The Task Force on the Family was among the initial task forces set up by the National Organization for Women (NOW) when it was founded in 1966.
Academic feminist Alice Rossi was the chairwoman of the first NOW Task Force on the Family. A later chair of the task force was Betty Spaulding, who was active for years in both the national organization and Connecticut NOW.
Many feminist activists of the 1960s and 1970s were concerned with the way society defined the "role" of women as housewife and mother. The founders of NOW rejected the idea that men should provide the sole financial support of the family. They also rejected the notion that marriage, home, and family were to be the entirety of a woman's world. Founding NOW President Betty Friedan had addressed these issues in her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.
Publicly funded child care was also a NOW priority, adopted as one of the organization's goals in its 1967 Bill of Rights for Women.