Caught in the Middle: Women's Rights and Coming of Age in the Seventies

Men weren’t really the enemy, they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. – Betty Friedan.

I was born in 1959, when Eisenhower was President and men wore business suits to baseball games. The civil rights movement was still in its infancy, Americans had yet to conquer the moon and Vietnam was a distant, far-off country that few people had heard of. The Cold War was in full bloom, the threat of nuclear annihilation hovered like a dark cloud above, and men ruled the world.

John Kennedy was elected President in 1960, in the Age of Camelot. With a young, handsome President and his glamorous wife on the cover of Life magazine, America was filled with optimism and youthful energy. Sophisticated and regal, Kennedy was, like his predecessors, surrounded almost entirely by men, the Best and the Brightest they would later be called, men who had been educated at Harvard and Yale, Andover and Choate, who promised to “pay any price [and] bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” They possessed an upbeat, optimistic view of the world and of America’s place in it. Although it all ended a few years later at the hands of a lone assassin, it remained a man’s world.

Kennedy’s men, and later Johnson’s and Nixon’s men, would embroil us in a difficult, messy, unjust war and struggle to make sense of changing times, but as a young boy growing up in suburban New Jersey, it seemed perfectly natural that men made the decisions and held positions of power and influence. Virtually all of my role models, the persons I wished to emulate, whether politicians, ballplayers, musicians, or actors, were men.

For the first decade or so of my life, American society had clearly defined roles for the sexes, or so it seemed. Boys were expected to pursue careers in law and medicine, run our companies, make our laws and, when necessary, fight our wars. Girls were expected to get married, have children, and provide emotional support for their families. It was almost that simple. Men were CEOs, Senators and Presidents, doctors, scientists and lawyers. We ran the corporations, the banks, the universities, and the government. Women labored in service-oriented and subservient positions, as nurses, teachers, librarians, and secretaries. The status of women, as explained in Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness (New York: Basic Books, 1971), was “the result of a slowly formed, deeply entrenched, extraordinarily pervasive cultural (and therefore political) decision that . . . woman shall remain a person defined not by the struggling development of her brain or her will or her spirit, but rather by her childbearing properties and her status as companion to men who make, and do, and rule the earth.”

By the time I entered high school in 1974, the Supreme Court had ruled for 100 years that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to women, who only a half century before had earned the right to vote. Indeed, women were confined to second-class citizenship in most aspects of law and economic life. And while a growing percentage of young women attended college, it was a common refrain even in the mid-1970’s said only partially in jest, that most girls went to college for their “MRS” degrees.

I grew up when Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best filled the screens of American televisions, part of a powerful socialization process reinforced by churches and schools, textbooks and the mass media. Before the advent of Title IX, society encouraged boys to play sports and girls to be spectators and cheerleaders. We were bombarded from infancy with portrayals of stereotypical sex roles, with advertising images of women as housekeepers and mothers, happily folding the laundry and cooking dinner in service to husbands attending to more pressing matters.

And then everything changed.

In 1963, Betty Friedan, a suburban housewife who supplemented her husband’s income by writing freelance articles for women’s magazines, published The Feminine Mystique. Several years earlier, Friedan had surveyed her Smith College classmates at their 15-year reunion and found that this highly educated and talented group of women, mostly housewives in their mid-30’s, were deeply dissatisfied with the state of their lives. From these and other interviews, and drawing on history, psychology, sociology and economics, Friedan wrote what would become one of the most influential books of the 20th Century. The Feminine Mystique described Friedan’s insights into the soul-draining frustrations of educated, stay-at-home women in the 1950’s. She called it “the problem that has no name”:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?”

The Feminine Mystique shocked middle class America and became an instant bestseller. It exposed the myth of the happy housewife, an ideal promoted by television, Hollywood, and mass advertising, and helped transform the expectations and roles of American women virtually overnight. With Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and others leading the way, the women’s rights movement pushed for equal pay for equal work, gender-neutral help-wanted ads, maternity leave, child-care centers for working parents, legalized abortion, safe and accessible birth control, laws prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace, and other issues often deemed radical by the standards of the early 1960’s.

I witnessed first-hand the growing consciousness and political empowerment of women in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. However little I may have paid attention to these issues in my younger years, intellectually and rationally, I understood exactly what women were demanding and why, for I wanted the same opportunities for myself. Black Americans and other minorities were properly demanding equal rights in all spheres of American life, so it was only appropriate that women would want these same things. The women I went to school with were just as bright and hardworking as me, so why should they not also be entitled to the same opportunities?

There were times, of course, when I reverted back to socialized sexism, when my competitive instincts and male role models did not easily reconcile to an imagined society in which the sexes were completely equal. I wanted to be respected and admired as a man of importance. I wanted to accomplish big things and be looked upon as someone special. Like any red-blooded American male, I wanted to slay the dragons and be greeted by admiring females. I wanted the women in my life to look at me with pride and affection as I battled the forces of evil and saved the world from destruction. I wanted to be Superman carrying Lois Lane to safety.

But then the rules changed. All of a sudden, women my own age and education level wanted a chance to slay their own dragons and hunt their own prey. They wanted to be Superwoman and didn’t need no stinking Superman. Men were no longer entitled to instant respect. We now had to compete not only with each other, but with women as well.

Had you asked me in high school if I was a feminist, I may have answered, “Sure, I dig chicks.” But I’m a fast learner. By the time I graduated college and entered law school, where I studied alongside lots of really smart, ambitious women who made up nearly half of my law school class, I genuinely embraced and acknowledged the merits of true women’s equality. My female classmates wanted the same opportunities as my male classmates – an interesting and satisfying career. And just like the men, the women saw no reason why they couldn’t or shouldn’t be able to combine a good career with a family.

Of course, American society was divided on the merits of a woman trying to do too much. “What about the children?” was a common refrain. Some contended it selfish and foolhardy for a woman to think she could do what needed to be done to advance in a pressure-filled, demanding legal career and still have time to raise a family. Men were not, were never, in my experience, asked these same questions. And yet, since the industrial revolution, a large percentage of men had failed miserably in mixing ambition with fatherhood. My female classmates understood this, which is why they wanted husbands who bore a greater share of responsibility for child rearing and house chores, who understood instinctively that an even distribution of responsibilities was only fair and just.

In all of my professional life since, I have worked for and beside many bright, talented women. It has always seemed quite natural, as if a continuation of college and law school, when women coexisted as equal partners in education. I have watched many of my female colleagues negotiate the constant struggle of balancing the demands of children with the desire to excel in their careers. When I first joined a large law firm in Washington, D.C., in 1986, a strong push was then being made for fair-minded and liberal family leave policies. It was debated regularly in offices and conference rooms of law firms and corporations, as employers sought to find ways to attract and retain highly qualified women professionals, and to provide the appearance of a family-friendly work environment. But inevitably, stories rolled-in about those who actually took advantage of these policies, who took time off to spend with their newborn infants and paid a price in stifled advancement and delayed career gratification. It could be no other way, really, the economic realities what they are in corporate America. There was still a long way to go.

Many of my friends and spouses, often two career couples, found the demands of toddlers and child care to be equally draining. The frustrations expressed by 1950’s housewives and Betty Friedan’s Smith College classmates were replaced by the frustrations of women (and some men) who, wishing to have it all, found that it was not so easy, that choices and sacrifices inevitably had to be made. Although the opportunities available to women have greatly expanded since The Feminine Mystique was first published, many women discovered that happiness can be elusive, whether pursuing a rewarding career or choosing the undervalued and underappreciated role of housewife and mother, or something in between.

Twenty-six years later, I wonder how many of my classmates have been disappointed with their careers and choices. How many underestimated the deep-seated socialization process that embedded traditional notions of home life in men, even those who seemed to be more progressive minded than most? How many had hoped that corporate America would more quickly adapt family friendly work environments?

The world is today more complex, if not necessarily more advanced. Advertisers and women’s magazines continue to portray the ideal Superwoman as super-thin and sexy, as someone who can wear a size 4 dress and flaunt a Barbie-doll figure while negotiating a merger and spying on the Russians. Pick up any issue of Cosmopolitan magazine and you will see nothing but photographs and articles on fashion, sex, make-up, weight loss, and tips on how to please a man. Meanwhile, American women and girls continue to face a body image crisis, with constant attacks on women’s self-esteem and self-worth. Women today are supposed to want it all, and when life comes up a bit short, when their careers or family lives, or both, do not match the glamorous images of the mainstream media, a crisis of confidence creeps into the mindset of many professional women. Women are now expected to have a career, many by necessity require financial independence, and yet they continue to bear the lion’s share of child rearing and housekeeping responsibilities.

In many ways, the advances made by women in the professions have been both a curse and a blessing to them. Despite the ever present glass ceiling, some women have successfully competed with men for the highest positions in business, law, medicine, and government. Those willing to sacrifice a rich family life, or cherished time with children – the same sacrifices ambitious men have been making for a century – can advance to positions of power and influence. And yet, for many women, a lingering dissatisfaction remains, the reality that merely emulating the life of a high-charging, career-driven man comes with many spiritual and emotional sacrifices, which even for a growing proportion of men, is not worth the cost of lost time with children and families.

Although I have occasionally looked with envy on the societal privileges (white) men enjoyed prior to the sexual revolution and The Feminine Mystique, I am today a better person, a better father, and a better co-worker because of the women’s rights movement. American society has made strides in the right direction. The big law firms, prestigious universities, and some major corporations today offer extended family leave plans, in-house child care options, and flexible work schedules. For my two daughters, I very much desire a world that provides women with the same opportunities and career options as men, that treats men and women with an equal degree of respect, and which allows everyone to pursue their dreams in ways that best fit their talents and skills. But I also hope that my daughters, and all young men and women, recognize that ambition has consequences, and that the dreamed-of career may not alone provide a fulfilling life; that it is important to explore what it means to live fully and passionately, with a sense of purpose and humility, authenticity and simplicity, and to drop preconceived ideas of who and what we are. "Our lives are a mixture of different roles,” said Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is . . . For me, that balance is family, work, and service."

The women’s movement will have succeeded if, as a society, we steadily seek a more compassionate and humane world that permits women and men to balance their lives in ways that are good for everyone; that allows us to enrich our spiritual and creative lives, to see the potential in ourselves and in others. For as Greta Crosby advised, “If I could give you one key, and one key only, to a more abundant life, I would give you a sense of your own worth, an unshakeable sense of your own dignity as one grounded in the source of the cosmic dance, as one who plays a unique part in the unfolding of the story of the world.”

In Defense of Bipartisanship and the Deficit Commission

As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

--President Dwight Eisenhower, January 17, 1961.

When President Eisenhower voiced these words at the end of his presidency, he did so from the vantage point of experience and historical insight. Sixteen years earlier, he helped lead U.S. military forces to victory in the European theater and oversaw the occupation of post-war Germany. As president, he ended our involvement in the Korean conflict, stood up to McCarthyism, and oversaw the development of the interstate highway system. He had seen firsthand America’s capacity to set aside partisan differences to fulfill a sense of national purpose, in defeating tyranny, in mobilizing a war effort, and in building a modern economy. With the nation then on the verge of a New Frontier, about to inaugurate an idealistic, young president, our history was replete with examples of liberals and conservatives, the religious and non-religious, the working class and the educated elite, coming together for the common good. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy each understood the viability of American resolve, that when we commit our energies and resources to problems of national import, when we work together towards a common goal, there is little we as a people cannot accomplish.

In confronting the economic and budgetary crises of today, we once again need a bipartisan appeal to the national interest, a serious effort at compromise and problem solving. Although the rising tide of national debt is less understood, and often perceived as less urgent, by policy makers, the media, and the public, the long-term threat to our economy is real and substantial. It is a problem that affects us all, with the burdens particularly hard on future generations. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this year’s deficit alone is expected to be $1.3 trillion (that’s $1,300,000,000,000). The total federal debt is now at approximately $14 trillion and growing. Absent major adjustments, we will pay over $1 trillion a year, or nearly 40% of every tax dollar, on nothing more than interest on the national debt by 2020. The CBO estimates that an additional $8 trillion will be added to the national debt in the next decade absent significant budgetary reform.

Over time, persistently large deficits of this magnitude will only increase national debt as a share of the economy, push up interest rates, crowd out productive investments, retard economic growth, and cause serious long-term damage to the economy. As the country borrows more money to finance the debt, increasing amounts are loaned by foreign investors who collect the interest payments and siphon much of our economic output. According to the Center on Budget Priorities and Policy (CBPP), absent positive adjustments, “the national debt will climb from 53 percent of GDP in 2009 to 314 percent of GDP by 2050, or more than three times the size of the U.S. economy.” It does not take a degree in mathematics to understand that this is unsustainable in the long-term, that our ability to repair our declining infrastructure, sustain a strong national defense, protect the environment, aid the poor, and provide medical care to the elderly, will become increasingly difficult.

It is true that the events and policies that have created the record deficits were largely outside of President Obama’s control. There is little disputing that a decade of Bush tax cuts and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, are almost exclusively responsible for the current deficits. But while President Obama may have inherited the present mess, that fact does not lessen his responsibility to address the fiscal imbalance and use the prestige and influence of his office to propose solutions.

Unless we wish simply to pass along the debt burden to our children and their children, it is time to set aside partisan differences and develop real solutions to what is a very real problem. Of course, there is no way to balance the budget and to unburden future generations from the mountains of debt that we have bequeathed them without some combination of (1) tax increases, and (2) spending cuts. Yet these are the very things that politicians most hate to do, because they make everyone unhappy. No one, especially those with partisan passions, enjoys the art of compromise and making hard choices. It is, however, essential to governing. For this very reason, President Obama established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform by Executive Order in February 2010.

The Deficit Commission, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles (former Chief of Staff to President Clinton) and Alan Simpson (former Republican Senator from Wyoming), is made up of a respected mix of bipartisan experts who aim to offer politically realistic and economically viable solutions to the debt crisis. As Jonathan Chait of The New Republic notes, the premise of the Deficit Commission is that “reducing the long-term deficit is very hard. All the options are unpopular. If you try to do it while imposing your party’s ideal vision of federal priorities, the other party will demagogue you to death and you’ll fail. So you need to find some way to reduce the deficit that falls short of your ideal while constituting an improvement over a status quo of letting the deficit run unchecked.” Or as President Obama said recently, "If people are, in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits, and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved."

Unfortunately, the initial reaction to a draft proposal put forth by Bowles and Simpson has been decidedly chilly. Conservatives opposed to any type of tax increase, including most of the Tea Party movement and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, are unhappy, while the Wall Street Journal editorial page is skeptical. The biggest outcry, however, has been from liberals. MoveOn.org commenced a campaign to tell the President “that Americans will not stand for this Deficit Commission report and he must reject it immediately.” Paul Krugman of the New York Times has said that “the deficit commission should be told to fold its tents and go away.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Bowles-Simpson plan “simply unacceptable.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated that the proposal essentially tells “working Americans to drop dead.” This is disappointing.

To be sure, there is much wrong with the Simpson-Bowles proposal, but to reject it out of hand is irresponsible and short sighted. First, the Bowles-Simpson proposal is not the Deficit Commission’s report – that will come later and will need the support of at least 14 of its 18 members; Bowles-Simpson is nothing more than a 50-page power point presentation of key talking points. It is a discussion starter, nothing more, nothing less. Second, liberals are ignoring a fundamental principle of democracy – politics is the art of the possible. Unless they can successfully accomplish deficit reduction on their own (good luck with that, especially after the midterm elections), they will need to work with Republicans, independents, and moderate and conservative Democrats to achieve meaningful long-term deficit reductions. Third, some of the ideas presented by Bowles-Simpson on trimming $3.8 trillion in debt by 2020 are very good and should be embraced by Democrats.

Among other things, although the proposal calls for simplification of the tax code involving a reduction in overall rates, it also calls for eliminating many tax deductions and credits that mostly favor the affluent, thus preserving, even enhancing, the progressive nature of the tax structure. While the proposal to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction will prove politically infeasible, one alternative (based on a proposal by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire) would eliminate mortgage interest deductions on second homes and mortgages exceeding $500,000, while retaining the deduction for all other homeowners. This should receive serious consideration from Democrats. That someone should be allowed a tax deduction for mortgage interest on a second home in the Hamptons (or even Ocean City), while those who pay rent (generally the less affluent) receive no tax deduction, is unfair, regressive, and serves no rational policy interest. I understand that the real estate industry and its powerful lobbyists will be upset, but without some political courage and economic common sense from members of Congress, no progress on the deficit and budgetary reform will ever occur. As a Democrat, I am unwilling to allow my children’s future to rest on outdated assumptions and narrow special interests.

There are a number of other proposals in the Bowles-Simpson plan that liberals in particular should embrace. Reducing farm subsidies is long overdue, and the fifteen cent per gallon gasoline tax will simultaneously raise revenue and help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, encourage conservation and protect the environment. To its credit, the Bowles-Simpson proposal attempts to prevent cuts aimed at assisting low-income Americans and makes clear in principle that future budgets must protect the most vulnerable citizens.

Bowles-Simpson also refuses to treat the defense budget as sacrosanct and calls for tens of billions of dollars in cuts to unnecessary weapons programs and other wasteful military spending. Preserving our nation’s military strength does not require squandering billions of dollars on wasteful, largely useless Defense contracts and Pentagon programs. We spend almost as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. Including non-Pentagon, defense-related expenditures (e.g., Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays), total defense spending in 2010 falls somewhere between $880 billion and $1 trillion. Even by more traditional measures, total spending on the Pentagon, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will exceed $700 billion. There is simply no way to get a handle on the deficit and national debt without ensuring, at a minimum, that we pay for these outlays, and better yet, reduce them. The Deficit Commission appears to recognize this.

My biggest problem with the Bowles-Simpson plan is its failure to take on the Bush tax cuts, which according to the CBPP account for $1.7 trillion in extra deficits from 2001 to 2008. If extended, these same tax cuts will add $3.4 trillion to the debt by 2019. This is no way to reduce the debt. Maintaining the Bush tax cuts, especially for those making more than $250,000 per year, is particularly galling, as eliminating only these tax cuts (which merely puts the top marginal rates back to 39% over the present 36%) would save us $700 billion over the next ten years.

I also am not satisfied with the manner in which Bowles-Simpson addresses the long-term budgetary concerns underlying Medicare and Medicaid (which make up the bulk of long-term deficit projections due to demographic changes and increasing life expectancies of the American population). But there will be plenty of time to debate these issues. For liberals to refrain from the discussion, to take their ball and go home, serves no purpose, and undermines our concern for the nation’s future.

Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office in 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared, "What you see too often in Washington . . . is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another." Are we really that selfish and short-sighted a nation that we cannot find ways to compromise and agree on deficit reduction? Although Carter lacked the leadership skills to overcome the paralysis of democracy that he described, his description is nevertheless as accurate now as it was in 1979. If the President and the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, cannot succeed where Carter failed, if they cannot summon the nation to embrace a sense of national purpose and to work for the common good on behalf of future generations, then they will be leaving a shameful legacy and forfeiting the right to govern.