Revisiting Betty Friedan

I caught wind of Stephanie Coontz's new book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,  while listening to a recent episode of NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  My ears perked immediately:  I've long been a fan of Coontz's theses, which include The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992) and Marriage: A History: How Love Conquered Marriage (2006).  I love both.  So, I didn't wait to order a copy of her new work, which was inspired, she tells Gross, when her publisher asked her to write a biography of Betty Friedan's controversial feminist work, The Feminine Mystique.  I've not been disappointed.  Coontz provides first-hand accounts of women who recall their reaction to reading Friedan's work when it was first published in 1963.  But she goes a step further to draw connections between the dissatisfaction of our mothers and grandmothers, to the social pressures of women and young girls today.  And, while she applauds the relief Friedan brought to many housewives of the 1960s, she recognizes that her work excluded many other sectors of women, including the working class and ethnic minorities.  The combination of perspectives makes for an engrossing work.