ABSTRACT
By the early 1960s a generation of educated women, born during or immediately after the war, began to define home as an oppressive, over-private and stultifying place for women. The first generation to be born into a servantless world and one where marriage bars had generally been dismantled, they experienced the transition from an educated and career-oriented identity to the role of full-time and servantless housewife on the birth of their first child. In a literature on the «housebound mother" they articulated this as an experience of loss of identity, self-esteem and self-confidence. In 1960 Maureen Nicol identified exile with being at home. She wrote to the Manchester Guardian, «Since having my first baby I have been constantly surprised how women seem to go into voluntary exile in the home once they leave their outside work."l Her letter prompted a response from readers, which led to the formation of the Housebound Wives Register in London, and subsequently to the National Housewives Register.
