THE DEATH of Betty Friedan has stirred up some nice old grudges among the self-styled radicals who dismissed her demands for equal pay as too timid, who thought her refusal to detest men was hopelessly bourgeois and who resented her being dubbed “mother of American feminism”. What an egotistical, backbiting world it was when there was so much at stake. It all sounds a bit petty to most women in their twenties and thirties now. We gained from your battles, thanks very much. That’ll be two skinny lattes, please.

In truth, Friedan did much of the heavy lifting for those who came after. There is little doubt that The Feminine Mystique (1963) helped to trigger a revolution in how women saw themselves. Friedan discovered that her college pals from Smith, who had trooped back to the suburbs to do their duty as homemakers, were intensely dissatisfied. It was not lack of education that was holding women back, she realised, but the narrow definition of the role of women. For that, a mere 40 years ago, she was apparently described as a greater threat to the United States than the Russians.

Millions identified with her picture of boredom and alienation masquerading as femininity, of the wife who “made the beds, matched slipcover material . . . chauffered Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night . . . afraid to ask even of herself the silent question ‘Is this all?’.” The question taxing today’s generation, “Can I have it all?” is clearly a minnow by comparison.

This does not mean, however, that the new question is simple to answer. The triumph of feminism is to have created the self-sufficient woman. But the self-sufficient woman seems so unhappy with today’s terms and conditions. Some — notably the rich — are stepping back into the gilded cage of non-working motherhood. In America the number of working women with children under 1 has dropped for the first time in 25 years, driven mainly by the better-off and educated. One of the biggest status symbols in London now is to have a clever, non-working wife and four children. You’ve made it, that seems to say. Your wife can look after herself better — and you.

This has put the rest of us in a bit of a spin. For we spend much of our time berating ourselves for doing everything badly: the job, the marriage, the kids. We still suffer from what Friedan described as a “schizophrenic split” between how women’s lives are perceived and how they really are. We are expected to be swans, gliding elegantly along the surface, but we’re still paddling furiously underneath. Having it all shows on your face: in the lines, the grumpiness, the sheer exhaustion of working late and then ministering to sick babes at night. Our secret delight at being able to spend nocturnal hours cuddling ill children we don’t see enough is diluted by concern at what our husband's colleagues at the office party will think of a wife who hasn’t slept for 24 hours and never quite got round to losing the pregnancy weight. Will they still congratulate him on his choice? One girlfriend who loves her job as much as I love mine reflected the other day that in ten years we will probably look ten years older than our peers who have given up work. For their new gilded cage contains cleaners, childcare and personal trainers.

There’s no doubt that choice has been a liberation. But it has also brought a new insecurity. Women today are more likely to be divorced, unmarried or single mothers than they were in Friedan’s time. They are more likely to work full time and also to do the bulk of the housework. Divorce still liberates many women. But the greater likelihood of divorce now looms so large in the consciousness of many mothers that it is acting to deny them choice. Why else would we be the first generation to believe that we “cannot afford” to raise our own children, when average national income is higher than ever? Women who barely earn enough to pay for childcare are going back to work even before their babies are weaned. Job satisfaction is part of it, but not all jobs are satisfying. They are doing it to keep their skills up, shoring up the CV against the time when their man moves on to a younger model.

The paradox of self-sufficiency is becoming apparent. Most men need to be needed. Do-it-all women can end up with exactly the result they are seeking to protect themselves from if their husbands realise they’re not really needed at all. I know many woman who claim to want to share chores equally but also have a strong drive to control everything. The other night I met a lawyer couple in their thirties. She was complimenting him on his help around the house, but in a back-handed way.

“I bet you don’t really do half,” I joshed. “No,” he said gently. “She won’t let me.” Then she admitted that it was true. She didn’t want anyone else to decide what the kids should wear, or eat, or do. “I like to have everything the way I like it.”

Perhaps this is not so strange. Inspired by Friedan, many of our mothers instilled in us a powerful ambition to “make up” for the brilliant careers they missed. But they were also housewives who were 100 per cent there for us when we were children, who created loving environments from which we know we benefited. We want to provide the same stability for our children. But we are frightened of being washed up when they leave the nest. And we were educated to be fulfilled in work. So we end up stressed and frustrated.

The question I struggle with is why, in a time of plenty, have we come to assume that looking after one’s own children is a perk only of the rich? Feminism was about fulfilment, but there are still too women miserably blotting out the emotional pull from home. Should we really encourage families to delegate the care of young children to the TV set and an au pair? I know one married woman who works long hours for a misogynist boss to pay a childminder she doesn’t entirely trust.

There is something wrong here. We’ve found our identity, lucky us: now maybe we should work on putting our children back into it.

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camilla.cavendish@thetimes.co.uk

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