Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture

It was a sign of the sixties. Drawn by the promise of spiritual and creative freedom, thousands of women from white middle-class homes rejected the suburban domesticity of their mothers to adopt lifestyles more like those of their great-grandmothers. They eagerly learned “new” skills, from composting to quilting, as they took up the decade’s quest for self-realization.

“Hippie women” have alternately been seen as earth mothers or love goddesses, virgins or vamps—images that have obscured the...