Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Quotes

The whole 1950s notion was find the right girl, get married, move to the suburbs and then hang out with the guys while she stayed home with the babies. I felt that was sort of sad.

When I was a young kid, girls were taught that their role in life was to get married and have children. It was the 1950s. Those were the rules.

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother 'worked' at anything besides raising her children.

Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.

I believe in large families: every woman should have at least three husbands.

The common man thinks that the marriage is like appointing one to do his work. The husband thinks so! The husband’s family thinks so. Every one thinks that a girl is coming to the family to do work. Even the girl’s family trains the girl to do the household work

There's always an assumption that when the girls get married they don't want to work.

I believe my woman shouldn't work outside the home.

Once you get married, women are still implicitly expected to do the majority of the housework and take care of any future children.

In the 'Mad Men' era, the archetypal dad came home; put down his briefcase; received pipe, Manhattan, roast beef, potatoes, key-lime pie; and was - apparently - content.

When I was a kid I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did know what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to grow up, have 2.2 kids, get married, the whole white picket fence thing.

I believe in the natural order where the man works and the woman stays home and raises the kids. It's what the people want and what they will get if I'm elected governor.

I have been a chief only because my father wished it. I always would have preferred to be married and have a family like other women.

The GOP will not be satisfied until women are barefoot, pregnant and back home by 5 o'clock P.M. to cook dinner.

I think the thought of a traditional family home is awesome. Traditional roles are becoming a thing of the past, but I think there is something really charming about them.

Many years ago, when I was born in the '50s - '50s and '60s didn't belong to girls in India. They belonged to boys. They belonged to boys who would join business and inherit business from parents, and girls would be dolled up to get married.

Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?

In our world marriage was the best option for any woman. No girl ever chose to have a career unless she couldn't get a man. It was very much a tertiary life.

My family was, I think, a bit more radical than most Mormons, especially on the question of gender. So in my mind, growing up, there wasn't ever any question of what my future would look like. I would get married when I was 17 or 18. And I would be given some corner of the farm, and my husband would put a house on it, and we would have kids.

Traditionally, our society has always seen women as homemakers and men as bread-earners. The demarcations are engraved in stone, perhaps.

In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father - of men as men, in other words.

I believe the preservation of the home in the future lies almost entirely in the hands of men.

Generally speaking, historically in this country, the care of a child has been thought of as female business.

It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.