Betty Friedan's View Of The Suburbia

Following the end of the Second World War and the return of the troops from abroad, many of the young men got jobs in corporate America, married and started to have children. They found themselves tired of the noise, grime, and danger they saw as defining aspects of urban living, but still wanting to enjoy the convenience and culture. The new families began to move to the suburbs in a mass exodus from urban centers. There, they could send their children to good schools, surround themselves with other parents, involved themselves in the children’s upraising, but also feel safe letting them play alone. However, none of these were the defining factors of the suburbs. Suburbia does not call to mind images of education, or playgrounds, or cocktail

She thinks they limit the options available to women. Even in her criticisms of the suburbs, and the pressure placed on women living within them, Friedan does not allow or offer the women any sort of independence or escape from the sameness of suburbia. When beginning to speak of the problem faced by housewives, Friedan claims that each woman suffers with it constantly and alone (300). The root of the problem, according to Friedan, is the pressure that all housewives are under to feel fully fulfilled, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by only the housework and elementary activities available to them. This expectation is placed on all women, and Friedan assumes that every woman in the suburbs is buckling under this pressure. Friedan speaks of more and more woman priding themselves on this new profession, and proudly writing housewife on the census as their occupation (300). Per Friedan the housewives then began to feel uneasy and empty about themselves. The women of the suburbs are afraid to speak of ‘the problem’. They are concerned that acknowledging a lack of fulfillment, a lack of happiness, could lead to judgement from other women, from their friends and family members. Friedan claims that when women finally do gather and one admits that she struggles with ‘the problem’ every woman involved feels relieved that they are not the only one coping with the issue (300). Friedan does acknowledge the dullness of the suburbs themselves, she refers to the “ugly and endless sprawls which are becoming a national problem”, Friedan attempts to utilize the sameness of suburbia to as an aspect of the oppression holding women back (301). Friedan than states that since nearly every woman in the suburb has a higher education level than women living in rural or urban communities, and then states that all the suburban women are wasting their privilege and their education (301). Even though Friedan is attempting to empower women to look