Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Family

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Recommended: Differences and similarities between the family today and 1950s

The perfect family has always been an American dream. In the 50s many families wanted to have the perfect family. A working father a stay at home mom and two well behaved children. This image was magnified by the media and you may have been considered an outcast if you didn’t act a certain way. “Widely accepted in the popular mind, this comforting and stereotypical picture was challenged by real-life wives, many of whom worked outside the home” (Introduction to the 50s). Many people then started to rebel against this idea of the perfect family.
[Television] suggests that the traditional family has always looked like this. The reality is that the 1950s family is more of a historical fluke - what Stephanie Coontz calls a "unique and temporary conjuncture of economic, social, and political factors. "It denies the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of American families. In reality, America has always consisted of many different types of ethnic, social, and socio-economically diverse families (Humboldt)
Many families did not realize that this dream was often impossible and therefore tried to achieve it. Three factors that impacted the rise and fall of the nuclear family are Levittown, the first suburb, Women’s roles in the family and teen rebellion.
One event that affected the idea of the nuclear family was Levittown. Levittown was the first real suburb and helped build the middle class. Levitt and his family knew that many soldiers getting back form the war would need a home to live in that would not cost very much money, so he started a community that had small detached single family homes ( Levittown: Documents). There was such a high demand for housing that the Levitt’s experimented with assembly line like housing. All the hous...

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...r family everything will be alright.

Works Cited
Batchelor, Bob. "Levittown and the Rise of the Suburb (Overview)." Pop Culture Universe: Icons, Idols, Ideas. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Source 3
Batchelor, Bob. "Introduction to the 1950s (Overview)." Pop Culture Universe: Icons, Idols, Ideas. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.
Digital History. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. .
Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. .
Sparknotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. .
Television Families: Or Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. .

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