During the 1950's there are numerous themes that are explored in Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. Such themes as the baby boom, hygiene, sex, bomb shelters, and marriage are some of the major examples. These particular themes and ideas can be seen in high volume through magazines, political cartoons, and advertisements especially during the 1950's.
Hygiene related advertisements were some of the many that I kept seeing over and over while looking through Life magazine. One in particular that caught my eye was a Colgate dental cream ad.Life It has a mother, son, and dentist all in it. The mother is applying the cream to the toothbrush of the son and the dentist is shown in another picture holding up an x-ray of perfectly healthy and un-decayed molars. The message behind the Colgate dental cream is the push for proper healthy hygiene during the 1950's. The audience for this ad is directed toward mothers or homemakers. During the 1950's it was the responsibility of the mother to teach and provide their children of the importance of good hygiene. The mother applying the toothpaste to her sons' toothbrush with a big pearly white smile symbolizes the effectiveness of the product as well as the significance of the homemaker to teach her children proper hygiene. Also the picture of the dentist holding up the x-ray of the back molars having no tooth decay symbolizes the effectiveness of the product as well as the back up needed to solidify the products success.
"In 1951, for example, Charles Walter Clarke, a Harvard physician and executive director of the American Social Hygiene Association, published a major article in the Journal of Social Hygiene on the dangers of atomic attack. "Following an atomic bomb explosion," he wrote, "families would become separated and lost from each other in confusion. Supports of normal family and community life would be broken down
there would develop among many people, especially youths
the reckless psychological state often seen following great disasters." This wording seen in Tyler Mays, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era supports that the theme in the US during the 1950's was to have and strive for good social hygiene. This advertisement would draw attention to its readers by the promotion and benefits that it offers.
Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound weaves two traditional narratives of the fifties -- suburban domesticity and rampant anticommunism -- into one compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May discovers that cold war ideology and the domestic revival [were] two sides of the same coin: postwar Americans' intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was an outgrowth of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war -- Within the home, potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute to the secure and fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.(May, p. 14) Moreover, the therapeutic emphases of fifties psychologists and intellectuals offered private and personal solutions to social problems. The family was the arena in which that adaptation was expected to occur; the home was the environment in which people could feel good about themselves. In this way, domestic containment and its therapeutic corollary undermined the potential for political activism and reinforced the chilling effects of anticommunism and the cold war consensus.(May, p.14)
In Homeward Bound, Elaine Tyler May portrays the connection between foreign and political policy and the dynamics of American families during the post war and Cold War eras through the idea of containment. She argues that political containment bred domestic containment by tying together the widespread anticommunist views of the years following World War II with the ideal of American suburban domesticity. According to May, "domestic containment" was a side effect of the fears and aspirations that arose after the war had ended - within the home, "potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute
The media continues to surround us with various advertisement to persuade us one way or another. Although they might be plain and simple to see, they always have an underlying message behind them. In particular, a great example that displays this is the advertisement “Sense of Community” with Dr. Jay Grossman. “Sense of Community” presents us with a poorly made picture of Dr. Jay Grossman in a dentist office treating a “homeless” patient. Some may assume that this advertisement’s purpose is to exhibit the noble deeds and great qualities that he has as a dentist, however, this is incorrect. In my opinion, according to some evidence that are made visible by the author, what he truly wants the audience to believe is how great being in the
The 1950s seemed to have brought families of all different kinds together and spend quality time with each other. Fathers were the head of the home out working all day to supply money for his family while the children were at school and his wife was at home. The children were gone all day just like their father but they were learning and obtaining a good education from school. The mother was a stay at home housewife doing all different chores, maintenances around the house, and preparing food for the
Society in the 1950 was dramatizing, this is the time were world war two was going, manufacturing conformity and the great depression, so there were some transitions that had been made in order to keep a substantial life. In the film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, there are different subjects that take place, talking about the dramatic change in an individual that took place during the world war two and how it affected him and his family. In the book Packerd the Status Seeker gives you a variety on the different class behavior in America and the hidden barriers that affect you, and the people that surround you that also focus on changes in work, family, and consumer culture. Although it may seem that having a nuclear family, a decent paying job, and the experience of being a part of the army, you are still place in the lower class of society. Little did we know that postwar in the 1950’s would give you so many mix emotions some days were happy, anxious and some days were fearful and content.
Some historians have argued that 1950s America marked a step back for the advancement that women made during WWII. What contributed to this “return to domesticity” and do you believe that the the decade was good or bad for women? The end of World War II was the main contributing factor to the “return to domesticity”. During the war, women played a vital role in the workforce because all of the men had to go fight overseas and leave their jobs. This forced women to work in factories and volunteer for wartime measures.
As gender roles were enhanced, the nuclear family was birthed. This ideal family, mainly portrayed in popular culture, had a working father, homemaking mother, and children. Television shows depicting this type of household, Leave it to Beaver, and I Love Lucy, were not representative of the reality of America. Not all of Americans were white, and not all women were happy living as housewives (Boyer 101). Although most did not fit the mold
Advertisements in Life magazine showed women mainly in ways were they were responsible for kitchen duties and taking care of their husbands. In the early 1950’s, there were recurring ads of women with refrigerators. In an advertisement from 1950, a woman is dressed like a typical housewife standing next to the refrigerator showing all the features it entails. It gives off the message that during this period of the 1950’s, society saw women as the face of the kitchen and a majority of the duties as a housewife took place there. Another advertisement from 1950, gives a clear indication of gender roles. In the advertisement for a refrigerator, the women and her daughter are shown organizing their refrigerator, and the man is shown as carrying in the refrigerator. The advertisement expresses that women are more fit for domestic work and that men are more for the labor tedious work that a woman cannot do. In an advertisement from 1953 to sell health insurance, the man who is selling health insurance puts a picture of himself and his...
Hartmann, Susan M. The Home Front and Beyond: American women in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982
After viewing an episode of I Love Lucy, positive aspects of family and financial issues can be clearly seen in the 1950s. The Ricardo's are middle class, Ricky works as a club band leader and Lucy stays home and `poured all her energies into their nuclear family.' (37) This is a positive side of the 1950s because compared to a few decades before, `women quit their jobs as soon as they became pregnant,' (36) and concentrated more on raising children. These families were much more stable and made almost `60 percent of kids were born into male breadwinner-female homemaker families,' (37) which is a important factor for children to have a good childhood.
As mentioned before, sociologists Coontz and Hochschild further elaborate upon Parsons and Bales’ concepts of the American family, but they mostly critique the idea of the male-breadwinner family. One of the main arguments Coontz and Hochschild present is the decline of the male-breadwinner family due to the economic changes of the United States and the arising social norms of consumerism. Because Parsons and Bales never considered how the changes throughout society would affect family, they believed the male-breadwinner family would continue to be a functional type of family for everyone. However, within her text, “What We Really Miss about the 1950s,” Coontz specifically discusses the major expense of keeping mothers at home as consumption norms...
One of the biggest changes in American families has been divorce and the single-parent families. In the article “What is a Family?”, Pauline Irit Erera argues that after World War 11, is when the major changes in families begun. Women were already accustomed to having jobs and working while their men were away during the war, and when the men all came back is when things started to change. Erera says, “The movement for gender equality led to increased employment opportunities for women, while at the same time declining wage rates for unskilled male workers made them less desirable marriage partners.” (Ere...
THOSE OF US WHO grew up in the 1950s got an image of the American family that was not, shall we say, accurate. We were told, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were not just the way things were supposed to be—but the way things were
The 1950s was a time when American life seemed to be in an ideal model for what family should be. People were portrayed as being happy and content with their lives by the meadia. Women and children were seen as being kind and courteous to the other members of society while when the day ended they were all there to support the man of the house. All of this was just a mirage for what was happening under the surface in the minds of everyone during that time as seen through the women, children, and men of this time struggled to fit into the mold that society had made for them.
Due to the idealization of domesticity in media, there was a significantly stagnant period of time for women’s rights between 1945 and 1959. Women took over the roles for men in the workplace who were fighting abroad during the early 1940s, and a strong, feminist movement rose in the 1960s. However, in between these time periods, there was a time in which women returned to the home, focusing their attention on taking care of the children and waiting on their husband’s every need. This was perpetuated due to the increasing popularity of media’s involvement in the lives of housewives, such as the increasing sales of televisions and the increase in the number of sexist toys. During America’s involvement in World War Two, which spanned from 1941 until 1945, many men went off to fight overseas.