Feminism's Great Success - Feminism's Greater Failure

It's been fifty years since Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, considered the magnum opus of modern day feminism. Since then, women have come a long way.

Feminists had a lot of legitimate beefs that needed to be rectified. I would have been furious if I was a woman working alongside a man, but receiving less money for doing the same work. I too would have been furious if I had been passed over for promotion simply because of my sex. I can understand their desire to fight for equality, and they have succeeded.

The Feminist Movement has made great strides in setting this right. As of 2010, women held 51.4% of all managerial and professional positions, compared with 26% in 1980. Women now earn the lion's share of bachelor and master degrees, and women outnumber men on college campuses 57% to 43%. In this regard, feminism has been a huge success.

But like many good causes, when the pendulum swings, it usually swings too far in the other direction. This has been true with the feminist movement as well. Along with their great success in achieving equality in the workplace and academia, they have also made great strides in destroying the underpinnings of marriage and the family.

Betty Friedan described the life of a housewife as a comfortable concentration camp, and feminists would sit around in their consciousness-raising parties sharing horror stories about their husband's bad behavior. As a result, women went off in droves looking for a good divorce lawyer. Now, about 70% of divorces are started by women.

As a result, marriage is on the rocks. This was evident in the cover story of The Atlantic magazine a month ago. The November issue carried the headline, "What, Me Marry?" The story featured Kate Bolick, the daughter of a renowned feminist, who claimed she marched off to third grade "in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE." Now, in mid-life, she laments not being able to find a man to marry; and she is terribly unhappy.

But that was part of the feminist's plan. They were out to destroy men, to free women from the bondage of marriage, to make sex recreational and totally detached from commitment, to make abortion commonplace so women could avoid the consequences of their choices - and in this, they have also succeeded greatly. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, 44% of Millennials and 43% of Gen Xers think marriage is becoming obsolete. Fully 50% of the adult population is single, compared to 33% in 1950. Co-habitation has increased 15-fold since 1960. Feminist Gloria Steinman and Mrs. Bolick's Mother convinced the culture that the old sexual mores were, along with marriage and children, oppressive to women. So the old ways were jettisoned.

Men, too, found great freedom in the Feminist Movement. No longer were they expected to make commitments to marriage and to raising of children. They could follow their Peter Pan dreams of extended adolescence, getting the fringe sexual benefits of marriage without any of the troubling demands to love, care for, and protect a family.

The only problem is this goes totally against the fabric of who we are as a people, of who we were created to be. The change of attitudes has left a wake of destruction in its path - it has been a disaster for children, and heartbreaking for the adults who have to live with the their choices.

The good news is that those trends are changing. Research from the University of Virginia's Marriage Project shows this. The divorce rate is declining since hitting its all time high in the 1980s. One of the reasons is that Gen Xers don't want to put their kids through the trauma they experienced watching their homes disintegrate as mom and pop split up. As a matter of fact, they "would rather put chocolate syrup in the baby bottles than put the children through a family breakup," according to Susan Reimer of the Baltimore Sun.

Citing the Pew Research Study, Glenn Stanton, author of The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Co-habitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage, writes, "Young adults have the strongest desire to marry of any generation alive today . . . . and the unmarried folks in other generations alive today are not, nor ever have been, disinterested in marriage."

Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, concluded, "I think there are more couples out there who have been married and who realize, 'Hey, we may not be experiencing the life of bliss that we were hoping for, but it's the best thing for our kids for us to stay together and try to make this marriage work.'"

More and more, people are realizing that the destruction of marriage by the Feminist Movement was a colossal mistake. More and more, people are realizing that marriage as God designed it, as God intended it, is the best way for people to live. It brings people the most satisfaction with life. It is still the best way to raise our children. We need to again develop a family friendly culture that promotes, not destroys marriage.