Quotes from book
The Fountain of Age

Name: The Fountain of Age
Author: Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan

The Fountain of Age is a book written by Betty Friedan, who also wrote The Feminine Mystique. It is a study of aging and how people face aging.

“If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.”

Betty Friedan book The Fountain of Age

Source: The Fountain of Age (1993), Ch. 4.

“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty.”

Betty Friedan book The Fountain of Age

Preface.
The Fountain of Age (1993)
Context: What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.