Too bad Betty Friedan didn't have the internet

I feel very sorry for Betty Friedan. From her book, The Feminine Mystique, she appears to have been very lonely as a housewife and yearning for something more. When I consider that she wrote the book at a time long before the World Wide Web, when a little color TV with three channels was considered as modern as one could get, I understand why she felt that way. What educated, intelligent person is going to be satisfied with mere passive intake of information via TV and books with the occasional phone call to a friend while little ones are napping and laundry is drying on the line? Children are cute and infinitely precious, but not very intellectually stimulating. In fact, I find other people's babies to be rather soporific.

Thankfully, I don't live in her time. Through my computer, I interact with the rest of the world throughout the day. I blog, I comment on blogs, I post on Facebook, I read interesting articles posted by my friends on Facebook, I do legal research for my very-part-time job, I research homeschool resources, I look up the answers to random questions posed by dd9 and dd7, I email, I take a free online course on water from The University of Oklahoma (from which I've been learning so much!), I learn how to fix plumbing problems, I learn how to make a favorite Thai soup, I keep up with recently published scientific studies in fields that are interesting to me, etc. I have a wealth of free music at my fingertips via Grooveshark and YouTube, and if I like a song, I can share it with my friends instantly on Facebook. Were I inclined to political activism, I could easily do it as I sit at the computer overseeing my children's homeschool studies in the morning. And I don't even have a smart phone; just imagine what I could do with one of those!

I love my life as a stay-at-home mother. Yes, I'm on the computer a lot, but I'm right here for my children when they need me instead of juggling out-of-home work with caring for my little ones. I don't think Friedan's central complaint in The Feminine Mystique has much relevance to women now. I think it did us all a disservice in that it fueled the continuing "mommy wars." With technology enabling us to work from home and giving us unprecedented opportunities to communicate with the outside world, it's time to recognize that everyone working in a house can have just as fulfilling a life as those who commute to somewhere else. Of course, I am a bit of an introvert, so extroverts can feel free to disagree with me...or just get themselves a Twitter account. :)