This fall, I was astonished to read that a new book with a similar theme had touched off a comparable controversy. The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free Recipe for Success and Satisfaction was written by Samantha Ettus, who quickly discovered that many women are still enraged by the suggestion that they’ll have better lives if they keep working.
“I’m already getting hate mail, and the book isn’t even out yet,” Ettus told The New York Post in September.
That kind of backlash is a predictable result of the way females are socialized in this culture.
“It’s the idea that all you have to do is grow up and attract a man who will sweep you off your feet and take care of you,” Ettus says. “When we hear about cases where someone’s husband dropped dead or left them, we think those are unicorns. But those are the norm.”
In coping with such challenges, we’re better served by facing reality than sticking our heads in the sand. And yet all too many women still avoid any facts that frighten them.
A couple of weeks ago, I met the wife of a successful television producer at a party. She shuddered when she heard my name.
“I bought The Feminine Mistake and started to read it, but it scared me so much I couldn’t finish it,” she said, glaring at me as if women’s economic vulnerabilities were all my fault.
She spent the rest of the evening avoiding me.
This woman hasn’t worked for pay in a couple of decades, and she has no career other than motherhood. But her children are now 17 and 20, so when the youngest leaves for college next year, her self-appointed role as full-time mother will be finished forever.
That phase is a dangerous one for stay-at-home moms, because the empty nest has a devastating effect on long-term marriages. Among couples over 50, the divorce rate has doubled in the last 20 years. When the kids grow up, many couples realize that their children were the only thing holding them together. In the past, most couples resigned themselves to the status quo, but these days many decide it’s time for a fresh start when they reach the second half of life. As a result, marriage is no longer a safe haven for aging women. As recently as 1990, fewer than one in ten people who divorced were 50 or older. That figure rose to one in four in recent years. It’s no wonder that women, like the one at the party, are scared, but fortunately, not everyone is so averse to facing the facts.
As I walked into a local bookstore last week, another woman came up to me and asked if I was Leslie Bennetts.
When I told her I was, she said, “Your book saved my life.”
Instead of fleeing from the message of The Feminine Mistake, this woman had devoured the information and decided not to resign herself to a circumscribed life and a risky future. She started a new career, and she has since become a successful author. Indeed, she was so excited to share what she’s achieved that she phoned her husband and asked him to come over to the store and bring a copy of the galleys of her next book. When she gave it to me, both of them were beaming with pride at her accomplishments.
Now her kids are growing up, but she isn’t afraid of the empty nest. Because she planned accordingly, she’s created an exciting new path for herself, and her future beckons with enticing possibilities.
“I’m so happy,” she said, looking radiant.
It’s hard to imagine why any woman would want to settle for less.
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In addition to The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? Leslie Bennetts is also the author of Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers.