Nixon during debate with Khrushchev - Nixon said that you "didn't need a wife" while pointing to the automatic floor sweeper. After 1945, women lost most of the industrial jobs they had performed during the war. As during most of history, women who worked outside of home remained in low-salary jobs rather than better-paying manufacturing positions. After sharp postwar drop in female employment, the number of women at work soon began to rise. The modern woman worked part-time to help support the family's middle-class lifestyle. Media portrayed marriage as the most important goal of American women, and married younger, more children, "baby boom". The ability of women to remain at home, declared a government official, "separates us from the Communist world," where a high % of women worked