What we could have had:

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

New Yorker Review

These days, we can only dream about a federal program insuring that women with school-age children have affordable child care. If such a thing seems beyond the realm of possibility, though, that’s another sign of our false-memory syndrome. In the early seventies, we very nearly got it. In 1971, a bipartisan group of senators, led by Walter Mondale, came up with legislation that would have established both early-education programs and after-school care across the country. Tuition would be on a sliding scale based on a family’s income bracket, and the program would be available to everyone but participation was required of no one. Both houses of Congress passed the bill.

Nobody remembers this, because, later that year, President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, declaring that it “would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing” and undermine “the family-centered approach.” He meant “the traditional-family-centered approach,” which requires women to forsake every ambition apart from motherhood.

So close. And now so far. The amazing journey of American women is easier to take pride in if you banish thoughts about the roads not taken. When you consider all those women struggling to earn a paycheck while rearing their children, and start to imagine what might have been, it’s enough to make you want to burn something. ♦

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/16/091116crbo_books_levy?currentPage=3#ixzz0am96RQVI

*sigh* In view of our ridiculous healthcare debate, this bit of news infuriates me.

get When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present in combination with Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton (This cover is fucking AWFUL)

and this too looks interesting: Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave


and Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire



any more suggestions leave in comments.


and one day we will get a fully inclusive one stop shop history. Excerpt from When Everything Changed

Comments

[gwailowrite.livejournal.com]

The New Yorker piece....I so wish they had not used the phrase "The false memory syndrome"...a a term coined by the religious right in order to fight claims of child abuse. The "False Memory Syndrome Foundations" was founded by an accused (and proven) pedophile and two of the other founders were "psychologists" who were on record numerous times publicly stating that pedophilia was a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice and all that pedophiles needed was better PR. Every time an institution as esteemed as the New Yorker uses that term, they give credence to a "syndrome" that has not only not been proven but one which has been largely discredited by the mainstream psychiatric community.

[the-inkslinger.livejournal.com]

I got "When Everything Changed" from my aunt for Christmas <3. But my god, some of the things that have come out of men's mouths over the decades (and depressingly this includes the present day- like the dear pope and his washing machine comment -__-)... and people try to say feminists are the deranged ones! Ughhhhhh.