The wonderful things about homemaking-raising children, living comfortably, contributing to a loving marriage-contrasted with feelings of isolation, boredom, and purposelessness, among others. For her, gender roles, and gender discrimination, were directly tied to urban form. Too many of them, like the homemakers invoked by the title of this book, live in quiet desperation, unaware of the impact their environments have on them and unable to do anything about it.įeminist pioneer Betty Friedan described the “feminine mystique” as a sense of tension and ambiguity about women’s roles in the 1950s, especially in suburbia. Too many Americans are resigned to living and working in mediocre places. Whether we live in Beacon Hill or Greenwich Village, Livermore or Santa Clarita, or Richmond or Compton, we are all passive subjects to the decisions made by planners and developers years and generations ago. The notion of a childhood origin story remains relevant to anyone who lives in cities because, in many ways, everyone who lives in a city is still a child. This essay is excerpted from the introduction to The Urban Mystique, newly published by Solimar Books.
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