A Strange Stirring

I recently changed my facebook work to writer/housewife. It was partially a joke because anyone who knows me knows that I take my writing seriously but am lousy at housework. I did it mostly because I didn't want to answer questions on facebook about what I am doing for work. I am currently actively looking for a different job and simply needed to put more time into the process.

However I found myself thinking about the history of women and our right to work. My ability to work full time and have my own checkbook can be attributed to the fight.

Stephanie Coontz's book A Strange Stirring is an excellent social history of what was going on in America when The Feminine Mystique was released.

"The problem with no name" in Feminine Mystique refers to a restlessness from feeling that housework and child rearing is all there is to life. I really enjoyed reviewing a history of these movements in this book.  I appreciate  that there were criticisms of the Feminine Mystique outlining a white middle class woman's dilemma and not having as much regard for women of color and working class women.

Coontz outlines a lot of these things very well and has an excellent bibliography for anyone who wants to research these topics in more depth.

I've been a fan of Coontz's scholarship ever since I discovered her book The Way We Never Were in my sociology of gender class in my undergraduate degree. While since I've read a lot on this topic a lot of the history felt like review but its always fascinating revisiting a topic I haven't thought as much about in years.

I was asked if I was going to continue to work after I got married when I had a temp job at a religious based daycare before I got married. While I felt deeply offended that the question was asked to me at that point in time I do feel like from a scholarly perspective doing more study on people who make this choice for religious reasons would be fascinating. And house husbands are becoming more socially acceptable with women being in more professional jobs which would also be fascinating to study.

Coontz definitely wet my interest in this aspect of women's history leaving me wanting more. But as my ongoing search for work continues I am thankful that I have a checkbook in my own name with money I earned.