Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles

Abstract

A study of women college Seniors shows that they commonly face mutually exclusive expectations of their adult sex roles. In particular, a girl's family and her male friends are the agencies through which she meets the inconsistency between the ideal of homemaker and that of "career girl." Some girls play vacillating roles, corresponding to the pressures of the movement; all suffer from the uncertainty and insecurity that are the personal manifestations of cultural conflict.