Reports of discontented homemakers disrupted the popular image of the happy housewife promoted by advertisers-pretty women who “beamed over their foaming dishpans.” Many actual housewives did not fit this image, but instead described a sense of emptiness. It was a feeling that they often contemplated quietly or when alone, but occasionally shared with other women who also reported feeling unfulfilled by housework and the work of child-rearing. Friedan also describes it as a “strange stirring” and a “yearning” that took root among women in the middle of the twentieth century. Toward the end of the book, she explicitly defines “the problem” as “simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities.” She first observed “the problem” when conducting a survey among fellow Smith College alumnae and noticed it again when interviewing other women from around the country. Friedan uses this phrase to describe a chronic sense of dissatisfaction among white, middle-class women in the postwar era.
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