Betty Friedan's The Problem That Has No Name

Unhappiness, emptiness, and yearning were the common feelings of most women defined in the article written by Betty Friedan named, The Problem That Has No Name. These emotions described in the 50’s and 60’s were hard to understand and even more difficult to explain by most women of this time. Friedan depicts these feelings of hollowness and the dreaded, silent question that at the time, and still likely today, went through women’s minds, “Is this it?” A question that even personally runs through my mind from time to time.

Betty Friedan describes that after World War II, becoming the esteemed housewife was ultimate goal of most women. In the article Friedan states, “By the end of the nineteen fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping into the teens.” (Friedan, p. 359). Describing even further how important getting married was at the time she says, “A century earlier, women had fought for higher education, now girls went to college to get a husband.” (p. 359).The housewife status was seen as a true feminine fulfillment and considered a man’s equal. “As a housewife and a mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in this world; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.” (p. 359).

Friedan later describes how many women during this time began to feel different, even after obtaining the marriage, house and children.

Several women would go to doctors saying “I feel empty somehow…incomplete.” (p. 360). As if these emotions weren’t enough a number of women would begin to have bleeding blisters all over their hands and arms. A condition a family doctor named “housewife’s blight.” (p. 360). “Housewife’s fatigue,” another condition named by a doctor, where he found that women “slept more than an adult needed to sleep-as much as ten hours a day.” Later saying, “The real problem must be something else, perhaps boredom.”

(p.361).
It wasn’t until 1960 that notorious publications such as The New York Times, Newsweek, Good housekeeping and CBS started to publically talk about this problem that for so many years was limited to only “kitchens that were once again the center of women’s lives.” (p.359).These publications although were finally acknowledging the issue, dismissed it by stating it had more to do with women’s education. “More and more women had education, which naturally made them unhappy in their role as housewives.” (p. 361.)
Throughout this article, it describes this widely underestimated problem with women that was incredibly hard to understand at the time and still sometimes today. The feeling of wanting more than the American dream and the feared inner thought of, “Is this all?” Friedan sums it up when she ends the article stating, “We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.” (p. 362).