Rosie The Riveter The Cold War

The United States formally joins World War II in December 1941 in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Because of the shortage of men, women were highly encouraged to go into the workforce for the duration of war. According to Lecture 8, women’s roles where on the “home front industrial front, and military” (Bufalino 4/26/18). Rosie the Riveter was one of the most famous figures for working women. She was a campaign directed at recruiting female workers for protection industries in World War II. The message the government attempted to convey was that by joining the work force, you would could acquire a living in the meantime and help your country, like Rosie the Riveter. The magazine advertisements, posters, and pamphlets of Rosie the Riveter

From 1945 to 1991, there was “conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union for global supremacy” and “on-going political conflict, occasional military conflicts, and mutually assured destruction” (Bufalino 4/26/18). In the 1950s, cultural conflicts started to arise. There was a “Baby Boom,” a period of McCarthyism, and a sudden glorification of domesticity. The rise of a new family structure and dynamic yet maintaining conventional family roles and qualities simultaneously resulted from Cold War tensions. The term nuclear family, characterized as parents and their children, expected a double meaning in the context of threat from Soviet nuclear attack, sustained by the media. This narrative of the nuclear family can be seen in the 1957 American sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. The sitcom is about a curious boy named Theodor “The Beaver” Cleaver and his life in his neighborhood, school, and home. In addition to Beaver’s family members, the show featured Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, his mother. With the Cleavers depicting the praised suburban family during the Cold War Era, the show achieved a significant amount of stardom in the United

In Leave it to Beaver, June Cleaver is depicted as being very committed to her family. Her passions outside the house are school events like plays and meetings or social occasions like weddings. Although she is the ideal role of a woman in this era, she is not just a housewife. She is hardly one-dimensional is was very witty, funny, and sarcastic. This makes her one of the most intriguing characters on the show. She shows compassion towards her children and continuously forms the bridge between her husband Ward and their children. Her children are oftentimes afraid of their father Ward because he is a disciplinarian. She truly creates the peace within the household. Aside from her role in the household, she is smart, has a college degree, and got good grades in the boarding school she attended. Ward is sometimes ignorant to the fact that women at the time did not have to necessarily depend on a man. She always has equal say in the household and frequently explains that women can be just as ambitious as men. June Cleaver was an iconic character in this era because she was a representation of women who did not wish to be limited to just a