The Middle-Aged Woman in Contemporary Society

Our society today is so complex that most women--and men, too, for that matter--do not know where their efforts for its simplification could be applied. The technological revolution with its rapid urbanization and other social dislocations has been hard enough upon men, but it has disrupted the lives of women far more drastically. Accelerated by wars both hot and cold, this revolution has shattered the old social structure, undermined the family, and weakened traditional moral standards. At the same time economic forces have drawn some twenty million women into the labor market and the professions. Most women work of necessity, many because they are especially talented. But the force of our economic maelstrom is such that few people can resist being drawn into it. It has now come to the point where many married women work and neglect their children because they feel they must have a paid job in order to hold the respect of the community. As a result, homemaking has become depreciated. It is one thing if women work because they must help support the family and other dependents or because they have a special contribution to make to society. It is quite another thing--it is socially undesirable--if society forces the mother to take a job in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others. No wonder that the average stay-at-home housewife is confused. She is no longer sure what society expects of her. Women have gained an unparalleled freedom in American only to sacrifice it to the rat race for success--and success in our country, alas, means financial success.

There are other bitter heritages with which the middle-aged woman has to contend. The feminist influence taught women to see themselves as rivals of men rather than as partners of a common endeavor, whether on the job or in the home. I concede that the early feminists had so many legal, political, and economic disadvantages to combat, and most males were so stupid in their opposition to progress in these areas, that hostility between the sexes was difficult to avoid. As a result, we have many worried, restless, immature females who complain bitterly that there are not enough women in the United Nations, the government, and diplomacy. Others actually rebel against the inescapable fact that they are women.

Dangerous as this dissatisfaction with their own womanhood may be to women's psychology, it is not more insidious than the reaction now in full swing which tempts women to be nothing but females. The preoccupation with glamor so prevalent in America today is the pernicious result. No self-respecting woman--or man for that matter--should neglect outward appearances; but too great a preoccupation with it is a sign of a superficial attitude toward life.

Yet our women have long had the greatest freedom to lead courageous, individualistic lives, for our institutions have been friendlier to them than those of any other nation. But many lack the self-discipline needed to ration that most precious of all things, time. Psychologists will tell you that many of them clutter up their lives with trivialities, that they actually welcome distraction because they lack clear-cut, worth-while objectives and therefore do not develop the will-power to organize their time and use their leisure for more continuity of thought and action.

Much of this lack of discipline results, I believe, from the attitude toward marriage entertained by many American women. When they get their man they feel the goal of life has been achieved and renounce further ambitions for self-development. As a result, the sheer ignorance of American women is appalling. In our country, where women have had the same opportunities for education as men, this is inexcusable. George Gallup has given me figures which prove that American men are not too well informed on current events, but the record of the women in every test is far lower.