"She presumed that all her suburban-housewife sisters felt as imprisoned as she did and that the gratification she found in her work was attainable for all."

"That was never true, of course; the revolution that [Betty] Friedan helped to spark both liberated women and allowed countless numbers of them to experience financial pressure and the profound dissatisfactions of the workaday grind. More women than ever earn some or all of the money their family lives on. But today, in the tumultuous 21st-century economy, depending on a career as a path to self-actualization can seem like a sucker’s bet."

From Lisa Miller's "The Retro Wife: Feminists who say they’re having it all—by choosing to stay home," a long article in New York Magazine. Worth clicking if only for the photo-illustration.