Critiques like Barber's did not lead feminist thinkers at that time to re-examine their perspectives on women and work. Even though the notion of work as liberation had little significance for exploited, underpaid, working women, it provided ideological motivation for college-educated white women to enter, or re-enter, the work force. It gave many non-college-educated white women who had been taught that a woman's place is in the home the support to tolerate low-paying jobs, primarily to boost household incomes and break into personal isolation. They could see themselves as exercising new freedom. In many cases, they were struggling to maintain mid­ dle-class lifestyles that could no longer be supported solely by the in­ come of husbands. Caroline Bird explains the motivating forces behind their entry into the work force in The Two-Pqycheck Marriage:

Although many of these women never participated in feminist movement, they did think of themselves as challenging the old­ fashioned ideas about women's place.