A `Herstory' of Private Life in the 1950s HOMEWARD BOUND American Families in the Cold War Era by Elaine Tyler May (Basic Books: $20.95; 284 pp.; illustrated; 0-465-03054-8) Home Edition

• Published in: The Los Angeles times
• Main Author: Perin, Constance
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, Calif Los Angeles Times Communications LLC 12.03.1989
• ISSN: 0458-3035

Why were Americans of the 1950s so deeply immersed in domesticities: having large families, enjoying suburban havens, being ideal mothers and fathers, and, not least, crystallizing gender as breadwinners and homemakers? In "Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era," Elaine Tyler May proposes that our foreign policy of "containment" of the Soviet sphere of influence had its domestic analogue in an ideology of domestic "containment." This "familial ideology" was a culmination, May claims, of an enduring sexism that "withered" incipient alternatives to women's traditional gender roles. Women's suffrage, the sexual openness of the 1920s, marital partnerships that kept families afloat in the 1930s, the abrupt rise of women in the paid workforce during the '40s war effort-all such historic potentialities for a "radical restructuring" of the family and the workplace were lost in the 1950s. The sexual politics of the '50s were particularly ugly, not least because they went unchallenged. In those of the McCarthy era, from "the Senate to the FBI, from anti-communists in Hollywood to Mickey Spillane, moral weakness was associated with sexual degeneracy, which allegedly led to communism. To avoid dire consequences, men as well as women had to contain their sexuality in marriage where masculine men would be in control with sexually submissive competent homemakers at their side. Strong families required two essential ingredients: sexual restraint outside marriage and traditional gender roles in marriage."