Housewife In The 1950s

returned from war, “they were seen as fragile growing boys whose power to survive could be too easily crushed and who needed as much nurturing as their own toddlers” (Ogden 183). As women were now obligated to care for their husbands as well as their children, society viewed their involvement in the workplace as especially damaging to family life. “If her marriage was not working, if the children were not learning – why then, she only had to look toward herself […] Women look inside; men look outside” (182). In addition, “in the early 1950s, when the super mother was just coming into vogue as the favored housewife model, it became unthinkable to bring up children without expert advice […] chief among these topics was the fast-growing field …show more content…
In a 1953 sociological observation of suburban life in Long Island and Illinois, one woman described her daily routine, “Your husband gets up and goes off in the morning — and you're left with the day to spend. The housework is a matter of minutes. I used to think I had been brought to the end of the earth and deserted" (Henderson 28). The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women describes the social skills required of a woman in the suburbs. “The suburban wife has constantly impressed upon her the importance of getting along well with people, adjusting easily to new locations. She is likely to move at fairly frequent intervals, and though there is an increasing sameness among American communities, particularly those built since the war, that makes one house or one school or one shopping center very like another, each move means new human relationship” (67). Though the idea of community was important, it still left much to be desired, demonstrated in the lamentation of another 1950’s wife that, "I used to sit by the window... just wishing someone would go by" (Henderson 28). Though suburban women were very involved and social on the surface, they still expressed a loneliness that may have been mitigated had they shared their discontentment with each other. One housewife described the social gatherings of the women, saying “A kind of floating, day-long talkfest, shifting from house to house, it has developed among young women to help fill their need for adult conversation and companionship. The conversation is strictly chitchat” (28). In addition, competition and pettiness among women (which have always been encouraged) also contributed to their silence. Carol Bly, a feminist living in Midwest described the contention among the women saying, “it’s hard for a