This book entails the private lives of families during the Cold War. Homeward Bound has not only been responsible for altering the common consideration of the Cold War in America but it also compels historians and readers like me to reassess the association between the public and private lives of American families after the Cold War. Elaine Tyler May through this book raises a question upon the political ideology by researching that the Atomic Age and the Cold War were not the only objectives to be studied by those who make the public policy. We all know that the Cold War era released tensions and pressures as such that made a heavy impact on American life at every level for the reason that the declared foreign strategy of containment in the direction of the Soviet Union had a familial consequence. The apparent threats of this era were a nuclear war, consumerism, collectivism, women’s liberation, and sexual testing which were shown to be contained in the family itself.
In my view, I believe that the thesis May argues on somewhat portrays “cold war ideology and the domestic revival as two sides of the same coin” (p. 10). At the same time, I read this to be a reflection of the scrupulous fears and anxiety as well as the ambitions and expectations for the period.
I read Elaine Tyler May’s study, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, and found out that the theme of her work is inspired by the much talked about settlement of the families away from the city after the war. We all have read in miscellaneous Cold War accounts that these families were abnormally big and it was difficult for them to dwell. However, very few works reflected the account of abnormal increase in the rate of birth after the war which was surely a demographic abnormality. This increase in birthrate was seen last in late 1800s after which the birthrate had started to fall. This rise in the birthrate been noted as return to customary traditions and family values which have been made probable by the wartime affluence which followed fatalities caused by the Depression. May convinces the reader at this point that these outsized middle-class families belonging to the towns were not a foreseeable come back to a former model but a new model of a family which resulted in the framework of a particular communal and political culture after the war. I perceive, May’s thesis is aiming to map out the edifice of this new image of family life as it resounded throughout the newly formed culture and became a basis of developing the foundation of societal approaches and strategy formulations in the community.
In my opinion May’s book is a significant study of the development of meticulous philosophies of the standard family and for the clear links it discloses between life of families, public and political philosophies in this era. To study the familial structures existing in the postwar era, this book would prove to be the only such account of history that will answer all your questions. May signifies that the postwar family would be the stronghold to defend its members from the fears of the atomic times, the interior risks of communist sedition, the enticements of greed and materialism. Barbecues in the courtyard and huge bedrooms and living Family rooms and backyard barbecues were a provision of a warm home setting that would lead to fulfilling all the ” personal need through an energized and expressive personal life” (11).
Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound intertwines two customary accounts from the 1950s, one was the domesticity in the suburbs and the other was an uncontrolled anticommunism. What was very strong about this intertwining, in my opinion was that this resulted in a forceful chronological argument. Aiming to determine why, “postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment,” (5-6) May tries to tell us that this was a resultant of “postwar Americans’ intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future” (10). In my view, domestic containment was a result of the insecurities and ambitions that were the outcome of the war – and that is exactly what May argues, that it started inside the homes, “potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute to the secure and fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired” (14). We will see that May begins her argument by looking at the origin of this domestic containment in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Throughout the Depression, she mentions, that two dissimilar observations of the family contended, that was between the breadwinners who shared other tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were stridently distinguished.
During WWII, the vision of both the men and women working to be breadwinners was held back. As May mentions, “women entered war production, but they did not give up on reproduction…Economic hardship was no longer a barrier to marriage, as it had been in the 1930s, and dependents’ allowances eased the burdens of families if the breadwinners were drafted. But perhaps most important was the desire to solidify relationships and establish connections to the future when war made life so uncertain” (59-60).
Even the popular culture defined in the book before the war respected woman to work; it also made sure that women return to their domestic life after the war ends. These trends were aggravated by the rioting of the atomic bomb. In this context, May states that “As the cold war took hold of the nation’s consciousness domestic containment mushroomed into a full-blown ideology that hovered over the cultural landscape for two decades” (91). It is in this part of her book that I saw her trying to make some very interesting claims. May tries to explain how the homes of the suburban families were used for dangerous atomic bombs and at the same time used for domestication of the females. May carries on till the end of the book to clarify how the habitats of these people turned into a redeemer and a jail for Cold War families in the 1950s. While sex inside these homes was being promoted by the popular culture, everything combined to form sexual dissatisfaction, complexity, and irritation.
For American women and men during Cold War Era a successful family life was a major personal goal. They wanted to build a home with all the security and accomplishments and happiness for their families and at the same time also secure them from the bitterness of the Cold War. As seen above, the birthrate was very high during this settlement period. The reason for this outrage in child birth was the same idea of the couples in the U.S.A. identified having a lot of children with sense of steadiness and safety. At the same time, the women’s position in the social order was altered as well. The accepted thought of a perfect housewife replicates spectacular change toward traditional and customary gender roles. Culture prevailing in America during the 1950s and 1960s gave much respect to women workers and since men were positively to go for education in colleges and focus on their careers. Also, the social order was fearful with the idea of a nuclear attack. The stable training for atomic war and the significance of the family show the important force of the events taking place on the political front during the Cold War on many part of the American style of living.
We all know that the Cold War had left many adverse affects on the American families in miscellaneous ways. Women and men in America were hoping positively that family life after the war would be much happier and secure and fruitful so they may free themselves of the hardships they went through in the past. They believed that wealth; commodities, pleasing sexual activities, and kids would make their families stronger, thus making them able to maneuver themselves out of the possible disturbances. American at that particular time wanted good career based jobs, a secure home for themselves and their families and long term committed marriages.
The form of American life was idealized all over the world giving vigilance to the distinct ethnic and racial assemblies, organizing themselves for any likelihood atomic conflict (with a protected guard in their home) or any kind of communal problem. Their family functions would counteract any danger. Good fathers and powerful, healthy mothers would inspire standards in their young children so they could bypass lesson disorder for demonstration all kinds of deviancy. There was powerful force to conform to the perfect of the heterosexual atomic family to bypass difficulties, which were markers of a need of loyal asset. Those were very powerful notes at a time when anti-communism was adhered to any kind of communal rebel.
One of the truths of postwar American heritage is that the perfect of humanity regardless of the class, where just about everyone dwelled a middle-class life — isn’t true. Though it became likely, particularly for veterans’ families, to move into snug suburban dwellings, it was much less factual for persons of hue, and even for Jews in some situations, to move into those communities.
While I was reading the book what I found to be the most interesting and evident aspect of May’s work is the inclusion of the Kelly Longitudinal Study (KLS) which comprised of over 600 participants’ wide answers to queries posed to them as married couples during the 1930s and 1955. This allows the reader and somewhat allowed May as well to conclude her main proof as to how these policies governing public along with the well-liked society formulations resounded through peoples’ life. Mostly the survey participants include white, middle-class, mainly Protestant couples who were called after they renounced their weddings in local newspapers of New England and retorted to questionnaires sent to them after every specific number of years. The results of the KLS questionnaires reveal the respondents’ profound obligation to the new familial model. When asked to look into their homes and respond their main focus or sense of achievement lied in the security and predictability of their family. Women were very committed their domestic life but many were found to be having problems with frustration and monotony that many were exposed to. Because of premarital sex among these respondents, it was discovered that actually after marriage their level of dissatisfaction had increased in the wake of which they had to lower their expectations.
These families were however very pleased with the large number of offspring that they had and were of a notion that the sign of a happy family and successful marriage was actually in these children. The KLS questionnaires were a good source of ideas that were put forward by May, however there is still a heavy research to be carried out which explores these issues further and not limited due to class and ethnic limitations.
I believe May’s book, appeals to the idealistic spatial circumstances of settling down away from the city and America’s leading inhabited typology. Despite its incidental righteousness, however, the use of home provokes the home balance and sentimental domestication intending to benefit power of the nation-state and analytically shapes benefits into local and international scales. Elaine May’s examination of the symbiotic relationship among the civilization of the Cold War and the home revitalization of the 1950s majorly points out towards the containment of home held out with the assurance of safety in an unconfident world. The nuclear family was a creation of the nuclear age, and then existent homeland’s family revivalism is edifying upon the Cold War’s discursive bequest.
The final argument presented by May insisted that the cold war domestic accord was traditionally constructed and that it had begun to loosen in the dissimilar chronological situation when the baby boom occurred in the 1960s. May suggests, in an epilogue that a great amount of achievable motives were the reason for which the domestic ideology had begun to fall apart.
I believe that May’s Domestic ideology was built on the premises of particular accounts of femininity and masculinity, but what remains untold is how were these further prejudiced by racial and ethnic issues? How did the yearnings moved by the 1950s’ account of the high-quality life influence people who couldn’t contribute in it, those who couldn’t pay for a house in the suburbs, or those whose wherewithal were so completely exhausted by the home that they couldn’t pay for? What was the force of the family agreement on those disqualified from it in terms of class, race, or sexual fondness? How did familial suppression function to conceal deficiency; ethnic, racial, and sexual dissimilarity; urban downfall; and class dissimilarities from observation?
Works Cited
May, Tyler Elaine. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.