Customer Reviews

The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For men who think that feminism is a threat to the male sex, this book will open eyes and minds in the same way abolition liberated white slave-owners from their barbaric addiction to controlling other human beings against their will. And for women who see feminism as a threat to families, this book will either help relieve them of their ignorance of history, or only further convince them that a woman can have no other meaningful purpose than to bear and rear children.

This book addresses the disconnect between traditional gender roles and reality that has been building up steadily since the industrial revolution. The trend toward industrialization came to a head during WWI and especially WWII when many women worked in factories to produce munitions used by their husbands to kill. As the sudden return of men from great carnage sparked the baby boom, the notion of the "housewife" came to describe women's return to domesticity aided with a new arsenal of household gadgets and appliances. Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique", in response to the vacuousness of this newly created paradigm of the suburban housewife paradise. Her book pointed out the absurdity of the domestic female role when modern conveniences had rendered them obsolete. Even childrearing was becoming usurped from the domain of women by the increasing institutionalization of public schools as day care centers.

A quarter century after Betty Friedan's landmark book, Barbara Ehrenreich finally gave men the same insight into how their roles have become outmoded in response to historical changes. If the feminist protest was against viewing females as mere baby-factories, this book critiques the socialization of men into being either breadwinners, or soldiers willing to sacrifice their lives in war. In a purely economic sense - with the vanishing of agriculture, women had ceased to contribute to the finances of the family as men competed in an increasingly specialized labor force. For the first time in history, in 1950's America, women had become purely concerned with reproduction thus forcing men to be even more focused on production, at the expense of leisure time. The blandness of this female domestic tranquility was matched by the sense of "pseudo" power men had over their wives as "kept" women. This books shows that the other side of the coin of feminist rage over female oppression was no picnic for men either.

Men were oppressed in an opposite but equally intolerable way. Taken to its logical extreme, the male gender role had become equivalent to greed. No other instinct could better serve a man in a world where male success was defined purely in financial terms. More so than ever, men were encouraged to be workaholic machines, denying their emotions. In this context, any sensitivity or weakness in a man was tantamount to a betrayal of his family in his role as provider. But in "The Hearts of Men", there was a longing for something deeper than the accumulation of wealth as expressed by the beat writers and 1960's counterculture. As long as a woman's place remained at home, marriage and family increasingly appeared to be a death sentence of hard labor. They rejected this heart attack-inducing life of the breadwinner. The elevation of sex and free love for its own sake in the 1960's was in part a reaction against this prostitution-like relation between the sexes whereby the husband had to pay for the privilege of having a "housewife".

This book rightly takes some of the blame for the breakdown of the family off the shoulders of feminism, and perhaps suggests that some of the blame should go to the insensitivity of American wage labor capitalism toward the personal lives of employees, in the relentless pursuit of profit over people. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in gender, history, and yes - family values.

Barbara Ehrenreich was a prominent feminist author, who'd written books chronicling the way the culture has mistreated women, like For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women (with Deirdre English). But then she got interested in the notion that the culture was also mistreating men. At first, she says, she was skeptical. She intended to write a book mocking the idea. But the more she researched it, the more she realized the men had a point: patriarchy hurts them too.

The result is a book that's not only a brilliant chronicle of how the sexual revolution has changed men's lives, but an honest attempt to grapple with what it all means for women. It's a fascinating read -- her reinterpretation of Playboy alone is worth the work.

Ehrenreich emphasizes that the economy changed dramatically during the post war boom, and the changes in the economy eventually demanded changes in the culture. Women have always worked, but they use to work at home on a farm. Even as late as the 30s and 40s America was still heavily agricutural. But during the 50s and 60s farm life died out in America, not totally of course, but to a large extent, replaced by big industry and then computers. On a farm a woman could do valuable work, in the new world of the 50s there was nothing for a woman to do but sit around and look pretty. You had millions of women of intelligence and strength and a desire for meaningful labor, and they no longer had an outlet, because they no longer lived on a farm. On a farm the could help their man and their family everyday, in a meaninful way. In the 50s, they were mere parasites, living at home in ease while the men worked. And eventualy, of course, the men got tired of that arrangement. To put it another way, on a farm, a man needs a wife. In the modern world, a man doesn't need a woman as much, or at least not in the same way. At some point, the culture had to adjust to the changes in the economy, and that adjustment was feminism. Women had to work so they could still contribute something meaninful to a marriage.

Required for a class I had to take. It was a decent book but not good enough for me to finish. Most likely because it was required.

I just got to reading this book (A few days after the 30 day return period) and realized the book is missing about 30 pages(Chapter six and seven)! Make sure if you buy this you make sure its not missing these chapters!

Other than that, the book itself is another feminist view of how men screwed them over (I wouldn't have read it if it weren't for a class). I'll admit I'm a bit blunt. Essentially women needed men for financial stability, men realized it was okay to be single and changed the view of manhood (playboy, beatniks, and counter-culture). Brings up both sides for and against Equal Rights Amendment, and how it didn't get passed. Then how the overall male revolt led to feminization of poverty, because women couldn't afford to be single parents, and thus a feminist movement began.

This book does try and be more historical, but the author basically chooses an argument and cuts and pastes in history to prove how her theory is true. If you are into woman's studies I'm sure you will find this book worthy of re-reading. I personally didn't see as much correlation between the examples and the theory as others.

The book itself deserves 2 stars, but the lack of chapters made it one star (I did read them, I can't say I'm completely disappointed they are gone, just irritated that I had to borrow a friends copy before a midterm)

With the notable exception of the Anglo-American versions, most revolutions are premised on the belief that the existing structure of society has been artificially imposed and that by altering that structure you can remake human beings and human nature in a new image. So the French Revolution required that the monarchy and the aristocracy be discarded and expected that egalitarianism and brotherhood would follow, as day follows night; meanwhile, Marxist Revolutions suppose that once capitalism and capitalists are done away with, the happy workers of the world will share and share alike. Of course, history has shown these revolutionary ideals to be absolutely ludicrous, and such revolutions have come a cropper when the ugly but immutable facts of human nature have come roaring back with a vengeance. This creates a rather hilarious situation whereby revolutionaries are continually being surprised by manifestations of the very characteristics which mankind has understood itself to have since time immemorial--greed, lust,selfishness, etc.. Barbara Ehrenreich is not only a socialist, but a radical feminist, which means that besides that Marxist vision, she also believes that once the patriarchy is overthrown, men and women will be coequal and will live in blessed harmony. This book then is based on her supposedly controversial discovery that the disintegration of the nuclear family, which has generally been blamed on feminism, owes just as much to the political desires of men. Duh?

Just step back for a second and think about Women's Liberation has meant for men. Basically, women have had to take on more economic responsibilities and more child-rearing responsibilities, while at the same time their mortality rates have begun to more closely match men's and, thanks to abortion of female children and these worsening health rates, their absolute numbers have begun to decline back towards those of men, or even below. In exchange, men have gotten to slough off economic responsibility for women and children, have been able to get out of child rearing responsibilities, and have gotten much freer access to intercourse with females. How can Ehrenreich possibly be surprised that men were willing participants in this process ?

GRADE : D

I thought that this book was well researched. That is why I was generous enough to give it two stars. However, the dryness of this novel cannot be described. This book dragged on for hours and at the end it was hard to make a point out of the book as a whole. I got as much out of the first page as I did from the middle 200. I do not recommend this book to anyone who expects a book that will not only flow well, but will also keep the reader even remotely interested.