Like most revolutions, feminism pushed the culture a few inches too far, ignoring the iron law of unintended consequences. Women who put their careers above all often found themselves listening to the remorseless ticking of their biological clocks without a man to love or child to nurture. Feminists had ignored Mother Nature, and Nature is the toughest mother of all.
The number of childless women in their early 40s doubled over two decades. One study found that 42 percent of successful women in corporate America were childless after 40. The numbers grew in other professions as well, as women became workaholics like the men they had railed against. By the 1970s, Betty Friedan's famous "feminine mystique" had hardened into conventions that deprived women of the warmth and caring that had marked their sex as la difference.
Betty Friedan made the mistake of imagining that all women were alike. She underestimated the passion of the conservative women led by Phyllis Schlafly, who almost single-handedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. In one debate, Ms. Friedan screamed at Mrs. Schlafly: "I'd like to burn you at the stake." Phyllis, who never loses her cucumber-like cool, replied: "I'm glad you said that, because it just shows the intemperate nature of proponents of ERA."
Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly clarified the issues for women, issues that still teeter on the seesaw of public opinion. Betty had the media with her, but Phyllis had a grass-roots movement of her creation that's still alive and well. John Kerry won the majority of single women in 2004, but George W. won the overwhelming majority of married women, who figured he would be more likely to keep the home fires ablaze.
Betty Friedan was contemptuous of the radical feminists who set women against men, women again women, feminists against family. She warned young women of the peril of distorting the priorities of women and starting a war nobody could win. She was right about that, too.