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Edited on Sun Feb-05-06 08:39 AM by no_hypocrisy
society defined them.
You were a spinster, an old maid if you weren't married. And by the late 50s, many women were getting engaged before they had graduated high school (without the "benefit" of being pregnant).
Or you were a wife, and soon a mother (otherwise, you were not seen as a contributing member of society by producing a family). The only tangible accomplishment you could demonstrate for your existence was your well-groomed, well-behaved, and popular children, a clean home, and a satisfied husband (in more ways than one).
You were known as "Mrs. (Insert your Husband's full name)", or "Jimmy's mother" in the community. Only your family and close friends knew you by your first name.
You had no credit in your name. You could not easily get a credit card in your own name, only as an extra card under your husband's policy (if he "let you").
You COULD work outside of the home, but that symbolized that your husband wasn't bringing home enough bacon and that didn't look good as far as keeping up with the proverbial Joneses next door.
If you were an independent, unmarried, "career girl", it was a step about "old maid", but you were regarded as somewhat deviant and having an unresolved conflict of wanting to compete with men instead of reveling in your womanhood and the natural order of things.
One of the best pieces of fiction depicting women changing their views of themselves from the 50s to the 70s is Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I think it came out 1978.
Returning to the point of the original post, men lost their identity as women found theirs as the men were not re-oriented to a new role as partners in their marriages. If their wives as marital colonies declared their autonomy and independence, then men were left in a vacuum. They didn't understand or didn't want to understand what the underlying issues were behind their wives' transformation and how society was changing.
And it was difficult to relinquish the default monarchy they had been given by virtue of being a male in American society. They made the decisions and things got done more expediently. Now debate was part of the equation with the possibility of deferring to another's choice. Plus, wives had been more or less viewed as another child and now, they were adult women, "equals", and a participating member of a household democracy. That's a tough pill to swallow if one is not enlightened and inclined to change.
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