"Feminism is not the Story of My Life": How Today's Feminist Elite has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women.

That wasn't always the case. Like Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, I came of age with feminism. Like her, I deviated from the movement, though for me the deviation has been total. I now regard ''feminism'' as I do Marxism: a dead ideology of no use in explaining how the world works. Thus, the title of this book strikes me as an epitaph not only for radical feminism but also for feminism as such.

The eloquent Mrs. Fox-Genovese, author of the important Feminism without Illusions, prefers to see herself as a kind of feminist Luther: in a series of interviews with contemporary American women which measure the disparity between what radical feminists say about women's lives and what ordinary women know about their own lives, this accessible work intends to expose the corruption that perverted ''true'' feminism.

Yet the problems with feminism were there from the start. The movement claimed to be for all women, but in fact it benefited --or seemed to benefit -- some women more than others. Feminists insisted on the absolute equality of the sexes, and asserted that this must translate into high salaries for women lawyers, accountants, and TV reporters. The real motivation behind this demand now appears to have been more complicated than merely a concern for abolishing unfairness.

The feminists wanted to abolish something else, too. The key difference between men and women is that women bear children. It is this difference that feminists secretly wanted to do away with, since it obstructs economic equality. This explains why abortion, a persistent subject of this book's early chapters, has been the ground on which feminists have fought their fiercest battles; for the absolute right to abortion is a crucial wedge between women and motherhood.

Professional women who can afford nannies have in some sense succeeded in liberating themselves from mothering. The children of these women suffer for the sake of their mothers' careers, but a $100,000-a-year salary can go a long way toward easing a mother's guilt. As Mrs. Fox-Genovese documents, however, women outside the elite, whether single mothers or those with haphazard child-care arrangements, can rely on no such emotional buffer. They suffer as much as their families do.

Elite women wanted to enter the professions because they believed such work would bring them the same sense of achievement, of meaningfulness in life, that men seem to enjoy. What distinguishes this female elite from its male counterpart is the extent to which the women in it see themselves as burdened by traditional ideas about motherhood and family, ideas that interfere with professional advancement. This explains the heavy investment radical feminists have made in seeking to delegitimate those old-fashioned virtues.

Thus, the threat posed by feminism to traditional values cannot be overstated, and Mrs. Fox-Genovese writes with great nuance about the relationship of feminism to the sexual revolution. She is so delicate, in fact, that it was never totally clear to me whether she thinks the changes in morals set in motion in the 1960s have been for the better or the worse. In her early chapters, for instance, Mrs. Fox-Genovese writes about the bonds that females share, shown by the stories we tell one another, which (as she acknowledges) argue for an essentialist view of women: we are different from men. A woman's role in life must therefore be different from a man's. But how does a girl learn to be a woman, when tradition has been made so radically suspect? How do women learn, for instance, to be good mothers? How do they learn to say no to men?

The undermining of tradition has had other effects. Take male violence, especially violence toward women, which feminists insist is on the rise. As the Studs Terkel - like portraits in this book indicate, most women are more subtle than the typical arch-feminist in their attitudes toward men, recognizing the interdependence of the sexes rather than seeing some innate mutual hostility between them. It is one of a woman's natural instincts to want a husband who will support her -- both emotionally and financially.

Might there not be a connection here? Might not men's aggressiveness have a natural function (as does women's nurturing) that, under the direction of civilization, is channeled into acceptable outlets -- like competing with other men in the marketplace in order to make enough money to provide for a family? Women's traditional role in the civilizing of men is under attack by feminists. Perhaps it isn't surprising that men have become increasingly inclined toward violence.

Though Mrs. Fox-Genovese understands that women must depend on men, violent or not, she takes it as an inescapable given that wives have to work nowadays in order to supply the basic needs of their families. A conservative might respond by saying that this situation was not at all inevitable. Lower taxes and thus more take-home pay would allow one spouse to stay home and provide the attention kids need. And surely the mass entrance of women into the job market has had a depressing effect on wages and the availability of jobs in general.

I do see one positive outcome of feminism. An important trend documented here concerns the adjustments the non-elite have had to make under the pressure of economic necessity. It has become increasingly difficult to support a family, at least in the style to which our middle class has been accustomed, on the income of a single worker. So men with working wives are now packing lunches and taking kids to school; boys are learning to iron. From this book a picture emerges of families becoming partnerships in the way that, historically, families always did in order to survive.

Yet this hardly compensates for the damage done by feminism. Is anything to be salvaged from this mess? Mrs. Fox-Genovese thinks so, but the most important evidence of her book is that the majority of Americans have long done without the benefits of feminism and will continue to do so when it is as passe as Marxism.