"Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticity. She was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question -"Is this all?" "
Anonymous. American Journal of Public Health. Washington: September 2010. Vol. 100, Iss. 9; pg. 1582, 3 pgs (Excerpted from: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963))
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