“A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, ‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.”

— Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystiqueand founder of the National Organization of Women, 1964

The woman who identified the true misery of desperate housewives and ignited the feminist revolution died on Saturday, her 85th birthday.

If it hadn’t been for Betty, where would this Jewish mother be? Probably not twirling four really great part-time jobs that leave me time to bake cupcakes and correct hair color experiments gone awry. Stapled to the vacuum cleaner, waiting for the old man to come home, sucking down Percosets, maybe? Or worse, working 9 to 5, five days a week at a job I hate while my kids are in daycare because that’s the only “feminist” choice?

Before the working-away-from-home mamas go all ballistic, it’s a wonderful thing to go to a job every day and entrust your kids to skilled caregivers — as long as that’s your choice. In the 70’s, feminist groups took on Friedan’s book as a call for all women to get out in the workplace, and those who stayed home were considered throwbacks — you couldn’t possibly be a feminist if you didn’t get a paycheck.

Nowadays, enough of a wedge has been created in the politics of gender that women can have any job they want (except maybe sperm donor) though the glass ceiling is still in full effect. And it’s socially acceptable — even approved of — for a smart, educated woman to stay home for a few years making sure the cooking, cleaning and childrearing gets done.

“For a great many women, choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice.”

It’s all about choice, and without Betty Friedan, American women might still believe they only had one.

May she rest peacefully knowing that women will never go back to a world without choices without one a helluva fight.