For her own good: two centuries of the experts' advice to women

Forward (2004)

1. In the ruins of patriarchy. The woman question ; The new masculinism ; Feminist and domestic solutions ; Science and the triumph of domesticity

The rise of the experts. 2. Witches, healers, and gentleman doctors. The witch hunts ; The conflict over healing comes to America ; Healing as a commodity ; The popular health movement ; Lady doctors join the competition

3. Science and the ascent of the experts. The moral salvation of medicine ; The laboratory mystique ; Medicine and the big money ; Exorcising the midwives

The reign of the experts.

4. The sexual politics of sickness. A mysterious epidemic ; Marriage : the sexual-economic relation ; Femininity as a disease ; Men evolve, women devolve ; The dictatorship of the ovaries ; The uterus vs. the brain ; The rest cure ; Subverting the sick role : hysteria

5. Microbes and the manufacture of housework. The domestic void ; The romance of the home ; Domestic scientists put the house in order ; The crusade against germs ; The manufacture of new tasks ; Feminism embraces domestic science ; "Right living" in the slums ; Domesticity without the science

6. The Century of the child. Discovery of the child ; The "child question" and the woman question ; The mothers' movement ; The experts move in

7. Motherhood as pathology. The expert allies with the child ; The doctors demand permissiveness ; Libidinal motherhood ; Bad mothers ; "Momism" and the crisis in American masculinity ; The obligatory Oedipus complex ; Communism and the crisis of overpermissiveness

The fall of the experts. 8. From masochistic motherhood to the sexual marketplace. Mid-century masochism ; Gynecology as psychotherapy ; Revolt of the masochistic mom ; The rise of the single girl ; Spread of the singles culture ; Popular psychology and the single lifestyle

Afterword : the end of the romance (2004).