Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

Other reviewers complained that this wasn't history. If by that they meant it wasn't the nostalgia-soaked 1950s as Leave It To Beaver and Happy Days, they're right. It is, however, a well-researched and cogently presented window into the hidden marriage life of the time. This is a difficult view to find but Dr. May is able to mine the data and arrive at a more well-developed and complex vision of family life of the 50s. In effect, she shows how the dream of security, a husband and children were presented as the prize to be won, but once won often created a sense of loss that even the women that lived it had a hard time understanding. She is equally able in presenting the conflict and confusion men experienced. Particularly interesting was how she was able to compare views of individual husbands and wives using a 300 person anonymous study. The only complaint I had was the clunky last chapter which had virtually nothing to do with the topic and instead was a polemic on 9/11. Fortunately, it was short and didn't wash out the positive experience of the other 90% of the book.

Beautifully written analysis of cold war families in America and the effects on feminism and women of that generation and those to follow. Very comprehensive and written in a clear point of view with dashes of humor and wit to keep the reader captivated. This was one for a school assignment that quickly became one of my favorites.

Elaine Tyler May opened her book, <i>Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era</i>, with a description of a 1959 publicity stunt. A young couple, recently married, chooses to spend their honeymoon in a bomb shelter. Surrounded by consumer goods, the couple enters the bomb shelter for two weeks and will have nothing more for entertainment than canned goods and each other. As May writes in the introduction, the couple epitomizes the image of the post-war family as “isolated, sexually charged, cushioned by abundance, and protected against impending doom.” (1) As the book progresses, May’s thesis is clear: the Cold War/anti-communism/domestic bliss of the 1950s may have been ideal for men and children, but was detrimental to women, their sexuality, and their personal fulfillment. She connects the Cold War and anti-communism to the oppression of women. A whole generation was inundated with propaganda describing the ideal domestic life and anything that deviated from the norm was “bad”. To support her conclusions, May draws from popular culture, Hollywood, politics, and the Kelly Longitudinal Survey. These examples show how messages infiltrated the American psyche and helped form the attitudes of a generation of men and women towards marriage, child bearing, and life in the suburbs. The 1950s was an era when, for the first time in decades, the birth and marriage rates increased, and the age of marriage and divorce rates decreased. Pundits, scientists, and so-called specialists advocated traditional gender roles and the submissiveness of women as a way to battle the spread of communism throughout the world. May shows how American domestic life mirrored the need for security with the boxy ranch-style home, fenced in back yard, and the family spending time indoors in front of the television – all protected from the evils of the outside world. May describes how the needs of 1950s women are suppressed and subservient to the needs of their husbands and children. May explains that this contradicted the previous gains women had made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Women’s emancipation movements started in the 1920s with suffrage. In the 1930s women went to work during the depression to help support their families and continued working in war industries during the 1940s. At the time, even Hollywood contributed to the image of the strong, independent female with role models like Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn. One of the more fascinating sources May uses is the Kelly Longitudinal Study (KLS). The KLS is a long-term study interested in personality development as well as the subjects’ attitudes towards marriage, family life and social situations. Questions were answered in detail, often taking more room than allotted on the surveys. It is a window into the life and psyche of the “picture perfect” 1950s family, which shows that the picture wasn’t so perfect. Unfortunately, as May points out in her introduction, this study is limited to the affluent, white middle class and their experiences with marriage and family life. Her book is a great start to open further research into the KLS study as well as the lasting affects of the repression of women in the 1950s have had on later generations of women.

Book was in good shape and was exactly as it is stated in the system.

Original book written prior to 9/11 (2001). This is basically the same book with the addition of another chapter covering the 9/11 events and bringing the book more up yo date and is considered the 20th Anniversary issue. Book was well researched with Appendix as well as detailed NOTES section - I would highly recommend reading this bok for those who want a look behind the scenes of American Life, in detail, especially covering from WWII thru the 70's - eye opener. A lot a stats, lot of research, lot of analysis and well told (not boring!).

Needed this book for a class. Was exactly as described

This is the go-to book for social and gender history during the Cold War. It is highly readable and full of well analyzed research. It is easy to read and provides so much interesting information. Highly recommend if you're interested in more recent American History!

The main idea of Homeward Bound is that society's definition of an ideal family structure, and the role of women in the family, in bed, and in the workplace, evolved throughout much of the 20th century based on perceptions of society's needs to respond to major events (the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War). The author concentrates in particular on the end of World War II through the mid-1960s, and argues that the desirable construct of the family (father-as-breadwinner/mother-as-childrearer; sexual containment within the marriage; early marriage and emphasis on childrearing, etc.) was in large part influenced by the Cold War. The book's general discussions of the impact of the Depression and World War II on the people who lived through those eras, and of womens' role in these two crises, appear to be accurate. Most historians agree that these events had a major impact on everyone who lived through them. The strongest chapters were those that dealt with these two eras (Chapters 2 and 3). The discussion of the baby boom in the 1960s and the end of traditional female roles (Chapter 9) was also strong. May asserts that baby boom mothers, frustrated at their own diminished opportunities, contributed to the feminist uprising in the late 1960s by raising their daughters' expectations. Chapter 4 (Explosive Issues: Sex, Women, and the Bomb) is by far the weakest chapter. The author's effort to link the development of domestic patterns in the 1950s with fear of nuclear war is extremely weak. Social historians seem to love quoting from civil defense manuals, training films, and brochures to portray society as obsessed with nuclear war and civil defense. And, these films and brochures are certainly easy to lampoon. However, I believe this view of the 1950s and early 1960s is wrong. In the 1970s I worked for a congressional committee that looked at civil defense programs over the previous 25 years. We found that from 1950 onward, there always was a constituency advising more emphasis on civil defense, but that these recommendations were seldom accepted by the President or funded by Congress. Presidential requests for civil defense funding declined from year to year throughout the 1950s, and Congress usually cut even the increasingly modest Presidential requests by half or more. May makes much of the supposed nationwide mania about fallout shelters, but in fact, this program never received much public or political support. A 1957 Presidential Commission recommended a national fallout shelter program, but President Eisenhower ignored this recommendation, and, while President Kennedy briefly supported a major fallout shelter program, funding had been all but eliminated within less than a year. The civil defense movement was never politically effective, nor did it ever have the traumatic impact on U.S. society as suggested by May. Instead of the view espoused by May, I believe that the postwar rush to domesticity, early marriage, homeownership, and conformity was largely driven by the desire of people who had lived through the Depression and World War II to "build a normal life." I believe the book is useful as a source of information and provides an interesting perspective on family life in the middle of the 20th Century. Much of the work's general narrative (the central impact of the Great Depression and World War II on the lives of people born in the first third of the 20th Century; the causes of the retreat to "traditional roles" in the immediate aftermath of World War II; and the ultimate obliteration of "sexual containment," traditional male/female roles, and other artifacts of this era in the late-1960s) appears to be accurate. However, the author's attempt to link these attitudes and behaviors to the Cold War is weak. Instead, I believe it is much more likely that the post-World War II rush to domesticity and conformity was stimulated by a desire on the part of Americans to attain a "normal" life after so many years interrupted by the Depression and World War II. Throughout the book, May also uses examples drawn from popular culture (movies, magazine articles, etc.) to show society's thinking on the family, the role of women, etc. The use of such anecdotal materials as an indicator of social trends is pretty questionable, because at any time in history, a researcher can probably find examples to prove whatever he/she wants to prove. For example, one person could argue that the success a few years ago of Lord of the Rings and Master and Commander indicates that society was in the mood for big, heroic epics. Someone else could argue that the success in the same year of Whale Rider and City of God indicates that society favored small movies with insights about different cultures. The use of these anecdotal sources does not increase confidence in her conclusions about cultural norms.

This was great!