When examining the course of history from the 1950s to today it is evident that women made the most progress in attaining individual autonomy equal to that men in their sexual lives (sexuality) and least of a progress when it comes to family life. There are four main sub-topics that regarding women's life that have led to this conclusion and they are family life, including marriage/divorce, and child care; work life; political life (including legal rights); and sexuality and reproduction.
"Marriage and the family are the roots of women's oppression" (Women's America, 291). The suburban wife felt alone and was afraid to ask if there was more to life than taking care of the children, shopping for groceries, sponsoring boy scouts and making brownies...she was afraid to ask this because it deviated from so much that she was use to. "By the end of the 1950s, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20" (Women's America, 692). The percentage of women in colleges compared to men were dropping at a significant rate. A century before women use to fight for the opportunity to receive a higher education and now they were just going to college to look for husbands. By the end of the fifties the birthdate in the United States had over taken India's. Million have women started to picture their lives as the suburban house wife. Taking the children to school in the station wagon, kissing their husbands good bye in the front of the home as the husbands we going to work, and then smiling while happily using the vacuum to clean their house and other chores of the sort. They cooked, cleaned, and only went out of the home when it really had something to do with shopping or family activities. It was their duty to be in the home.
"Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mother; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house" (Women's America,