Eric Alterman: Remembering the ‘Feminine Mystique’

  The Center for American Progress is hosting a forum today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. The forum participants include CAP President Neera Tanden, current New York Times pundit Gail Collins, former New York Times pundit Anna Quindlen, and CAP Senior Fellow Judith Warner. As the event description notes, when The Feminine Mystique was originally published in 1963, “[m]arried women in some states couldn’t sit on juries, get a job without their husband’s permission, or keep control of their property and earnings.”

Jennifer Marshall: Homemakers in an age of feminist mystique

  Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen hit close to many American homes with her comment that Ann Romney, stay-at-home mother of five boys, "had never worked a day in her life."

  The broadside didn't just hit a presidential candidate's wife but also a wide swath of Middle America moms.

  It turns out the typical stay-at-home mom doesn't live next door to the "Desperate Housewives" in a four-bedroom house on Wisteria Lane. Instead, as The New York Times reported after the Rosen-Romney dust-up, 65% of stay-at-home, married mothers of children under 18 live in a household with an annual income below $75,000.