ABSTRACT
Although the feminist movement has done a great deal in the last several decades to improve the lives and choices of women, particularly white middle- and upper-middle-class women in the United States, there have been high prices to pay for such progress. One victim of social change has been the relationship between men and women. It has become clear that the changes in women's attitudes, roles, and behavior brought on by the feminist movement and consciousness-raising are challenging the traditional family and male-female relationships. Women are angry with men for not taking more responsibility for those tasks once designated women's work, when women have taken on the masculine task of providing a family income (Hite, 1989; Hochschild, 1989). They expect men to be as emotionally available and expressive as are their women friends. The strong, silent type who fixed the car, chased away burglars, and brought home the bacon is no longer acceptable. Women find themselves struggling under the same stresses as men, getting the same psychosomatic disorders, drinking too much, smoking too much, and having to make difficult choices between career and family. They resent the fact that men with traditional wives can seemingly have it all, and they are angered by their spouses' automatic assumption that the female's career is merely an avocation, while his is an identity. Male-bashing has become popular in the media and among yuppie females.
