This article reflects on three narratives that affected American women's participation in higher education during the first twenty years after World War II. In hindsight, the educators of the 1950s and early 1960s may seem gratuitously meek and self-effacing. In comparison to later efforts, their activism can appear unnecessarily limited and too adaptive. Yet, the nature of the advocacy practiced by these postwar educators suited itself to the opportunities and the thinking of an era filled with ambivalence about how women should balance home with career, community work with national service, and personal fulfillment with societal expectation. (Contains 44 footnotes.)