Ehrenreich put together a very comprehensive, well-researched book on the effect of "expert" advice on women over a two-hundred-year span. The chronicle is both hilarious and frightening. We see women being celebrated as frail, delicate creatures whose reproductive organs are the source of every illness... then later women are descended upon by psychologists and deemed too dangerous to run a family, having penis envy and ambition compelling them to kill their children. Mothers were considered the heart of the home for their childrearing powers, then considered too weak to raise their own sons. It's enough to make a woman never buy a self-help book again.

It's amazing to see how much the woman's role has changed in two centuries. Before machines became a way of life, women had a lot of work to do. Surprisingly, we learn that housecleaning was low on the list. It wasn't until the the 20th century where women's boredom and advertisers met to compel a frenzy for housecleaning. Early women were too busy making all their home's supplies. When all of women's traditional work was being taken over by factories, and their healing knowledge taken away by men, the Woman Question arrived. With so little to do, what was a woman's role in society? What was her contribution to her household? Early feminists argued that women were reduced to glorified prostitutes, with their skills and knowledge taken away. The Woman Question is one that was debated until the feminists exploded into the 1960s and '70s.

At this point, after the women's rights movement of the '70s, Ehrenreich falters a bit when describing the "Let's think about me, now" attitude of women who eschewed a husband and kids for a childfree life. She paints these as selfish people obsessed with money and free time. True, many women feeling stifled under the confines of traditional society would start thinking of their own needs in a manner considered "selfish" after centuries of thinking solely of their family's comfort. Ehrenreich seems to think that the advice of earlier "experts" who encouraged permissiveness went too far and made child-haters of these women. On the contrary, the childfree movement that stemmed from modern feminism is all about the choice to have children. Since Ehrenreich clearly approves of abortion in her writing, it is strange that she gets a little touchy over the choice to be a mother or not. Since the author is pro-choice, she may not have thought out the connection to those who abstain from childrearing entirely, and how they must fight charges of selfishness just as those who get an abortion fight charges of being a "murderer." I wonder if Ehrenreich, being a mother, is aghast at how feminism inspired future generations of women to live a childfree life.

Other than that criticism, I found the book a valuable source of information. I want to wave it under the nose of every person who thinks the feminist movement was a mistake. I want to yell at them, "Do you know where these doctors would put leeches on a woman because her husband could drag her in to a doctors office for an attitude adjustment? Think of a place only her gynecologist would see - that's where they put those leeches!" But, as Ehrenreich points out, there are many people who buy into the romance of the woman invalid, the lobotomized housewife, and sheltered female who never has to make an important decision. Some may find this a blissful life, but as history proves, it's not necessarily a healthy one for women. ( )

Read this book!!! If you are even thinking about it then it will interest you enough to be a phenomenal experience. Ms. Ehrenreich and Ms. English have written a compelling, eloquent, and, perceptive history of modern "Medicine" with special interest in its treatment of women. Not only will this satisfy your craving for good writing but it will change your perspective on the science of medicine. ( )

This book examines how experts, mostly male, (from medicine to consumer science) have studied, judged and prescribed all aspects of women's lives...from marriage to child rearing to every aspect of a woman's role in society.

It's a thorough, highly readable, analysis. Reading this gave me a deeper understanding of how socio-economic changes affected both men and women, and how the "Women's Lib" movement came to be, in many ways, inevitable. ( )

For two centuries, doctors, psychiatrists, scientists, and politicians have been telling women what to do. Ehrenreich spins a delightful history that encompasses the trends in contraception, child rearing, marriage, and a woman's role in society. I was alternately outraged and amused, but never bored. ( )

I greatly enjoyed Ehrenreich and English's analysis of the advice which women have received from mostly male "experts." In less than 400 pages, they break down the differing ways in which certain men have tried to take away women's agency through "expert advice." The update in 2004, analyzing how feminism has taken away that potent power from the experts is especially interesting. ( )