But even May admits that images such as the bomb shelter do not always convey an accurate picture of reality, given that few Americans built such shelters in their homes, although the images of the media might suggest differently, and the way people respond to surveys does not always reflect their lived experience (May 107).
May's analysis thus seems to fall into validating 'Leave it to Beaver' cliches about the 1950s, even when her own data contradicts it. She does remind the reader that the image of the 1950s as normal and iconic is in error: "It was not, as common wisdom tells us, the last gasp of 'traditional' family life...it was the first wholehearted effort to create a home that would fulfill virtually all its members' personal needs through an energized and expressive personal life" in American history (May 11). Some of the most interesting parts of her book are those that do not deal with cultural images of the 1950s still popular today, such as the rise of therapy culture and psychoanalysis, which can be said to parallel similar movements in our own environment today. Therapy "offered private and personal solutions to social problems" just like turning to family to solve all of one's problems and to fulfill all needs, as opposed to the community or vocational life (May 11)
Overall, May's method of argument seems more poetic than substantiated by real facts. She writes: "As the chill of the Cold War settled across the nation, Americans looked toward the uncertain future with visions of carefully planned...
However, although the 1950s may have prohibited sexual 'deviance' outside of conventional sexual norms, in the form of out-of-wedlock births and homosexuality, it was highly approving of sexuality within the bounds it defined as acceptable -- the age of newlyweds plummeted according to the natural average, and the birthrate skyrocketed. Marrying young and having children enabled "Americans to thumb their noses at doomsday predictions" and also signified the end
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. By Elaine Tyler May (New York: Basic Books, 1988). vii + 284 pp. Reviewed by in her book, Elaine Tyler May begins by describing a Life magazine feature involving a couple in 1959 who spent their honeymoon in a bomb shelter. This is the attention-grabbing start of a work that seeks to explore, in depth, the various components involved in domestic
Though the book focuses on femininity and gender division, it explores these topics as a window to the larger issue of a society dealing with the fact that it could be instantaneously annihilated. This fear was used to fuel rampant consumerism, much of it directed at the housewife -- the proper way to stock a bomb shelter, how to cook with makeshift tools, and other emergency measures were common
Did she on some subconscious level realize this irony and dichotomy? She does not deal with it in her book, but on some Freudian level it is certainly possible that she did. To recap, both of the authors Elaine Tyler May and Ann Moody see the institution of the family as something that was a mixture of limiting and liberating influences both for men and women during the 1940s, 1950s,
Today, the Americans fight different insurgent factions, who have limited weaponry, no air force, and no real large scale fighting tactics. Instead, they create havoc with roadside bombs and suicide bombers. Vietnam was fought on the scale of a world war, while Iraq is being fought on a much smaller scale. In addition, there was a draft in place during Vietnam, and no draft in place today, so our
The crisis facing Soviet society as the union disintegrated came from several sources, but the economic problems, the growing crime rate, the inter-ethnic violence, and the political struggles all derived from the deep crisis rising questions about the legitimacy of Soviet political institutions and the identity of the Soviet people. Gorbachev brought about many changes in Soviet politics and society. The development of this national policy came as the
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