Generally, both feminists and those who are critical of feminism agree that the women’s movement benefited women by expanding their opportunities within the workplace. However, with regard to feminism’s overall effect on society, these two groups possess strong ideological differences, principally over the issue of marriage.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, author of the book Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life: How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women, contends that feminists, because they regard husbands and children as unfair burdens on women, have engaged in a campaign “to secure women’s complete freedom from marriage, including the freedom to leave a marriage at will, never to marry, and to bear children outside marriage without sacrifice of respectability.” According to Fox-Genovese, feminist attacks on marriage harm children, who benefit...