THE CINDERELLA SYNDROME
March 22, 1981
Credit...The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context from March 22, 1981, Section 6, Page 47Buy Reprints New York Times subscribers* enjoy full access to TimesMachine—view over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared. SUBSCRIBE *Does not include Crossword-only or Cooking-only subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Copyright c 1981 Colette Dowling. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This article is adapted from ''The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence,'' by Colette Dowling, to be published in May by Summit Books. By Colette Dowling In 1971, buoyed by the militancy of the times, I left my husband. It was something a lot of wives were doing. Within a year, half the women I knew had walked out of their marriages and were going it alone: earning money, paying the bills, creating new social lives.
Five years later, the headiness of those first days of promise was gone, and the realities of living independently had begun to seem overwhelming. While the political push to legislate greater opportunities for women had succeeded, many of us found we were not prepared to handle the internal psychological demands of selfsufficiency. Collectively, women wished for more -indeed, demanded more - in the way of money, jobs, freedom from restrictive roles - but, individually, many of us felt caught in an old adolescent conflict, pulled equally by the need to live freely (by which, too often, we meant without constraint) and the need to feel safe.
''I'm not ready,'' I remember shouting once at the man I've been living with for the past six years. ''I was never reared to think I'd have to support myself and my children for the rest of my life!''