The World Split Open: How The Modern Women's Movement Changed America

During the 1950’s, the vast majority of American Woman lived a traditional lifestyle that society at large claimed would bring happiness and fulfillment. The model of this lifestyle is as follows: a woman’s job was to stay at home to keep house and raise children while the husband’s job supported the family financially. When the life they were living matched the picture that society painted as perfect, but brought them despair and made them long for something more, they thought the problem stemmed from within themselves and not their situation. Housewives sought help from their doctor only to be put on Valium, a medication often prescribed for depression, due to the misconception that a woman must be depressed if, according to society, her life is perfect and she is still not content. This became known as “the problem that has no name.” In Ruth Rosen’s book, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, Rosen chronologically explores how women’s lives shifted from the 1950’s to the 1990’s.
(Smith, Lecture Notes,

Their female children experienced life in the traditional family and the effects it had on their mothers in a way that caused them to not become like their mothers. As these children grew into women, they longed to pursue higher education and seek employment outside of the home, but often society ostracized them if they did not marry and bear children. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marya Farnham, in their bestselling book, The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex portrayed the women that strayed away from the traditional life as being emotionally disturbed. This led most women to stay at home despite whatever dreams they had. In order to keep a reputation of a “good wife and mother,” independent or career driven women were forced to keep their lives outside of the home a secret. Women acted this way because they believed that they did not have the same right to work as men