--- title: Feminine Mystique Anniversary: Betty Friedan's Response to Critics description: 'Children don't need all that mommyness. It doesn't matter to them who waxes the floor,' the author said after writing The Feminine Mystique, which was published on Feb. 19, 1963 canonical: https://time.com/3711230/betty-friedan/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-19T15:00:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:05:36.979Z og:title: How Betty Friedan Responded to Her Critics og:description: 'Children don't need all that mommyness. It doesn't matter to them who waxes the floor,' the author said after writing The Feminine Mystique, which was published on Feb. 19, 1963 og:url: https://time.com/3711230/betty-friedan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt86305a5e2500e390/69877f802dce0135a69dd933/150216-betty-friedan.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: New York lawyer Brenda Feigen Fasteau, arm raised, argues about candidate support at a Washington meeting of the Caucus's National Policy Council. Some fellow members, left to right are: Ms. editor Gloria Steinem, National Organization for Women (NOW) pr og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Betty Friedan Responded to Her Critics twitter:description: 'Children don't need all that mommyness. It doesn't matter to them who waxes the floor,' the author said after writing The Feminine Mystique, which was published on Feb. 19, 1963 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt86305a5e2500e390/69877f802dce0135a69dd933/150216-betty-friedan.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Betty Friedan Responded to Her Critics  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Feb 19, 2015 3:00 PM UTC  Betty Friedan, second from right, with Gloria Steinem, Brenda Feigen Fasteau and Wilma Scott Heide at a meeting of the National Women’s Political Caucus, 1972. Betty Friedan, second from right, with Gloria Steinem, Brenda Feigen Fasteau and Wilma Scott Heide at a meeting of the National Women’s Political Caucus, 1972.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Feb 19, 2015 3:00 PM UTC When _The Feminine Mystique_ hit bookstores on Feb. 19, 1963, more than a few readers dismissed author Betty Friedan’s claims as dangerous. “If most mothers followed her advice, divorce and juvenile delinquency would increase tremendously,” read one letter to the editors at LIFE. “By the time American women have been indoctrinated by Betty Freidan and Simone de Beauvoir, they’re ready to commit mass suicide,” read another. To these readers, Friedan’s identification of “the problem that has no name”—the elusive sadness of housewives whose lives revolved around vacuums and burp cloths rather than self-actualization—represented a threat to the social order. To Friedan, it was long past time to name the source of so many women’s unhappiness so that steps could be taken to address it. The words “anger” and “angry” appear frequently in reviews and reactions published in response to the book. LIFE called Friedan an “Angry Battler for Her Sex,” and the book, “an angry, thoroughly documented book that in one way or another is going to provoke the daylights out of almost everyone who reads it.” While it’s tempting to write off these characterizations as dismissals of the author as hysterical or unserious, Friedan herself owned that anger. It was one of the many forces—along with a desire to reframe the guilt so many mothers and housewives felt about wanting more–that drove her to write the book in the first place. In an interview with LIFE in November 1963, after the book had been marinating in the minds of the American public for six months, Friedan took the opportunity to respond to her critics, many of them women. She called out those who saw the book as a call to action they weren’t prepared to take: --- > “” --- She identified what she deemed an insecurity among working women who took issue with the book: --- > “” --- To the men who jokingly lamented an equivalent “masculine mystique”: --- > “” --- To those who believed subscribing to her worldview required a gargantuan effort and guaranteed a miserable, sexless existence: --- > “” --- Dismantling the feminine mystique, Friedan said, need not begin as an international movement. It could—and _should—_begin in the very same home that cultivated the mystique in the first place. “You have nothing to lose,” she reassured skeptics, “but your vacuum cleaners.”  Betty Friedan, second from right, with Gloria Steinem, Brenda Feigen Fasteau and Wilma Scott Heide at a meeting of the National Women’s Political Caucus, 1972. Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3711230/betty-friedan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3711230/betty-friedan/"},"headline":"How Betty Friedan Responded to Her Critics","datePublished":"2015-02-19T15:00:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:05:36.979Z","description":"'Children don't need all that mommyness. 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