Jumpstart a family

Meet Marge Sutton, the woman whom Life magazine upheld as a “happy, successful… lucky” housewife in a 1956 issue celebrating the American woman (at the time, 1 in 4 American households read it). Dropping out of high school to marry at 16, Marge is profiled at age 32. Her husband, only a year older, makes $25,000 (nearly $300,000 in 2025) and “comes home for lunch almost every day.” She has “a spacious home, a gardener, and a full-time maid.” While she “sings in the choir at Hollywood’s First Presbyterian” and is civically engaged, she also “makes clothes for her four children (ages 6-14) and for herself and, as a hostess, she entertains an endless stream of guests - 1,500 a year, she estimates” - and without alcohol because she and her husband don’t drink. To maintain her size 12 figure (today a 6, a rare case of deflation), she takes twice weekly trampoline classes,