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What did the american dream mean to women libing in 1950s and 1960s america
In 1957 Betty Friedan, a wife and mother of three trained as a clinical psychologist and working as a freelance writer, started carrying out research into the lives of the American housewife. Friedan felt that for American wives and mothers at the time; “there was a strange discrepancy between the reality of [their]lives as women and the image to which [they] were trying to conform” and she came to call this image the “feminine mystique”. Her research revolved around her search for the origins of this mystique and its effects on women, and involved her interviewing, in depth, women at “crucial points in their life cycle”. Friedan strongly believed that “woman, as a man, has the power to choose, and to make her own heaven or hell” but it would appear that women at the time did not realise this as they were not infact making their own decisions. Betty Friedans research therefore raises the question ‘what did the American Dream mean to women in 1950s and 1960s America?’
This idea of the ‘feminine mystique’ was taught to girls from a young age. In school and at home and through the media they were taught to only partake in what was considered feminine. Their role in life was to “grow up and go to college, and then get married, and that’s as far as a girl had to think”. More women than ever were entering college, however they went due to conformity as it was expected of them, and also in the hopes of finding a husband. Despite the increase in female college entry 60% of them would drop out, and not due to poor intellect but to get married, to look after their children (by the late 1950s many college girls had four, five or six children), or due to the belief that if they were too educated no one would want to marry them. A third of these girls who dropped out would take up part time work usually in sale, in order to support their husband through college, whose education was considered vitally important.
At the college age the American Dream to women consisted of simply finding a husband-their only goal at this point in their lives. Before long high school girls started marrying and were turning down good college educations to do so. Of the brightest 40% of high school graduates half would go to college, of the half who didn’t two thirds were women. This was either because they did not want to continue their education or because the 'feminine’ subjects which they chose did not tax their brains enough to warrant them going to college. In a study of Vassar girls in 1956 only a third were considering a career and most decided that they would not continue with this career “if it should conflict with family needs”.
Due to the girls’ refusal to become fully [next page]