Why were women's roles so neatly contained to the domestic sphere in the 1950s?

The largely domestic role of married women in America in the 1950s was due in large part to the return to the home front of millions of men who had fought in World War Two, retaking the jobs that they had vacated in order to fight. In many ways, the role of American women in the workplace during both World War One and during World War Two was anomalous, and the relative prosperity that most Americans enjoyed during the 1950s made it possible for most families to live off of one income, the husband's.

Yet the notion that all women stayed at home is a false and misleading one. It is more accurate to say that most all married women were confined to raising their children and keeping up the house. Single women, unless they came from wealthy families, still worked outside of the house in various jobs, but they were paid badly and often treated worse, so even those who did not particularly want to get married and raise a family came under great societal pressure to do so, for economic reasons.

Additionally, the Cold War, which began right after World War Two, was a time characterized by intense pressure to conform to societal norms or face being ostracized and even punished. The role of the family and mother was elevated to an almost worshipful level, partly in order to differentiate the American, capitalist system from the Soviet system, in which the worker was deemed to be of paramount importance. The American propaganda machine that idealized family life in American was powerful and wide reaching. So was paranoia about possible Russian spies on the home front. Due to the fact that domestic politics revolved around anti-Soviet sentiment and fear of nuclear annihilation, the price of non-conformity was very high indeed. The U.S. government maintained that the nuclear family was the basic building block of American society, and that upholding "American family values" was essential to maintaining societal cohesion and defeating the Soviets.

Thus, many American women who tried to pursue careers outside of the home or to have relationships with men outside of marriage were not only shunned by their families and neighbors, but sometimes even institutionalized by their families for behavior that society and even the medical community considered pathological. In essence, women faced the proverbial carrot and stick: in order to partake of the economic boom that was taking place, women had to marry, and in order to avoid being marginalized by society, women had to marry. To do otherwise required financial independence and/or the courage to live a solitary, lonely existence.