Organized business, in these years, showed itself well aware not only of the importance of women as consumers, but of the value of marriage and traditional family patterns in maintaining an appropriate level and distribution of consumption spending … These pragmatic convictions, that marriage and the formation of new households had positive effects on the demand for an important range of products, have since been validated by econometric studies of the demand for consumer durables … Not surprisingly, business promoted the romanticism of marriage and homemaking in these years, utilizing this sentimentalism to sell their product.