The roots of this book lie in my enduring fascination with the generation of women who were married and raised families in the decades following the Second World War. These women, many of whom had childhood memories of the war, began their married lives in a rapidly changing world. On the one hand, historians have described the period as ‘the golden age’. Rising incomes and the new educational opportunities afforded to many by the Eleven Plus exam resulted in a blurring of class distinctions. The shift in trend towards home-ownership and the new ‘consumer durables’ that flooded the market during the late 1950s, resulted in a renewed emphasis on the importance of ‘home’. The introduction of the contraceptive pill during the 1960s finally offered women the prospect of real choice in family planning. All these changes were duly energized by the expanding media: women's publishing, cinema, radio and the television.

On the other hand, the post-war period was marked by darker under-currents. The development of nuclear weapons and the ideological tensions between the liberal democratic West and the communist Soviet Union resulted in the growing fear of atomic warfare and mass annihilation. On a more personal level, feminist authors and commentators in Britain and the United States were indicating that, for women, the new suburban housing estates were causing psychological and psychosomatic disorders.