When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
$15.00
- ISBN13: 9780316059541
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and bestselling author, recounts the astounding revolution in women’s lives over the past 50 years, with her usual “sly wit and unfussy style” (People).
When Everything Changed begins in 1960, when most American women had to get their husbands’ permission to apply for a credit card. It ends in 2008 with Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign. This was a time of cataclysmic change, when, after four hundred years… More >>
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When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
The book does a very good job of telling what women have accomplished in the past 50 years. Yes, they have, and I raised four very successful daughters and they are all accomplished and successful, three married, two with children, and one still single and a teacher in Alaska. OK, what’s my beef? It is simple, YES, and am sure it will be mostly women that read this, you failed to do your basic job for society and that is to have two children each. Baby boomer women had about about 1.5 babies each, and as a result the history of western culture has been changed. In other words, without valuing children and producing them, the population of the US would be declining, and is for European American descendants in any event.
OK, I got your attention, now, without these children entering the workforce there has been a shortage of young people to take the jobs which produced a vacuum in population which has been filled by Latinos coming here illegally. Most don’t look at this way, but that’s really what happened. So why am I writing this? Hopefully, to get the attention of other young women and encourage them to have a couple of kids! Without women having children the culture will die. In Europe the birth rates are so low with European women that their countries will be taken over by Muslims with 50 years. Japan will cease to exist as a country in less than 75 years, no children are being born to the young women who are now paid by the government to get pregnant, as the government is so worried about population decline with a large majority of old people in the country. Who will take care of the middle aged people now if they have no children?
So, if you care about your country, yes be successful, go out and accomplish your goals like my four daughters did, but please, for the future of our country, have those two kids on average!! Think about it this way, you have made a selfish conscious decision to make money at the expense of having a family.
By the way, the book does a good job of summarizing the accomplishment of women and the competition with men that they seem so eager to surpass in wages and prestige. But at the end of your lives, if you don’t have children, who is going to take care of you? All this prestige and money won’t mean nearly as much as kids and grand kids, take my word for it. You can do both! My wife did!
Rating: 1 / 5
Yes, I remember all too well when and how everything changed. I lived through its’infancy in a hotbed of liberalism. Never much of a mainstreamer, I watched it unfold from the sidelines and couldn’t help but feel a twinge of dread. It just seemed like too much all at once. I cringed as the wealthy wives of suburbia burbled about really seeing their vaginas for the very first time as they all sat in a circle at their latest consciousness-raising meeting, mirrors and flashlights in hand, panty girdles having been burned in a backyard ritual. Think I’m joking? The foolishness that becomes the hallmark of every great ground-breaking cultural movement did not pass this one by. Yes, feminism has traveled the spectrum from the sublime to the ridiculous, but nearly half a century later we are beginning to see just how it shakes out long term. Historical facts do not exist. There are only opinions and perceptions. So as Collins lays out the advances of feminism, it only fair to bring in the devil’s advocate -that’s where I come in. I have the lumps on my head to prove it. Deep breath; here I go. Define “advances” as it applies to a materialistic technology-crazed culture run amok. Is it the two large incomes that are now required for any reasonable, and in some locales, attainable standard of living? Is it $500,000 three bedroom tract homes? Is it empty-nester baby boomers rolling down the road in houses on wheels towing SUV’s sporting stickers bragging about how they are spending their children’s inheritance? Having come from a childhood where homes had only one breadwinner and one vehicle and Mom still baked cookies, I have to ask myself just how all this liberation has really improved the quality of life of the average American-all Americans. It’s easy to put the icons of feminism on a pedestal and celebrate their obvious accomplishments. But how about the contrast between these relatively few icons (usually already wealthy and privileged) and the ever increasing groundswell of their impoverished sisters struggling to do it all and never quite making it? Bummer. That doesn’t make for very entertaining storytelling. But it’s closer to the reality of the situation. There are more poor and homeless PEOPLE (the fallout of all this liberation has hit BOTH genders hard) than ever before. Hard work and a frugal lifestyle used to allow most of us to live modestly but comfortably. Then the job market began to open up for women. “You know, with both of us bringing home a paycheck, we could really get ahead of the game.” Indeed, the predominant tangible symptom of feminism was the stampede of haus fraus into the workplace. Enter polarization – either join the ranks of the “haves” or get left behind in the ghetto of shrinking economic opportunities and escalating expenses. I’ve watched it happen first hand to people that I know. One particular couple married as dirt-poor farmers. She was one of the first to enter the ranks of women with three jobs – wage-earner, housewife and mother. They saved and invested. Now a wealthy widow sitting on millions while her grandchildren sweat their rent and job security, she can’t figure out why they just can’t seem to get with the program. I would have liked to have seen Collins take a more balanced approach to “the Great Cause” (I need a break from feminism, even from its’ name). The Cause has been really hard on men, and that includes our own children. I remember my own son’s embarrassment and confusion when a liberated woman with an armload of groceries growled, “I’m not helpless” and nearly knocked him over as he stepped up to open the door for her. He was only trying to be the helpful human being he was taught to be. That same son, now in his thirties, tells me that the women of his generation are a horror. The men of his generation huddle in groups for protection from them and generally avoid them out of fear. Sounds like lots of lonely people to me. My own generation isn’t much different. The little old couples that took care of each other to the end no longer exist. As we enter the winter of our lives, record numbers of us are alone. As we succumb to the ravages of old age, societal resources will be stretched to the limit. As far as pushing for more changes, more so-called reforms, maybe it’s time both genders and all ages took a break from all this endless pushing and shoving and just spent some time together achieving a balance-a kinder, gentler man and woman. Turn off the machines – take a walk, play a game, go play at the beach. The enthusiasm of many of the staunch proponents of feminism is admirable, but perhaps it is time to slow down and turn down the volume on the whole gender issue and remember that ultimately we’re still the same species.
Rating: 2 / 5
This was a long and tedious read. Though I feel I am open minded, I did feel her Left Wing slant was way to overbearing and often inaccurate. Her writing seemed to slam motherhood and stay at home moms as something to be ashamed of. Why can’t we have women be free to experience their full potential while still allowing the beauty and joy of motherhood? Of course equality, of course equal pay and of course all the other freedoms and rights that all people should have. But why categorize woman on such a rigid plane? But I should have been forwarned as the authoress worked for the New York Times.
Rating: 2 / 5
I graduated from Barnard in 1980 and not a single thing in this was new. So I was disappointed, but also curious: who was this book written for, and why is it news? Also, Gail Collins had access to the news at that time, and was older and lived through it more personally. I can’t believe this was very hard to research.
I think it would be more interesting to develop the ideas that come towards the end of the book, does feminism have a role today? And if so, is there room for it? Many of the people glorifying the role of stay-at-home motherhood seem to forget how they are going to pay for it. In the 70’s, women fought for equality, today they have it, so yes, you’d better have an education and a career up your sleeve rather than counting on your child’s father to pay your way through motherhood. Tough.
Rating: 1 / 5
So you’re not a feminist. And that would be because feminists…took all the fun out of life?
Gail Collins brilliant book shows readers what America was like before women went from being inferiors to equal citizens. If you are a young woman who would just love to go back to the old days, consider what life was like for the “little woman,” of the 1950s. By quoting magazines, newspapers and other examples from popular culture Collins shows us how insideous sexism was. If you grew up at a time when a man’s voice narrated tv commercials for bras, because only a man’s voice was considered authoritative enough to sell anything, you will know what I mean. There was a time when virtually every television commercial and most TV shows portrayed women as helpmates, to husbands, doctors or ace detectives. Sometimes she was a smart, resourceful helpmate but usually she sounded like an idiot.
Collins also explains the legal problems women faced including divorce laws that gave homemakers no rights to property acquired during a marriage, no matter how long as well as employment laws that prohibited women working normal business hours.
And then, within just a few decades, everything changed. Among the many factors that got us out of this mess may have been a highly eductated but under-utilized female population. When the jobs finally became available, there were an astonishing number of women ready to take them.
I recommend this book to everyone, men, women, teens and especially young women, who may think twice before they insult the women who fought for this change by saying “I’m not a feminist, but…”
Rating: 5 / 5