Particular Passions

Particular Passions: Talks with Women who Shaped our Times

Betty Friedan - On Motherhood

Betty FriedanLynn GilbertComment

"My three kids are great. Who knows? They may think I would have been a better mother if it hadn’t been for the women’s movement, but I don’t think so. The way that you can have children now, when you’ve already started on your work and know what you can do, you are not subject to the guilts that women in my generation were. That was the worst, the guilts, the conflicts, the leaning over backwards against them. That put negative valences on one’s own enjoyment of motherhood. It’s such a short period. I wish that in the period when they were little, I wish I’d felt free to concentrate on them more. But when you’re under the aegis of the feminine mystique, there was the rebellion; and then to do anything at all, you’re going against the stream of society and you have your own guilts about what you’re doing."

— Betty Friedan, in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

The oral biography of Betty Friedan, who fueled the women’s liberation movement that continues to work toward equal rights for women around the globe.

Available on Amazon and Apple.