What social issues are addressed in the novel, The Women’s Room?

The social issues addressed in the novel include poverty (even upper-middleclass married women are only one man away from welfare), birth control, the male retreat from marriage as "self" becomes socially acceptable and "duty" declines, the lack of social supports or resources to cope with a disturbed child, men who "outgrow" the women who dropped out and went to work in order to support them through law or medical school, and the constant emotional drain, diffusion of energy, and pressures which are created by total responsibility within a nuclear family and which lead women to feel inadequate as mothers.