"The Feminine Mistake"

Have any of you read the book, "The Feminine Mistake," by Leslie Bennetts?

While it is not a book specifically about being CF, it is a book about how women, often well-educated, rely too often on their husbands for their lifestyle. They become, to use our terminology, breeders, and give up thier jobs only to find themselves vulnerable to their husbands divorcing them or suddenly becoming unemployed, disabled, or even dead, leaving these women with no clue as to how to handle financial matters and raise their kids (if they are still young) by themselves.

Being CF and remaining in the workforce better enables these women to handle a sudden change in one's personal situation without falling apart.

Reading many of the stories posted here about these breeders reminded me a lot of the Bennets book I read earlier this year. Anyone else feel this way?

Oh yes, I completely understand the philosophy. The book it loosely is sorta poking fun at is "Fascinating Womanhood". A RIDICULOUS fundie book which is perfect for moomies in training. My mother had ALL of the workbooks. It was writen by a moo with 8 kids back in the 60's, and it's been re-released several times and STILL sells millions of copies. The author is in her eighties and is still a popular public speaker. Below is an excerpt from one of the workbooks regarding moomies and their daughters;

"Should You Train Your Daughters For a Career?

If you are like most of today's mothers, you have this list made in your mind with all the reasons you need to have your daughter train for a career - she may have an emergency, she may get divorced, her husband may die, her husband may get disabled...on so on. There are serious consequences to this action. Here is the flip-side of the coin:


It Will Make Her Independent: As we have learned, one of the traits of a fascinating woman is dependency. Training for a career and a job outside the home teaches her just the opposite. She becomes independent and without the need for manly care. She has taken over one of the duties of a man and is in danger of acquiring masculine efficiency.

Encourages Her To Work: Although as a single woman she may need to support herself, training for a career will encourage her to work after she is married...

Being prepared for a career not only encourages a woman to work but encourages suitors and husbands to require a woman to work after marriage and after childbearing. It puts a temptation in front of a man when he realizes the amount of money a highly-skilled woman can earn.


Allows an Easy Exit: A woman with the ability to support and care for herself may be willing to call it quits with greater ease than one who is more dependent on her husband. Most marriages are hard work and have rough times. A woman with an easy-out may not weather the storms.

Deprives Her of a Broader Education: A varied education can provide a woman with a well of information and experience to draw from. This kind of education prepares her to help her children as they grow.
A woman who continues to grow and enrich herself in the home is much better able to meet an emergency than one with specialized training. During the years at home, such a woman will develop a well-rounded character. She will push her creative skills, learn to make sound financial decisions, foster wisdom and logical thinking, and many other things that come with a woman truly focused on making a success in her home.



Injury Caused By a Working Wife

When a woman works she steals part of the husband's rights. You will stunt his growth in this area of his responsibility. He will not need to strain himself to rise to the occasion. As you become more effecient, capable, independent and more masculine in your traits, he becomes less so. This can cause you to pick up even more of his load. Remember this: When you lift the bucket up, he sets it down.

You also cause harm to yourself. When you work by choice (not necessity!) your feminine charms dwindle and disappear. You will lose the special sparkle that you, as feminine, dependent woman can have. You will tend to put on masculine traits. Women in the working world get bold, mouthy, aggressive, pushy, arrogant, independent, capable, and efficient.....

Children suffer most of all in this type of arrangement. They are deprived of the mother's presence in the home. Merely being there is extremely important to a child's well-being. You may be busy with household tasks, but you are there.

A woman in the home and a man working provides children with a role model to pattern after. There is so much pressure today on our young ones to conform to opposite functions. Our boys are being feminized and our girls are being pushed to become more and more masculine. How will you teach them proper roles when you are doing the opposite yourself?

Our giving in to the pressures of the world and conforming to its standards will cause a further decline in society as a whole. Not only do we lose our masculine and feminine identities, but we upset the economy. Most families, especially those just starting out as young newlyweds, are finding it difficult to make it on one income (not impossible, just difficult). This is because women entering the work-force have brought down the wages. Once women entered by choice, now it is becoming by necessity......"


It's a shocking read, but every SAHM MUST have read it.

http://members.tripod.com/~frankysj/fwlsnindex.html
The above site has a good outline and overview of the general philosophy.

geez that would have to be the saddest thing i have ever read,even those few paragraphs were enough to make me sick.
i love the part where she says that women in the working world become bold,mouthy,aggresive,INDEPENENT,ect how dare they. i know this was written in the 60's but is scarey to think that it may be becoming full circle.

She's just makin' money by singing to the choir of those who've made poor decisions (kids). And they lap it up.

"A woman who continues to grow and enrich herself in the home is much better able to meet an emergency than one with specialized training."

Absolutely. That's so true in my case. I'd much rather grow and enrich myself by getting poo smeared all over me instead of researching local history. Yep. And we don't HAVE daily emergencies, 'cause we don't have...


...wait for it...

oh, you know.

I'd like to read "Feminine Mistake". But I wonder if there's ever been a book written which tells all the self-satisfied SAHMs:

"Look at the state of you. Just look what a mess you are. You cut all your hair off because washing it was too much trouble for a bizzy mommy. Your makeup and perfume are long dried-out and unfashionable specimens from almost a decade ago. You've worn nothing but sweats for the past 9 years. Today a chunk of someone's chewed-up sandwich is dried to the collar of it. You've done nothing but eat for 16 hours a day because you're so fricking bored by life and mentally dulled that you quite frankly can't think of anything better to do with yourself. You smell like vomit - someone else's. You have poo-poo under your ragged fingernails. You haven't had a hot sit-down bath since your honeymoon. Your tits look like the popular 1970s toy 'clackers'. You hum the theme to Blues Clues all morning. You think your best friends are the 3, 5, and 7 year olds who live with you. Your vocabulary has reduced to about 29 words and your only mode of communication is shouting. Which employer, exactly, do you think would be gagging to hire you, and for what purpose?"

- - - - - - - -
"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

OMG. Reading that stuff from 'Fascinating Womanhood' made my tubes tie themselves and my brain turn inside out.

Words fail me.

Catabat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> OMG. Reading that stuff from 'Fascinating
> Womanhood' made my tubes tie themselves and my
> brain turn inside out.
>
> Words fail me.


Then you really ought to go to that link and read some other shit on there. They encourage moomie hood, SAHM, women who don't do anything to make their husbands feel less masculine like change a light bulb, take out garbage, or hammer a nail, they have clear cut gender roles defined, they tell moos ways to stop working if they do work, ways to talk husbands into more kids, and are to downplay all of their needs and contributions (to bolster hubby's ego) and focus on their husbands and children. It's a real eye opener. It's a modern day best seller and their workshops and seminars stay filled to capacity, yet it wreaks of 1920's mentality.

I read this book and the woman who wrote it is smart. She is right when she compares SAHMs to parasites - that is exactly what most of them are. Especially the SAHMs who still refuse to work even when their kids are older and in school. Taking too much time out of the workforce will drastically impact someone's future earning ability. I know that for a fact, I was unemployed one time for 8 months and even that is a huge handicap. the longer you are without a job, the harder it is to get one.

The sad thing is, that most SAHMs are not going to read this book. And when their husband dies or leaves them, they are going to whine about what victims they are and all the "sacrifices" they made.