The Feminine Mystique is a book about my dad.

See, the problem with my dad is that in trying to live a selfless life, and in valuing in himself only those parts which do things for others, he denies all the parts that make him an individual, and a fully human one at that. He does not understand that people value him for more than what they can take from him. He doesn't understand that a person with no self-respect commands no respect from others, and that that's why people walk all over him. He doesn't understand wthat until he sees himself to be the equal of those he loves, he will never be happy.

He looks for happiness to me--he hopes that if he can see me happy as a result, direct or indirect, of his actions, that that will validate him as a worthwhile human being. I can't tell him that this is a burden that is too much for me to fairly be expected to bear, though it is, because that would only worse his problem of self-hatred. The real problem is for him--that he can't find happiness in himself, but only in others; he is reliant on everyone else to define his sense of self, not understanding that a self is something you can't get from anyone else.

This is precisely what Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, describes to be the problem in American housewives in the 1950's. It isn't a woman's problem in essence; it only manifests itself so often in housewives because it is they who are told from external sources that they can find value only by refusing to value themselves, and by living their lives entirely through their role in the family. They experienced neurosis, sexual dysfunction, loss of identity, and they really fucked up their kids.