Stifled Goals.

American women had long struggled against the perception that they were second-class citizens, too emotional, too childish, too feminine to participate in the affairs of men — which included almost everything outside of the home. Still, by the 1960s job opportunities and fair pay for women were generally lacking, and young women found that their aspirations to be anything other than a wife or mother were stifled. For many women this did not seem to matter: 96 percent of women who responded in a 1962 Gallup poll said that being a housewife made them happy. But different feelings were stirring, too. In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan, who was dividing her time as a housewife, a mother of three, and a freelance writer, tried to give a voice to what she called "a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that...