HIST 2800 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Cold War, Nuclear Family, Family Values
Document Summary
The way we never were: american families in the cold war era. Main point: for both men and women, a successful family life was a major personal goal. In its idealized form, during this period, the home and family life was meant to offer companionate marriage, material comfort, well-adjusted children, and wives and husbands who performed well in their clearly defined roles. This was a lot to ask of the nuclear family; family realities rarely matched these expectations. The golden era of family life: why did postwar americans turn to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment during the late 1940s and 1950s, the general assumption is that americans were weary from the depression and. In actuality, the trends of the 1950s are totally unique; the era"s strong domestic ideology, consensus politics, and peculiar demographic behavior stands out as different and does not reflect the long-term trends of the 20th century.