AS THE YEARS HAVE MOUNTED in much-belabored preparation of this book, so have the debts. It’s a wonder authors have any friends by the time they get around to the acknowledgments. I am enormously fortunate to have had such a kind, and forgiving, cheering squad.
This project began as a 1986 magazine story on the Harvard-Yale “man shortage” study, written while I was on the staff at West, the Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News, and West editor Jeffrey Klein proved an early and invaluable supporter. He greatly eased the research and writing process by arranging for a yearlong leave and by agreeing to publish a string of magazine stories on women’s status that became an important element in Backlash. My good luck continued under the auspices of Greg Hill, my bureau chief at the Wall Street Journal, who held open a job for months so I could finish the book and who granted weeks off for various rewrites. My colleagues at The Journal’s San Francisco office have also been an understanding and supportive crew.
Edie Gelles, American scholar with Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, gave much-needed intellectual sustenance, bringing me into the visiting scholars program at the institute, which provided a wonderful forum in which to test ideas, and lending a sensitive and intelligent ear as I fumbled around for the book’s thesis. I am grateful to all the scholars at the institute for their thoughtful suggestions and criticism.
My agent Sandra Dijkstra was willing to take a chance on what was initially a pretty fuzzy proposal, and I am grateful to her for backing the idea so indefatigably. At Crown Publishers, Jane von Mehren was an enthusiastic and gracious editor, putting up with several false starts and telephone-book-sized early drafts. I am also indebted to Betty Prashker, who gave her personal support to the project from the outset. I also would like to give special thanks to Irene Prokop, Andrea Connolly, and Penny Simon, as well as the many others at Crown who guided the book through its final paces and suffered through my many last-minute inserts and changes. Christina Pattarelli and Rebecca Carroll also were lifesavers, hunting down a last round of books and periodicals and helping with fact checking at the eleventh hour.
I would have not made much headway without the quiet cooperation of the many people, from Census Bureau demographers to mental-health epidemiologists, whom I called upon in my research for this book. With few exceptions, they gave ungrudgingly of their time, submitting to lengthy interviews and providing a vast store of documentation. Nor would I have progressed very far without the work of many feminist writers and researchers, whose impressive body of scholarship provided both inspiration and critical foundation blocks.
Many friends have been salvations. Sarah Winterfield read through unwieldy first manuscripts and dispensed sometimes daily pep talks; Phil Winterfield tamed an often-petulant computer. Barbara McIntosh, Lisa Scalapino, Kathy Holub, Sara Frankel, Peggy Orenstein, and Cathy and David Massey came to my rescue countless times. So did Robert Faludi, who coaxed me out of writing doldrums with perpetual good humor. To Gary Kamiya goes heartfelt thanks for his endless enthusiasm for the project, his tender loving care, and his kitchen wizardry. I have, finally, a special and incalculable debt to Scott Rosenberg, whose clarity of thinking and meticulous editing are felt throughout Backlash.
This book is dedicated to my mother, who as a young woman fought to preserve her independence in the face of her own era’s “feminine-mystique” backlash. And it is written in the hopes that the next generation of women might not have to fight another round.