Modern Woman: The Lost Sex

Modern Woman: The Lost Sex is a 1947 work of scientific literature written by Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D. which discusses the sociological and psychological context of American women in the post World War II era.

Lundberg, a sociologist and social historian, and Farnham, a psychiatrist affiliated with the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital, argue that "contemporary women in very large numbers are psychologically and disordered and that their disorder is having terrible social and personal effects involving men in all departments of their lives as well as women." This book became a national bestseller and contributed to both the return to domesticity in the post-WWII decades and the psychoanalytic antifeminist movement.

Lundberg and Farnham wrote Modern Woman: The Lost Sex in the years following World War II, as American society was attempting to return to normalcy. One of the most impactful social changes during World War II had been the involvement of American women in the war efforts, both abroad and on the homefront. Over 350,000 women served in some branch of the military, while massive numbers of women left the home to fill in the industrial labor needs left vacant by drafted soldiers. By 1945, almost 37% of American women were employed in the public workforce, with almost one of every four wives working as more than a housewife and mother.

As men returned to the labor force after WWII ended, many women were hesitant to leave their newfound strength and independence realized outside of the home. This created a conservative cultural backlash whose proponents encouraged women to return to the home and to more traditional, domestic gender roles so men could reassume the role of financial provider and family protector. The late 1940s and 1950s were thus characterized by "domesticity, religiosity, respectability, [and] security through compliance within the system," that catalyzed the social movement of women back into the household.

Thus, Lundberg and Farnham's study of female psychology sought to provide a scientific basis to encourage American to reclaim household domesticity and restore the pre-war social order.

"The bases for most of this unhappiness, as we have shown, are laid in the childhood home. The principal instrument of their creation are women."

Lundberg and Farnham frame their argument during a period of rampant unhappiness and rising neurosis. This neurosis is not merely affecting draft-age men returning from World War II, but the majority of the American population. According to the authors, between one-quarter to one-third of all people are neurotic, while an additional one-quarter to one-third "have some neurotic character traits or some physiological weakness of ailment psychics in origin."

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