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"I've been married a little over a year and actually my husband and I have been very happy, even before I read Fascinating Womanhood. However, I wish more women my age would agree with your philosophy. I've read reviews of your book by angry, radical feminists but am afraid to confront them. I would love to recommend it to them because I see how valuable your teachings are, but I feel they will say I'm backwards and have no self-respect.

"A lot of the qualities you admire in women are discouraged by society today, which I feel is a real shame. Before I met my husband I had a relationship with a man who felt I was too dependent and passive. I fell into a severe state of depression because I was also under a great deal of pressure from my family to succeed. I was attending Cornell University, planning to go to medical school. My mother is a doctor and she wanted me to become a doctor too. I had always been an overachiever, receiving excellent grades and becoming an accomplished musician as well, but the pressure was too great and I became severely depressed. I am still under a lot of pressure. I go to college during the day and teach piano lessons in the evenings to make money.

"When I was receiving therapy, my therapist told me that I was too passive, dependent and non-assertive. I thought I had a major personality flaw but didn't know how to change myself. When I met my husband I told him that I was too passive and not independent enough, and I was absolutely shocked when he told me that I was wonderful. He said he hated women that were too independent and that he enjoyed giving me the attention I needed.

"When I read your book I wished I had been born in a time when most women stayed home with the children. Everyone in my family desperately wants me to finish school and work, and I feel sad that it is so socially unacceptable today for women to stay home and not work outside the home. My apartment is often a terrible mess because I have so little time to clean, and want to be healthy but always end up eating fast foods during the week because I have no time during my comute from school to work in the evenings.

"I told one of my friends that I sometimes wished I could be "just a housewife" and she laughed, as if the idea was ridiculous. I also remember talking to a 19 year old college girl who stated, embarrassed, that she wants to be a mother and stay home with her children. She immediately went on to say "I know that sounds terrible! I should want to have a career and be independent but I do kind of want to be a stay-at-home housewife anyway." I think that much of my depressioin stemmed from the fact that my mother put her career ahead of me. I didn't even live with my mother for four years, from the age of 7 to 11. She and my father divorced and she completed her residency in NY while I lived with my father. I had also spent endless hours in daycare as a child, and even at the age of 3 my parents were told that I had severe depression.

"I want to thank you for your book because when I read it it makes me happy. It helps me see the bright side of things. Right now I am reading it for the second time. The first time I read your book my husband told me that I had changed. He said I seemed so much happier and he liked whatever I was doing. I also started wearing feminine clothes more often and we have been having fewer and fewer arguments as time goes by.

"I still plan to finish school and start working as a teacher. However, if I have children I will definitely be there for them, instead of putting them in daycare. I absolutely do not want to put my children in day care. I don't think I would be emotionally capable of handling a job and raising a child at the same time. And I wonder when I am older if I would deeply regret never being a mother.

"I think your book is so important, not only for women who are unhappily married but for society. I hope more women will start to see things the way you do, and am saddened that so few of my age do. I know this situation has affected men too. It definitely seems that the roles in the family have meshed, and many young people today have no role models for creating healthy, happy marriages and families.

Comments by Mrs. Andelin

If you know what is right and true, you have a responsibility to defend it, even if you are in the minority. What do you care if pople mock you? They did the same to our Lord and Savior and finally crucified him. The majority is not always right The early day Christians were thrown into the lion's dens rather than deny what they felt was true.

As for the angry feminists reviews, there are also good reviews of Fascinating Womanhood. And there is a growing tide of women who support the FW way and would give anything to stay home and turn their households into a "heaven on earth" but feel locked into working. They did not cause this unwelcome situation but are victims of it. Being compelled to work is entirely the work of the feminists in the 1970s, who cried out for the right to join men in the working world. This has so upset the economy of this country that women are now compelled to work to meet financial demands. We all need to develop the moral courage to defend the truth, even when the truth is not popular, even if people ridicule you or mock you for it. Our guiding theme should be "do what is right, let the consequences follow. (words from a sacred hymn.)

You will never find inner peace by following the tide and flow of life. Read what the prophet Jeremiah did when people mocked him for preaching the truth. You will find this account in the Bible, Jeremiah Chapter 20, verses 7 though 9. There was so much opposition to his preaching that Jeremiah grew tired of it all and thought of quitting, but soon found that the truth was like a burning fire shut up in his bones, and he could not restrain himself.

If you plan to finish school and start working as a teacher you are at some risk. So often women who begin working outside the home become used to the additional income, then dependent upon it. Before you begin, be certain when the time comes, that you will have the moral courage to quit and turn your attention to your family. I will cose by quoting these simple lines from a warm and homey song, popular in the 1920s, by a man's voice:

My Blue Heaven

When whipoorwills call, and evening is nigh

I hurry to my blue heaven

A turn to the right, a little white light

Will lead you to my blue heaven

I see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room

A little nest that's nestled where the roses bloom

Just Molly and me, and baby makes three

We're happy in my blue heaven

                - Author unknown

Comments from Grateful Students

"My husband and I have been married for nearly 13 years and have 4 wonderful children. It has always been my dream to be a mother and homemaker fulltime but our financial situation has never allowed for this. As a result I have become a very successful career girl earning almost three times as much as my husband. When I read your book and can see what I have actually done to my husband, when I thought I was helping him, I just cried. Our finances are now so dependent upon my income that it is going to be hard to get out of it, but I am adamant to do so." South Africa

"However brilliant a woman's talents may be, she ought never to shine at the expense of her husband. The government of states and kingdoms, though God knows managed badly enough, I am willing should be solely administered by the Lords of Creation (men). Women should confine themselves to Domestic Government." - Abigail Adams, wife of the President.

"May our Lord advance His kingdom in this great work. I appreciate your obedience. Let the labor of love change lives to His glory."

Movie Magic: An impressive example of a talented young woman who over shadowed her husband in performance and fame, and in so doing inadvertantly destroyed him, is the early movie, A Star is Born, with Janet Gaynor and Fredrick March. This tender romance awakens a sympathy for the masculine drive to excel and how devastated a man can become when his wife overshadows him. This is not a jealousy, but an intense desire to be admired by the woman he loves. How can he hope to gain admiration from her when she has already won the honors of earth.