Betty Goldstein Friedan was born in 1921 in Peoria, Illinois. She went to school at Smith College. In 1947, she married Carl Friedan and had three children with him. Sometime during the 50s, Betty lost her job after asking for her second maternity leave. She sent a questionnaire to two hundred of her college classmates, wondering if they felt the same dissatisfaction with their lives. The answers she got convinced her to write the book The Feminine Mystique, explaining "the problem that has no name." In 1969, she and Carl divorced. She was founder and first president of the National Organization for Women and headed the National Women’s Strike for Equality. She also wrote It Changed My Life (1977), The Second Stage (1981), and The Fountain of Age (1993).