FRIDAY, NANCY

born Aug. 27, 1937, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S. American feminist and author who explored the dynamics of identity and relationships between women of different generations. Friday was educated at Wellesley (Massachusetts) College. She worked briefly as a reporter for the San Juan Island Times and as a magazine editor before turning to full-time writing in 1963. She has produced several books of popular psychology since 1973. Her first best-seller was My Mother/My Self: The Daughter's Search for Identity (1977), which argued that women of Friday's generation had been reared by their mothers to conform to a prefeminist ideal of womanhood from which they would have to struggle to liberate themselves.