In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core o
f contemporary American culture. ... For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their children's school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Using context clues, choose the best synonym for the word perpetuating as it is used in this excerpt from Friedan's "The Problem That Has No Name."
