Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the social needs and self-identity of women as homemakers. Defined in terms of her homemaking function for the family and the economy, the homemaker was directly addressed by consumer product design and market research, and promised both leisure from household drudgery and an aesthetically pleasing home interior. Her identity as a shopper and homemaker was linked with class attributes in order to broaden the consumer economy base, and her deepest emotions and insecurities were tapped and transferred to consumer product design. Even as the women's movement in the late 1950s and 1960s was exposing ideologies and the contradictions imbedded in a social economy which positioned women as homemakers, long-running suburban family sitcoms defined women within the security of homelife. (49 end notes) (CGD)