Women Who Broke All The Rules

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Overview

Life turns out in ways you never expected.

The eighteen million women born in the first years of the baby boom grew up anticipating a life of rules--go to college, get married, have a family. But when the time came, the cultural, social and political tumult of the late 1960s catapulted them into options that no previous generation had even considered.

The Women Who Broke All the Rules is the first book to celebrate the ordinary but extraordinary women who made decisions that have changed every woman's life. Against extreme odds and without role models, these women made unprecedented life choices--in marriage, childbearing, education and work. By breaking...

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Overview

Life turns out in ways you never expected.

The eighteen million women born in the first years of the baby boom grew up anticipating a life of rules--go to college, get married, have a family. But when the time came, the cultural, social and political tumult of the late 1960s catapulted them into options that no previous generation had even considered.

The Women Who Broke All the Rules is the first book to celebrate the ordinary but extraordinary women who made decisions that have changed every woman's life. Against extreme odds and without role models, these women made unprecedented life choices--in marriage, childbearing, education and work. By breaking every rule in the "good girl" handbook, they defined new ways for adult women to live. You will recognize yourself, your family and your friends in these pages.

Editorial Reviews

Rebecca Maksel
Specifically tailored for a general audience, the book would benefit a sociology or women's studies course, or provide the foundation for an oral history project.
— ForeWord Magazine
Library Journal
Using oral histories, Evans, a University of San Francisco professor, and Avis, a licensed psychologist and director of the Life Transitions Institute, piece together the stories of everyday women of the baby boom generation. Born between 1945 and 1955, these "torchbearers" discuss marriage, careers, delayed child bearing, female friendships, and family relationships. The authors examine adult female psychological and professional development through interviews with over 100 mainly white, heterosexual women from supposedly diverse backgrounds. The analysis is rather thin and contains some language that oversimplifies women's plight, e.g., "they were programmed to follow a lockstep sequence from school to marriage." This is a popular study aimed at a general middle-class professional audience; readers looking for more detail might turn to Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America 1945-1960 (Temple Univ., 1994) and Generations: A Century of Women Speak About Their Lives (LJ 7/97). Recommended for public libraries only.--Jenny Lynn Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A feeble attempt to explain how women got where they are today. The women's movement is still evolving, yet already people are analyzing what really happened way back in the 1960s. Evans and Avis, experts in interpersonal communications and psychology respectively, both at the University of San Francisco, interviewed more than 100 women who came of age in the late '60s and early '70s, their theory being that these "torchbearers," who broke new social ground and crushed certain accepted gender conventions, could help shed light on how women forced social change. Unfortunately, the authors reduce this intriguing idea to pap, resorting to clichés under the guise of "new truths" such as "You've got to have friends" and "If it's a trial by fire, don't forget to bring marshmallows." In attempting to consolidate a lot of information, Evans and Avis trivialize individual women in stereotypical caricatures. Joyce, for instance, was a radical leftist who created coffee houses near military bases to encourage soldiers to question the Vietnam War. Later she tried to join the army to better organize from the inside. (Her father secretly sabotaged the attempt by calling the FBI.) Her ultimate decision to marry a conservative, apolitical man and live a "settled middle-class life focused on family" is evaluated by noting "she did so with a deep sense of satisfaction, knowing she had been true to herself and had contributed to stopping social injustice." Is that all there is to say about such an original life? The book also traffics in the worst sort of New Age-isms: "Create balance in your life." This is a woman thing? The authors' annoyingly simple explanations don't do justice to a timeperiod deserving of better analysis.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781570714283
  • Publisher: Sourcebooks, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 3/1/1999
  • Pages: 258
  • Sales rank: 1,180,032
  • Product dimensions: 6.25 (w) x 8.50 (h) x 0.63 (d)

Meet the Author

Susan B. Evans, Ed.D., and Joan P. Avis, Ph.D., are professors at the University of San Francisco. Susan teaches graduate courses in special education, survey research and data analysis. Joan is a licensed psychologist who specializes in adult development and life planning and is the Director of the Life Transitions Institute in San Francisco. They are both members of the generation of women who broke all the rules.

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter One, "I See Myself as an Accidental Pioneer"

"If you could talk to the women who came across America in covered wagons, they'd say they weren't very tough either. I did what I had to do. That was the case for most of my generation. It was all timing. We never set out to blaze trails, yet in so many ways, we did."

The generation born between 1945 and 1955, the first decade of the baby boom, is the first in which vast numbers of American women chose to deviate from conventional patterns of education, marriage, childbearing and careers. Raised with the traditional female expectations of the 1950s—to go to college, get married and have a family—they encountered unanticipated events in adolescence and early adulthood which changed the course of their lives.

Like Sleeping Beauty, an entire generation was awakened by the collective energy of the radical counterculture, the civil-rights movement and second-wave feminism. Because these women entered young adulthood in the late 1960s, a time of enormous social change, their thoughts and actions directly challenged society's narrow and stifling rules for girls. They became accidental pioneers in the process, going where women had never gone before.

Remarkably, this generation went beyond conventional limits and rules in their twenties, thirties and forties, not just during adolescence. As teenagers and young adults, they began the lifelong process of being risk-takers, bold in their pursuit of both professional and personal success. When the doors to traditionally male professions swung open, they were among the first women to take advantage of emerging opportunities. When they weren't challenging the assumptions about who could enter certain occupations, they were breaking every rule in the "good girl" handbook.

They defied the sanctions against interracial and interfaith marriage, abortion, single motherhood, divorce and unmarried cohabitation which, at one time, were big violations of social mores for middle-class females. They led the way by showing that women could engage in such conduct and still be respectable people, by any standards.

The story of this transitional generation is a contemporary version of the classic pioneer tale of self-transformation and triumph over adversity. Like early pioneers, these women took different roads, made distinctly different choices than their predecessors, and learned that those who "go first" face difficult times when they reject established social and cultural conventions. Unlike early pioneer women who left home with their husbands and families, these women had only each other to buffer what they encountered along the way and their journey still continues to have profound and far-reaching implications for how society views women.

Despite relentless efforts over the last thirty years to rein them back in, this generation boldly refused to accept second-class status on the basis of their sex and created unprecedented life options for all women, not just for themselves. Because we see their lives as prototypes for all women learning how to survive and thrive, we call the women of this generation Torchbearers. Torchbearers initiate, originate, break new ground and scout unknown trails. As transmitters of the light of knowledge, they also have the responsibility to pass the torch to those who follow.

The women of this generation were forced, out of necessity, to meet the challenge of integrating valuable lessons from the past with abundant new ways of being. Through the course of their adult development, they pioneered previously unheard of freedoms and choices for women that most now take for granted and constructed empowered lives by devising new ways to love and work. As a result of their efforts, women today are truly free to become fully self-actualized persons, without the constraints of gender.

We want to honor this amazing and resourceful generation for their sense of spirit and adventure, their ability to triumph over obstacles, and their creativity in crafting an entirely new model for female adult development. Theirs is a living legacy that must be shared with women of all ages.

The bold statements we just made about the generation of women who broke all the rules may seem obvious to some, but if they are so obvious, why haven't we read about their incredible, inspirational lives in the media and popular press? In fact, the opposite is the case. With the exception of some feminist writers, few have publicly extolled the virtues of this generation. Apart from articles about famous members, such as Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Diane Keaton and Amy Tan, we found very little in the popular literature that commends this generation as special and unique.

Instead, they have been characterized as selfish, anti-male, unappealing and unattractive, neurotic, narcissistic and anti-life, to name just a few. While we knew intuitively from our personal experience that this picture was distorted, it wasn't until after we finished our interviews with one hundred ordinary but extraordinary representatives of this generation that even we fully realized the extent and depth of their impact on womankind.

Table of Contents

Preface
Part One: Who We Are As Women
Chapter 1: I See Myself as an Accidental Pioneer
Chapter 2: By the Time I Got to College,They Changed All the Rules
Chapter 3: I was a Foot Soldier in the Sexual Revolution
Chapter 4: I've Become the Person My Mother Hoped I'd Marry
Chapter 5: I Like the Journey As Much As the Destination
Part Two: Who We Are As a Generation
Chapter 6: I've Made Lifestyle Choices That Surprised Even Me
Chapter 7: I've Grown, What's His Problem?
Chapter 8: I'm Blessed to Have Women Friends Who are the Backbone of My Life
Chapter 9: I Tell Women to Keep Walking and Remember to Pass the Torch
Appendix: Interview Questions

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