Author Guide · Feminist Nonfiction
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In 1957 Betty Friedan sent a questionnaire to her Smith College classmates ahead of their fifteenth reunion. Many of the answers described the same unease: educated women, now housewives, who could not say what was wrong. No magazine would print the article she built from it, so she wrote a book instead. The Feminine Mystique came out on 19 February 1963, sold more than three million copies by 2000, and is widely credited with starting the second wave of American feminism. Three years later she co-founded the National Organization for Women and became its first president. This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 1963–2000 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Betty Friedan wrote six books. The best known by far is The Feminine Mystique (1963); the others are It Changed My Life (1976), The Second Stage (1981), The Fountain of Age (1993), Beyond Gender (1997) and the memoir Life So Far (2000). Start with The Feminine Mystique, then read The Second Stage to see how her own thinking changed.
Where to Start with Betty Friedan
If you want the book that started it
→ The Feminine Mystique (1963) — the 1963 book behind “the problem that has no name”.
If you want her second thoughts
→ The Second Stage (1981) — feminism and the family, eighteen years on.
If you want her on growing older
→ The Fountain of Age (1993) — her long argument against the “mystique of age”.
If you want her own story
→ Life So Far (2000).
6 Betty Friedan Books, in Order
The Feminine Mystique
Starting from a 1957 survey of her Smith College classmates, Friedan describes “the problem that has no name”: the dissatisfaction of educated American housewives in the 1950s. She blames women’s magazines, advertisers, Freudian psychology and the education of girls for selling them the idea that fulfilment lay only in home and family. W. W. Norton published it in February 1963; it sold over three million copies by 2000. Critics, including bell hooks, later pointed out that it speaks almost only for white, middle-class, married women.
It Changed My Life
A collection of her writings on the women’s movement from the 1960s and 1970s, the years from The Feminine Mystique through the founding and growth of NOW. She separates what she saw as the movement’s healthy aims from its divisive ones; reviewers at the time objected to her tone, and her view of lesbianism as a private matter drew heavy criticism.
The Second Stage
Friedan argues that the first stage of the movement, winning equal rights, had left women trying to be “superwomen” who did everything. The second stage, she writes, must restructure institutions, work and family life so that equality is real, and the movement should put the family at its centre. She also criticised what she saw as the excesses of some feminists.
The Fountain of Age
A 671-page book in which Friedan turns the method of The Feminine Mystique on old age, attacking what she calls the “mystique of age”: the assumption that ageing means decline and dependence. She draws on interviews with active older people and on research in gerontology, covering retirement communities, nursing homes, menopause, work and intimacy. Reviews were mixed; The New York Times Book Review faulted it for generalising from a mostly white, middle-class group.
Beyond Gender
Written while she was a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and published by its press, the book calls for a “paradigm shift” beyond single-issue women’s politics. Chapters deal with corporate downsizing and its effect on men and working wives, part-time and temporary work, welfare reform and affirmative action, and putting children first in family policy.
Life So Far
Her memoir, from a Jewish childhood in Peoria, Illinois, through Smith, her years as a labour journalist (she was fired from the UE News when pregnant with her second child), The Feminine Mystique, NOW and her feud with Gloria Steinem. It also states that her husband Carl beat her during their marriage, which ended in 1969; he called the claim a fabrication.
In What Order to Read Betty Friedan
Friedan’s books do not depend on each other, but they make the most sense in publication order, because each later book argues with the earlier ones. It Changed My Life reports on the movement The Feminine Mystique helped start; The Second Stage questions where that movement went; The Fountain of Age applies the same argument to old age.
If you read only two, read The Feminine Mystique and The Second Stage, eighteen years apart. Read Life So Far last, as her own account of everything that came before.
A reading path
1. The Feminine Mystique (1963)
2. It Changed My Life (1976)
3. The Second Stage (1981)
4. The Fountain of Age (1993)
5. Life So Far (2000)
The years · 1921–2006
Quick facts about Betty Friedan
- Known for
- Betty Friedan is known for naming “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique (1963) and for co-founding the National Organization for Women in 1966.
- 1921
- Born Bettye Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois
- 1966
- Co-founds NOW, first president
- 1981
- The Second Stage
- 1993
- National Women’s Hall of Fame
- 2006
- Dies in Washington, D.C., on her 85th birthday
- Born
- 4 February 1921, Peoria, Illinois, as Bettye Naomi Goldstein
- Died
- 4 February 2006, Washington, D.C.
- Education
- Smith College, 1942 (psychology, summa cum laude); a year of graduate work at Berkeley
- Journalism
- Federated Press from 1943, then UE News from 1946
- Organisations
- Co-founded NOW (1966), NARAL (1969) and the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971)
- Honours
- National Women’s Hall of Fame (1993)
The red mark is 1963: The Feminine Mystique, the book that made her name.
How Betty Friedan Writes: Reporting on a Feeling
Friedan came to her books as a reporter, not an academic. The Feminine Mystique began as a questionnaire to her classmates and grew through interviews with housewives, and it mixes those voices with her reading of women’s magazines, advertising research and psychology. Its famous opening, about a problem “buried, unspoken”, sets out what the book does: give a name to something many readers recognised but had no words for.
Her method is to name a “mystique”, a shared assumption sold as natural, and then take it apart with evidence: the feminine mystique in 1963, the “superwoman” in The Second Stage, the “mystique of age” in The Fountain of Age. She trained in psychology, and she leans on it, from her attack on Freud to Abraham Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation.
The weakness critics return to is the same in every book: she generalises from people like herself, educated, white and middle class. Her later books are longer and more policy-minded, built around interviews, conferences and research projects rather than one urgent argument.
Watch
Betty Friedan on The Open Mind
Richard Heffner talks with Friedan on The Open Mind, taped in September 1993, about the road from The Feminine Mystique to her new book on ageing, The Fountain of Age.
Frequently asked questions about Betty Friedan’s books
How many books has Betty Friedan written?
Six: The Feminine Mystique (1963), It Changed My Life (1976), The Second Stage (1981), The Fountain of Age (1993), Beyond Gender (1997) and her memoir Life So Far (2000).
What are Betty Friedan’s books in order?
The Feminine Mystique (1963), It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1976), The Second Stage (1981), The Fountain of Age (1993), Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family (1997) and Life So Far (2000).
Where should I start with Betty Friedan?
With The Feminine Mystique (1963). Everything she wrote afterwards responds to it, and it is the book that made her name. Follow it with The Second Stage (1981) to see how her views changed.
What is Betty Friedan’s most famous book?
The Feminine Mystique, published by W. W. Norton on 19 February 1963. It sold more than three million copies by 2000 and is widely credited with starting the second wave of feminism in the United States.
What is “the problem that has no name”?
Friedan’s phrase, in The Feminine Mystique, for the dissatisfaction of educated American housewives in the 1950s and early 1960s who had comfortable lives but felt empty, and who were, she wrote, afraid to ask even of themselves the silent question, “Is this all?”
Did Betty Friedan found NOW?
She co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966 and was its first president; she wrote its statement of purpose with Pauli Murray. She also co-founded NARAL in 1969 and the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, and organised the Women’s Strike for Equality on 26 August 1970.
Why is Betty Friedan controversial?
Several reasons. In 1969, as NOW president, she called lesbians a threat to the movement (the “lavender menace”), though in 1977 she seconded a lesbian rights resolution. Critics such as bell hooks argued that The Feminine Mystique ignored women who were not white, middle-class and married. The historian Daniel Horowitz showed that before 1963 she had been a radical labour journalist, not the typical suburban housewife she presented; she disputed his reading.
Is Betty Friedan still alive?
No. She died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C., on 4 February 2006, her 85th birthday.
Has Betty Friedan been portrayed on screen?
Yes. Tracey Ullman played her in the FX series Mrs. America (2020), about the fight over the Equal Rights Amendment.
Footnotes
- Betty Friedan — Wikipedia
- The Feminine Mystique — Wikipedia
- Betty Friedan (1921–2006) — Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University
- Friedan, Betty 1921–2006 — Encyclopedia.com
- The Fountain of Age — Publishers Weekly
- Beyond Gender — Wilson Center
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women.”
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), the opening line of chapter one
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