Essay On 1950s Family

Taking a look into the 1970’s mothers weren’t just looked at as housewives anymore they were workingwoman. And if they weren’t that probably meant that they were either a doctors wife or there family was very poor and probably a Baptist or a Church of Christ. (Reader responses to a look back at the August 1976 issue of Good Housekeeping.) Being a stay at home mother was not that usual for this time

While the 1950’s had been very conservative, the stay-at-home housewives, the perfect families and home lives, children of the baby boom soon alternated this into a very different kind of

The roles and expectations for women in the 1950s differed in many ways from today’s society. “Society placed high importance and many expectations on behavior at home as well as in public” (Colorado.edu). In the 1950s women were considered “housewives”. Women’s sole purpose was to maintain the home, take care of the children, provide meals, and be obedient wives. “Good wives” listened to their

Traditional roles of women in America during the 1860s were significantly different than they are today. Around the Civil War era, most women were expected to be homemakers above anything else. They spent much of their days cooking, sewing, or cleaning, and if they failed to create a cheerful, cozy home environment, they were looked down upon because it was considered unacceptable according to society’s standards. (" Literature and Its Times.”) In addition to housework, mothers encouraged their

Depictions of families in the 1950s were extreme in a myriad of ways. The notion of a “nuclear family,” in which a husband, wife and their children were considered the smallest unit of our society, became incredibly popular. Husbands and wives each seemed to have particular roles and duties from which they couldn’t stray. The husband, of course, was a working man responsible for bringing money to the household. His wife worked on something else: their household itself. She cleaned, cooked, and decorated. She bought groceries and clothing for everybody. She watched their children, fed them, and took care of them. In the 1950s, advertising advocated these roles and these roles alone: straying from them was rather unthinkable. The “nuclear

In the 1950s, she was pitied if she did not want what was expected of her.” (Coontz, A Strange Stirring 75) This growing discontent resulted in a push toward newly built suburbia‒ where eighty-five percent of new homes were built‒ as an answer to their search for belonging (Coontz, The Way We Never Were 24). This shifting focus to the nuclear family complete with the concept of the male as breadwinner and head of household and a fixation on finding happiness within the “traditional family” was new in America (Coontz, The Way We Never Were 27). The tight knit nuclear family was considered a weapon in the fight against communism, and a push towards capitalism through the “American Dream” (Hellman 1).

During the 1950s, women were expected to take care of just about every aspect. Woman cleaned the home during the day and having dinner on the table by the time their husbands were home. Social media advertisements were focused mainly on women because they were the only ones home to watch them, but focused only on a white nuclear family unit. They never showed a minority, a single mother, or a working mother because they were socially unacceptable. Women were not allowed to grocery shop because men believed they were too stupid to handle money. Women were afraid to upset their husbands because they could lose their weekly allowance. The twenty first century has a variety of differences, including men are allowed to stay home, both genders take care of home needs, and woman some in families make the majority of the income of a

This reading greatly ties into our discussion on the politics of housework between parents. During the early years of being married, some couples do not feel the burden of caring for a family because they chose not to have children at that point in time. As Alix Shulman describes in her passage, she and her husband were very content during that time, often shopping, cooking, and spending long walks together on the weekends in Central Park. They wouldn’t need to worry about cleaning too often because their apartment was modest and not too large for a family of two. She notes that during that period of their life, their domestic was beautifully uncomplicated. Suddenly down the road, a couple years later, the couple found themselves distressed when they had their son and daughter. Life became more complicated and at times, “impossible” according to Alix. The reason was that both Alix and her husband automatically accepted the traditional sex roles set in place by society. Alix left her job and became a stay-at-home mom, while her husband was working all day in the office. Alix was used to interacting with people during the day and having a life outside the office as well as the home, but now she was confined to the company of her children, who were preschoolers at the time. Alix was upset because she felt as though her husband’s life changed little when the children were born while her life became 1000x more complicated. She was working more than a 9-5 day job, and she didn’t get compensated for the work either. Preparing six meals a day for different people, spending several hours cleaning a mess that would remain unclean within the next couple hours, due to her children playing, and laundry that was originally done a couple times a month, now is due on a daily basis. Alix never got a break. She once enjoyed reading, but now she can’t even have a private mental life without the constant

A family may have cooked a pie, and the neighbors each had prepared a side dish to complete a meal. People never were hungry and always had a meal to eat," said Marjorie Smith (qtd. in Smith). Even with the war happening overseas the households constantly made the best of every situation to make sure the children were fed and well taken care of. Before World War II, the woman's role was primarily in the household taking care of the everyday needs of the house and the children, but that changed shortly when women were being moved into the working field.

During the early 1950s women who had been working supporting the war effort were forced to leave their jobs and return to their lives as housewives. The times were changing once again and women were forced away from the workforce which many enjoyed, and into housewifery in pursuit of a happy marriage. An article written about housewives during this period argues that the 1950s were an era in which women abandoned any professional aspirations and took on the job of being housewives (Pollard). In this article the young women preform all the tasks of a housewife that Esther would find menial and unfulfilling. Esther Greenberg is a complicated and intelligent girl who sees marriage as nothing more than a life of being a servant from the examples that she has witnessed. As the author states, “Hadn’t my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon… from that day on my mother never had a minute’s peace” (Plath, 85). Although Esther does not believe in putting aside her goals and ambitions for a man, society during the 1950s says that young women get married, have children, and abandon their own dreams. Feeling the pressure to settle down Esther in her heart knows that marriage would not be the right choice for her even though it is what is expected. Many women during the 1950s and 1960s felt the same pressure to settle down as

One of the most romanticized family institutions in North American is the nuclear family. Although the nuclear family was created to appear as the ‘traditional’ and normative ideal, it has never been the reality for all families (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 154). The nuclear family was created after the end of the Second World War when women were taken out of the workforce and placed back into their homes. “Men and women embraced this nostalgia, marrying and having children early, and divorcing little. The 1950s family model they created was almost immediately enshrined as the most ‘natural’ and healthiest form possible” (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 185). In Kimmel and Holler (2011), they define the nuclear family of the 1950s as “a lifelong sexually exclusive, heterosexual monogamous marriage, based on affection and companionship, in which there is a sharp division of labour with the female as full time housewife and the male as primary provider and ultimate authority’” (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 141). It is the family structure where women stay at home, do household chores and child care, while men work and be the sole breadwinner for the family. In North America, the ‘traditional’ family was characterized by:

Prior to and during the 1960’s the traditional outlook on women as equals was limites in nearly every aspect. From marriage, sexuality, reproduction, and motherhood a woman was expected to follow a pre destined order and timeline in life to complete these tasks. The expectation of women at the time was to marry young, 18-24, and quickly start a family where she would devote her life to raising children and housekeeping. Wives of the time period shouldered the responsibilities of child care and home making, while men were expected to merely work, come home to a clean house and dinner, and then slip off to bed. Until the late-1960’s when women began pushing for social change to rid themselves from the slavery of traditional womanhood. Though this life style seems more like imprisonment, some women didn’t feel that way, for example my grandmother Armalene Haxby, was content in her role as the home maker. However we know that this idea wasn’t shared with the rest of American women. The 1960’s was filled with social reforms and women rights protest meant to free the American women to be equal to their male counter parts. An excerpt from Betty Friedan 's book The Feminine Mystique, gave insight to some women’s outlook on life, "I 'm desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I 'm a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bed maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?"(Friedan 63) What was it like to be a house wife? Was it in fact

Though the 50s might be portrayed today as the picture perfect American family, popular opinion is a far cry from the reality of what life was actually like. In television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, the typical family followed the same model. The average nuclear family included a housewife, a working father, multiple children, and probably some type of pet, all of who lived in a typical suburban home (“Harmony at Home”). Women did not work. Their job was to stay at home and take care of the children, clean, and cook. She would send the children off to school

After World War II, the husband would work long hours as his wife stayed home using her Hoover vacuum cleaner. Page says, “Following World War II, the U.S. experienced increased distribution of wealth and income which allowed more people to acquire more things such as; automobiles, houses, refrigerators, airplanes, etc (3). No more hand washing clothes and hanging clothes on the line to dry, which the poor people had to do. A worthy person’s washer and dryer could clean and dry her chores in hours instead of days. These appliances helped improve life, for both sexes. The husband showed his worth even more, when his wife did not work as well. If a husband’s wife worked a job, this could spread rumors that the family is experiencing a hardship.

From the 1940s to the early 1960s, after both World War II and The Great Depression, Americans were more eager than ever to establish families. Following traditional family values, these couples set a trend for earlier marriages with a greater number of kids than those of Europe during the same time period. Consequently, divorce rates dipped as many families found stability, peace, and love within these marriages. The heterosexual man of the relationship was typically the “breadwinner,” working during the day to provide