ABSTRACT
In the half-century since the end of World War II, the changing role of women has dominated the development of family life and family relations. Debate about the issue has cascaded through society, igniting concerned discussion about everything from diminished educational achievement among children to the viability of the traditional family. It is not that the familial rights and responsibilities of women had previously been irrelevant to the family experience. Indeed, the history of the American family reveals not only that women repeatedly redefined their publicly assumed nature and place but also that, in doing so, they exerted substantial influence on both family functioning and family relations. Certainly, women’s evolving sense of themselves did not escape the Lynds (Lynd & Lynd, 1937), who argued that, as they reconstructed their social identity, women were “incidentally changing significantly the pattern of ‘marriage,’ ‘family life,’ ‘wife,’ and ‘mother’ in Middletown” (p. 181).
