...I stopped writing them because I believed they would have been masters too jealous of my husband and my children...

...Women in the third group will choose marriage as their primary career, devoting themselves mainly to husband, children, and domesticity...

...We believe that our child's well-being depends on responsiveness to need as undivided as possible and on continuing, loving interaction with one to whom this child is incomparably precious...

...Well, paintings are objects but they're also helpless...

...Heeding de Beauvoir's directive, feminists discourage the domestic choice by supporting child-care subsidies...

...Many express strong yearnings to be home with their children and guilt over their choices...

...The only disdain I have ever experienced, in fact, has come from contemporary feminists who have spent three decades or more waging war against the choice I made along with countless millions of my contemporaries and our younger sisters—the choice to be a homemaking wife in a traditional marriage with a breadwinning husband...

...Those in the first are unable or unwilling to marry, or are profoundly afraid of childbirth, and will devote their lives to a career (many of them once entered religious orders...

...With these assaults, feminists broke what I call the "Women's Pact," which existed long before feminism's advent and, if the feminist regime is ever ended, will have to reassert itself in the future...

...a lawyer," I said, and I said it with fear...

...Feminists have thus weakened society by curtailing a female activity that substantially contributes to societal health and stability, and they have injured those women who could find motherhood, unencumbered by market employment, to be an incomparable joy...

...Why, in 1963, do not more women pursue careers, now that "all professions are finally open to women" after the "removal of all the legal, political, economic, and educational barriers...

...Virginia Woolf never compromised her market achievements with motherhood...

...their opinions greatly affect a woman's confidence as to what she should expect from men and from herself...

...nor did Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, or George Eliot...

...But neither should we continue to validate destruction of the Women's Pact by those who sought to make us all follow their script...

...This article is based on her forthcoming book, Awakened Femininity: A Brief Against Feminism...

...The feminist diktat denies the happiness of a domestic arena to women who believe that striving in the workplace is less agreeable than concentrating on husband, children, and home...

...Sociologist David Popenoe recently attacked "parental androgyny"—the view that men can and should serve as primary caretakers of young chil-dren—and he also deplored "limited infant-parent contacts and non-parental childrearing...

...But feminists instead seek subsidized institutional child care that disfavors families where the mother remains at home by taxing and otherwise economically burdening them to pay for child care and other benefits for working women...

...I feared being consumed by my career and that, thus desiccated, too little of me would remain for my roles as wife and mother...

...Housewives are "less than fully human," she said, for they "have never known a commitment to an idea," "risked an exploration of the unknown," or "attempted . . . creativity...

...Proclaiming only market employment worthwhile, feminists targeted the traditional family as the source of women's oppression and demanded its destruction...

...likely to possess the lawyerly qualities of sobriety, competence, and reliability...

...In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir identified another danger posed by women at home...

...From that day until I left my law firm in 1959 to raise a family, my aspirations were never ques-tioned—not by the teachers and counselors who helped me obtain scholarships, nor by the employers and colleagues who always supported my career...

...But he asserts, nonetheless, the undesirability of returning to the 1950s traditional family...

...Not all working mothers now making these compromises celebrate their situation as the social advance it is to feminists...

...A woman caring for home and child, feminists were certain, does not assume equal responsibility, and no-fault warns her "that instead of expecting to be supported, a woman is now expected to become self-sufficient...

...The feminist goal has been to drive homemakers into the work force to work as hard as men and thus gain equal political and economic power within an increasingly androgynous society...

...Carolyn Heil-brun asserts that the housewife lacks "selfhood" because she fails to act "in the public domain" and exists, instead, as a "female impersonator," simply "fulfilling the needs of others...

...The example set by women at home saps a working woman's ambition, she said, for a "comfortably married or supported friend is a temptation in the way of one who is intending to make her own success...

...One need only substitute "black," "Jew," or "Hispanic" for "housewife" to know that feminists would never describe any other group—except possibly the very religious—with the degrading terms they routinely applied to us...

...By recruiting other women, feminists did gain political clout to secure preferential treatment and did insulate themselves from the competition with males that some women fear...

...and devaluation of child-nurturing so that wives would always work and never become dependent upon husbands...

...It is "extremely demoralizing" for the working woman to see "other women of like social status" come to have very different fortunes "through man's mediation...

...What we do at home with our child is unique...

...socially acceptable abortion to eliminate inconvenient children...

...A mother must make her children come first: young children are helpless...

...we were happy taking our children to the park, sitting on the benches with each other, watching our children play, and pushing them on the swings...

...The precise purpose of Friedan's endeavor was to destroy the housewife's confidence that she was engaged in an important activity for which she was uniquely qualified...

...Feminist divorce policy, Betty Friedan once explained, purposely deprived women of alimony to force them to assume "equality of responsibility...

...others can do it equally well...

...The most significant barrier strung around a woman's marketplace goal has always been and will remain her own unwillingness to constrict her maternal and domestic roles...

...Given my painting, children could have suffered...

...The pact is necessary and its shattering was so significant precisely because women seek approval from each other...

...To prove their equality, women should be sexually available on male terms without commitment...

...Nor did Helen Frankenthaler, who, when she was the most prominent living female artist, said: "We all make different compromises...

...I lived with my divorced mother, a secretary and the family's only high school graduate...

...Housewives do believe we contribute to our husbands' work performance...

...She wrote before the civil-rights movement developed affirmative action law on which feminists later relied to allege that women, like blacks, had been discriminated against...

...We were happy cooking breakfast for our husbands and children in the suburban morning...

...My own experience has taught me that a woman's response to motherhood springs from physical and emotional reactions, as the experiences within her marriage awaken and then mold the dimensions of this response...

...Homemakers may have considered the lives of these unmarried and childless women empty, just as they may have felt that the second group were neglectful wives and mothers, but they usually refrained from saying so, lest they break the pact...

...Feminism's most effective weapon was to marginalize housewives by degrading their role...

...Love can flourish between adults only when everyone pays his or her own way...

...All families with children would benefit from family allowances or an increased federal income tax dependent exemption...