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Title: Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era by Elaine Tyler May ISBN: 0-465-03055-6 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: November, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A landmark text in the field of American Studies
Comment: Elaine Tyler May's text "Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era", remains a classic in American Studies-and example of relevant, clear, well-written scholarship utilizing a variety of data to make a interesting and important case. This is not to say that the work has no weaknesses, but it remains in many ways an enduring, if somewhat superceded landmark in American cultural studies.
Tyler May's central thesis of the book is that the foreign policy of the "containment" of communism, summarized and popularized by Secretary John Foster Dulles, paralleled the rise of a domestic politics of containment, where the home space became a way to contain the economic, sexual, and social desires of both women and men. Moreover, the construction of this home space necessitated the casting of gender, sexual, and social roles in rigorous, socially compulsory terms that effectively marginalized many people from ethnic, sexual, and ideological minorities. These roles, constructed through the politics of domestic containment, were held in majority American culture to be necessary to the social survival and maintenance of capitalism in the Cold War struggle against the Soviets. Women in particular, are focused on, as the strong, independent, single role models of the 1930's gave way to increased imagery of the married, safely domesticated woman, who were under heavy societal pressure to give birth and raise children. Men too were constrained by corporate superiors, and looked to home as the one place they could exercise full influence over their wives and children. Not everyone, of course, was happy with this.
A number of surprising arguments are made and defended in this book as sub-theses to the greater point. Birth control achieved social acceptance quickly during this time, albeit "contained" in such a way as to officially promote family expansion and lower the marriage age. Fulfilled eroticism, albeit only in marriage, becomes a central point of majority discourse, to the point that women were counseled to pour more energy into their mates' fulfillment, sexual and otherwise, than the children of the household. (this is not to say those actual sexual attitudes and practices always reflected these images, as she points out on pg. 102) The Cold War demanded that the excesses of capitalism (in promoting huge differentials between rich and poor) had to be checked, lest communism breed and flourish in the nation's slums (147). Fewer African-American women went to college than white, but more of them graduated proportionately. May even shows that the so-called Baby Boom didn't start after the war, but rather in the early part of WWII, thus dispelling the common notion peace and affluence alone created the baby boom (these conditions also existed after WWI, but with no population boom.)
Another excellent aspect of this study, besides nuancing the role of the Cold War, is the inclusion and careful use of quantitative data, the Kelly Longitudinal Studies---these were surveys taken among housewives and husbands (white ones, to be sure) and they reveal a wealth of data. Rather than painting a picture of comfortable domesticity, these surveys reflect a great deal of dissatisfaction among women (and men) coping with these rigid gender roles. Women who worked in industry during the war had mixed feelings at best being relegated back to the home. Sexuality, motherhood, all of these things proved ultimately unfulfilling for many women in the surveys, causing guilt and resentment in the supposedly "placid" generation.
Tyler May leaves important parties out of her study. Black women, for example, are discussed rarely, and the labor and civil rights movements (which start in the 1950's, not the 60's) are not part of this story. Subsequent scholarship ("Not June Cleaver", "Tupperware") has demonstrated that even in this time, women created counternarratives to compulsory domesticity, that allowed many to ameliorate and contest, if not wholly counter, these discourses. But what Tyler May demonstrates is that these majority discourses of political and domestic containment maintained a definitive hegemony over the public discussions of the day, and held wide sway in the larger culture. Especially through media representations of that time period, these operative models of domestic containment and placidness tend to guide, somewhat incorrectly, popular collective memories of that time period. This fact only serves to further underscore their continued influence.
Christopher W. Chase - PhD Fellow, Michigan State Univ.
Rating: 3
Summary: Uneven in examining reproductive rights
Comment: I purchased this book for my graduate-level independent studies course hoping to find definitive answers to a hunch post-war controversy over reproductve rights actually had a larger tie-in to the era's blatant anti-communism.
After all, the advent of antiseptic surgery and antibiotics meant the driving reason behind 19th century anti-abortion campaigns was effectively negated by the post-war period, so opponents of women's rights had to construct a new justifcation for extending the laws beyond their original intent. Abortion was now dangerous because it increased women's autonomy and freedom.
While May does address reproductive policy, this work suprisingly does not delve heavily into how anti-communism and reproductive bias paralleled eachother.Considering many post-war restrictions (pregnancy-related job firing and school expulsion co-existed with illegality of abortion and contraception) were directly related to women's reproductive potential, a considerable amount of research was missing from her book. The research presented skimmed what I had already discovered from Solinger et al's other works and did not provide the insight I was desperatley seeking.
Because May is able to tie anti-communist objectives into television and other cultural arenas, I remain puzzled by the selective exclusion. However well written structurally, it also seemed as if she were skipping around the same argument, but electing not to explore it for whatever reason.
This book is not a good candidate for work with reproductive policy, but would be an excellent choice for a general study of American women's post-war political agency.
Rating: 3
Summary: Suprisingly uneven in some places
Comment: Still working on my independent study project, I bought this book hoping to gain some critical insight on the apparent ties between the era's anti-communisim and renewed interest in enforcing other-wise ignored anti-abortion laws.
Originally passed in the 19th century when all surgery carried a certain degree of risk, abortion had become a fairly safe medical procedure with the advent of antiseptic surgery and antibiotics. Yet, the immediate post-war era saw massive restriction on the number of 'legal' abortions which directly contradicted medical technology's advancement. Paradoxically, when the procedure had attained a fair degree of safety, society was going to go out of it's way to remove women from their own reproductive rights.
This removal had significantly less to do with fetal rights than concern about the woman's real and future 'femininiy'. An informal and unlikely coalition of government experts, and Madison avenue set out to convince the American woman (via comericials, movies, and atrocious sitcoms) THE way to fight the communists was through their unquestioning adoption and adherence to a pre-determined gender role, because only then could she (and the nation) be 'sure' her children would grow up unmarred by communist doctorine.
While there is some information implicating newly rigid gender roles (and the related quest to contain women's sexuality--just like the containment for the communists!)in the sharp increase in abortion prosecutions and legal/cultral restrictions, it did not go in depth as much as I would have prefered. For whatever reason imaginable, May's research into this specific facet abruptly fades in and out of an otherwise solid and engrossing text.
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Title: The Culture of the Cold War (The American Moment) by Stephen J. Whitfield ISBN: 0801851955 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age by Paul S. Boyer ISBN: 0807844802 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Critical Perspectives on the Past) by Joanne Meyerowitz ISBN: 1566391717 Publisher: Temple Univ Press Pub. Date: June, 1994 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis ISBN: 0198780710 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America by Beth L. Bailey ISBN: 0801839351 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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