Backlash

      I would like to spend my blog post talking about the Changing Social Roles of Women by Betty Friedan. I am quite fascinated by the different mindsets across women over the decades and generations, and so my interest was piqued by this article which discussed the mindset of women over the 1950's.
I had previously assumed that across the 20th century, more and more women became educated and went off to pursue careers. It made sense in my mind that after the 1st wave of feminism things kept going up and up. Equality and education for All!...and all that. However, upon reading this article I learned that after WWII, as the United States ended the 40's and entered the 50's, there was a backlash to which women returned back to the days of the Feminine Mystique, which many women worked so hard to rid their gender of. I was shocked. It's strange to think that the children of the mothers who worked so hard for the vote and for better education and access to careers for women, went off to drop out of college, live in the home, and find purpose only in their husbands and children. The percent of women attending college in 1920 was 47, the years nearing the end of the 1st wave. In 1950, this rate had dropped down to just 35%. The other 65% of women got married after high school (as in 1950 the average marrying age of a women was 20), and immediately settled down with their husbands to spend the rest of their lives having kids, cleaning, cooking, and doing other motherly duties.
     No wonder so many women faced "the problem" of being unsatisfied with life! So many women felt unfulfilled because their real destiny was to become a scientist, an engineer, a doctor, a politician, a manager and all of these other careers that they didn't have access too because society and their peers told them that was unfeminine. I wonder what role models and changes in society there would have been had these women been raised in a different culture. Even if they had been born 10 years later their lives could have been completely different! I find it incredible how this "suburban housewife dream" came about and changed so many factors of so many peoples lives.
     At least I can be thankful that women finally did choose to talk about "the problem" so that they could realize that they were not alone. Without those first timid conversations of women squeaking out a cry with a life more than their husbands and children, today we could still be stuck in that backlash to another era.