Fatherhood In The 1950's Essay

The differences between gender roles are not so apparent anymore. Men are not always the typical breadwinners and many women are not stay-at-home mothers. An article by Beaupré, Dryburgh, and Wendy (2010) described the transition that many men are going through. According to Beaupré, et al., (2010), fathers were once considered the forgotten parent. “Until recently studies on the family focused mainly on the mothers” (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fortunately, both parents are now being focused on. Fathers today are much more involved in the pregnancy and birth of their child and their child’s life in general (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Beaupré, et al., (2010) explained that women’s involvement in the labour force could be a factor to this change. Women are more educated than they were in previous years. And while women want to work more, men want to be more involved in their children’s lives (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fatherhood is occurring later in adulthood. Research stated that the majority of men are very satisfied with their involvement in their children’s lives. (Beaupré, et al., 2010).

During the 1950's, there was a lifestyle in America that was essentially set in stone from birth. Television portrayed an image that women were to stay to home with the children. Shows such as, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best displayed a stereotypical way of life and structure in a family. “The sitcoms were simultaneously advertisements, etiquette manuals, and how-to lessons for a new way of organizing marriage and child rising” (Coontz, 39). Although television shows of the 1950's were not true reality, it seemed to be a good model at the time. Family life in the 50's era differs greatly from today's family unit.

An average, women during the 1960’s were held accountable for many responsibilities. Women led very different lives during this time period. Punctual, responsible, and reliable were just some of the many standards that were expected from society. At the age of twenty women were expected to be married; soon after they would become pregnant. Raising a family and devoting their lives to be the best housewives possible. Legally women made no earnings or any income for that matter. Child care and in vigorous chores were a part of their daily routine. Women had no say financially. Women had one duty, and that was to be a housewife. Men had all the control in marriages; after all they were the bread winners. Women were stuck in a vicious cycle of controlling and power hungry men. Comparing women from the 10960’s to the women in today’s generation is quite astonishing. The women’s rights movement fought for women to be free. Women no longer need to be chained to such degrading and depressing circumstances. Raising a family and having a husband is a beautiful goal most women dream of. However, we should also have the right to decide when we want to marry and to whom we believe is the right candidate. “Why I Want a Wife” written by Judy Brady raises a powerful message on women in the 1960’s. Judy touches upon the idea that women had constantly been expected to be in confined and submissive relationships. Brady perfectly depicts the

After all the devastation brought about by the Great Depression and World War II, Americans desired and sought for a return to normalcy during the 1950s. With men away at war and women pursuing jobs, the rate of divorce skyrocketed as families were being split apart. Juvenile delinquency rose in great numbers due to the lack of parental supervision during wartime. This evoked fear in the American people that the survival of the “traditional American family” was in jeopardy. Thousands of women were pushed out of the workforce and back into their homes as returning soldiers resumed their positions on the job. Suburban housing flourished as the notion to conform spread across the country. The 1950s was a period of conventionality, when both men and women practiced strict gender roles and complied with society’s expectations in attempts to recreate the “American Dream”. The concept of the “Ideal Woman” created a well-defined picture to women of what they were supposed to emulate as their proper gender role in society. A woman was told her primary interest was everything but herself. She was expected to cook, clean, take care of the kids, and be a loving wife who waits for her husband to come home in order to adhere to his needs. Taking time to care for herself was never in the picture. The idea of conformity trapped these women in suffocating boxes that allowed no room to breathe. The pressure put on women to be the core of the entire family while keeping her husband happy was

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

   Historically, the job of women in society is to care for the husband, the home, and the children. As a homemaker, it has been up to the woman to support the husband and care for the house; as a mother, the role was to care for the children and pass along cultural traditions and values to the children. These roles are no different in the African-American community, except for the fact that they are magnified to even larger proportions. The image of the mother in African-American culture is one of guidance, love, and wisdom; quite often the mother is the shaping and driving force of African-American children. This is reflected in the literature of the

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).

Throughout the United States, more than one-third of children don't live with their biological fathers, and about 17 million of those children don't live with any father at all. Of those, roughly 40 percent haven't seen their fathers in the last year. The over 500 Father's Rights organizations are trying in a variety of ways to change these statistics because they believe that fathers are necessary to the intellectual, psychological and emotional well- being of all children. "Family values" groups encourage long lasting stable, marriages and tough divorce laws to increase the number of two- parent households. Some organizations focus on reasonable child support and visitation, as well as creative joint custody arrangements to

The goal in life of these women were to meet the needs of their husband and children. Society believed that this idea should be the goal for women. For those women who did not do so, there were job opportunities that were given to them during World War II (“Women’s Roles in the 1950s”, 2005). From the 1950’s to 1980’s the opportunity for the African Americans increased. The goal of individuals during the 1980’s was different.

The American dream is summed up into the life of having a big house, with a picket fence, happy marriage, and having 2 children. Well that used to be what the stereotype was, but nothing is ever really that simple or perfect. The days when that would have been a reality is back somewhere in the 1950's, when women took care of the domestic duties and the men took care of the financial duties. Not everyone subscribes to that idea anymore, which makes childbearing a choice of sorts. Society has changed since the 1950's quite a bit, and so has the ideas behind becoming a parent; it's not longer as big a deal to not become a parent. The decision to not have children isn't always based on their wants, there are those who are unable to become parents based on lifestyles types. Another major reason young adults choose to not have children is based on educational and financial statuses.

The message this film gives me about motherhood in the 1960s is that skin tone socially influenced women’s roles as mothers. Despite the end of slavery, racism was highly attributed to discrimination and field of work among the African American community. Although African American women had other aspirations growing up, they knew they’d grow up to be maids, because their mothers were maids and their grandmothers were slaves. Thus, women of color spent their lives raising white children, instead of their own. You could see the pain through their expressionless face. They were taught to show no emotion—which serves as a representation that during that era people of color were viewed as inhuman. They did all the housework (e.g., cooking, cleaning,

The representation of TV fatherhood has transformed largely in recent decades. Father figures on TV have undergone a wide social transition, whereby earlier portrayals of fathers were idealized as strong, revered characters that acted as the disciplinarians. However, due to factors such as the rise of feminism and the World Wars, audiences began changing their stances, expectations, and attitudes toward father figures. This gave way to new family shows that reflected this change in society. The authority of father figures on TV in the 1980s began to be ridiculed, and shifted from a know-it-all to a clueless individual. An example of this would be Everybody Loves Raymond. Shows also emerged where there were dual-income parents as well as stay-at-home fathers. This was a drastic change from the 1950's dad who worked a steady job, lived in a middle-class suburban bubble, and whose wife was a picture-perfect stay at home mom.

Today, society largely misunderstands fatherhood. In most television shows, the mom solves the problem and the dad acts silly. Society sees women as its leaders and therefore men have no responsibilities. With feminism as the reigning authority, patriarchy is left in the dust. As a result, many fathers do their job poorly or leave the family. The world has forgotten the role of a father-leader, protector, and provider for the home.

Looking back over centuries of children’s films, there are many in which the father is completely absent. For instance, Bambi, Cinderella, Frozen, Ratatouille and The Little Mermaid, are some examples of Disney movies with fathers who either play very minor roles or have less than desirable traits for a father. There is truly a stereotype in action throughout the world, which holds that mothers are more kind, selfless, caring, warm, and directly involved in their children’s lives. On the other hand, men are often considered to be a little more distant, and are often expected to be the primary disciplinarian of a home. While this is certainly not always the case, it’s true that many children’s movies present characters that promote those stereotypes.

Breedlove’s and Mrs. MacTeer’s practices of mothering serves to further emphasize Mrs. Breedlove’s obsession with whiteness,…Henderson describes two theoretical perspectives on mothering in her essay, ‘Pathways to Fracture: African American Mothers and the Complexities of Maternal Absence.’ The first, termed the biological imperative, aligns most with Mrs. MacTeer. This perspective argues that, for some women, there is an ‘instinctive (innate) desire to mother above all else’ (30)….We see examples of this when Mrs. MacTeer takes Pecola into her home to save Pecola from her own