Ron Milam

Empire, War and Revolution

Dr. Bob Buzzanco

April 19, 2000

May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound, New York: Basic Books. 208 pgs. Plus Appendices of Kelly Longitudinal Study Questionnaire, notes and index.

Elaine Tyler May has written a provocative and thoroughly enjoyable chronicle of family life, with considerable emphasis on the women’s role, pertaining to the 1950’s through the 1970’s, or in historical context, during the Cold War period. This social history relies empirically on the Kelley Longitudinal Survey, which consists of many surveys conducted in the 30’s, then followed with additional questions of the same respondents during the war years, and ending with a detailed follow-up in 1955. Supplementing these studies is a reliance on popular culture indicators such as newspapers and magazines, and thorough discussions of movies. The well-known Kinsey report is also used in support of the Kelley studies and, in general, corresponds in most cases with the Kelley study.

The main thesis of May’s book is that the American family, with its working father, homemaker mother and three children, with a three-bedroom house and two cars in the suburbs was a result of the aftermath of World War II, and was influenced

dramatically by the U.S. government, and that this home provided the shelter and protection, both physically and psychologically from the Cold War. Furthermore, many of the problems of the 60’s, the “baby boomer” generation, can be directly attributed to this period; looking retrospectively on this time, one could have seen the symptoms of the various problems that occurred such as higher divorce rates, drug use and higher unwanted pregnancy rates.

May discusses at length the role of women during the war, and the change that came about when women gave up the workplace to raise children and run the home. She quotes J. Edgar Hoover as saying in an article on motherhood that “There must be no absenteeism among mothers…Her patriotic duty is not on the factory front. It is on the home front.”1 (In retrospect, the thought of J. Edgar Hoover writing this article in Woman’s Home Companion is intriguing. Perhaps he was given a year’s wardrobe of dresses as payment!) And for women who had taken a man’s place in the factories of America to help produce war materials, this change was accepted, but not necessarily with great enthusiasm. In fact, it was generally considered unpatriotic for women to continue to work, because for every job held by a woman, that was one less man that could find his place in the work force. While a burgeoning economy ultimately allowed women to work without causing male job displacement, the idea of the workingwoman had already declined in acceptance, and her role was already established as the homemaker.

Women took to this role with great vigor, and coupled with the improvement in home ownership opportunities with veterans’ loans and expansions into suburbia, women engineered the movement to a consumer driven society, according to May and her Kelley studies. The desire to own “stuff”, which included electronics, appliances, furniture and cars, was all-new to the American way of life. With the boom in television and advertising, buying for the home became the most important aspect of one’s life and May argues that the home and all it’s glories gave the family the feeling of being protected from the outside world. As the Cold War heated up, families became self-centered and affluent, and women relished their important new roles as homemakers.

Against this backdrop of consumerism was the growing “menace” of Communism, and its perceived discordance with the family values that were beginning to take shape in America. Russia had matched the U.S. in the A-bomb, the H-bomb, and Mao and North Korea had won a standoff in Korea. Russia was allegedly ahead in the space race with the launching of Sputnik I & II, and Nixon and Khrushchev met in their famous “Kitchen Debate” in Moscow. May devotes a great deal of discussion to this incident, as Nixon bragged on the “consumer gap” that had widened in the U.S.’s favor. While Khrushchev argued that none of the appliances that Nixon bragged on were necessary, Nixon extolled the virtues of “making life easier for our housewives.”2

The entire discussion of consumerism centered on the metaphor of a race. Nixon said:

“There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the

development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space; there

may be some instances in which we are ahead of you – in color television, for instance.” Not to be outdone, Khrushchev claimed: “No, we are up with you on this too.” Nixon remarked, “We welcome this kind of competition because when we engage in it, no one loses, everyone wins.” Thus the commodity gap took precedence over the missile gap.

May sees this period as key to the change in U.S. social history, because Americans began to spend profusely, what she calls the work-to-consume ethic. The family home became the place where a man could display his success through the accumulation of consumer goods.3 And statistics bear this point out: in the 5 years after World War II, consumer spending increased 60%, but the amount spent on household furnishings and appliances rose 240 percent, while food purchases only rose 33% and clothing 20%.4 Money spent on the family was seen as moral, while personal luxury items were immoral. And for the U.S. economy, nearly the entire increase in the gross national product in the 50’s was due to increased spending on consumer durables and residential construction.5 So, Elaine Tyler May concludes that although they may have been unwitting soldiers, women who marched off to the nation’s shopping centers to equip their new homes joined the ranks of America’s Cold Warriors.6

The conclusion one can draw from May’s discussion of these issues is that Communism as the enemy of the U.S. population was an “easy sell” because if the homemaker could be convinced that the success of Communism would impact her ability to acquire consumer goods, she would become the strident anti-communist that was required to perpetuate the red scare. Thus the fear of losing the ability to acquire “stuff” kept the Cold War on the domestic front alive. While seeming simplistic, this explanation seems plausible, particularly with the advent of television and advertising and the marketing methods, which accelerated the creation of wants and desires.

Regarding the title Homeward Bound, May conveys the powerful image of the nuclear family in the nuclear age with a picture of a family in the fallout shelter on the cover. She also describes the Life magazine couple who spent their two-week honeymoon in a fallout shelter, and develops her homeward bound thesis that the couple represents the important aspects of post war America: isolation, sexually charged, cushioned by abundance, and protected against impending doom by the wonders of modern technology.7 While this image and symbolism may be powerful, she does not really develop the relationship between the nuclear bomb fear and woman’s role in the family. Several interesting items are presented regarding music and the bomb, movies and the bomb, etc., but the linkage is not very well documented. Thus the book leans much more toward a social history of women and the family as compared to a discussion of women’s role during the cold war. The book is extremely well written, and of general interest to those seeking a retrospective view of the way the consumer economy developed in America.

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NOTES

1. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound, page 64. From J. Edgar Hoover, “Mothers…Our Only Hope”, Women’s Home Companion, 1944, p. 20-21, p. 69.

2. May, 145.

3. May, 146.

4. May, 148. From U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975) p. part 1, pp. 49 and 316 – 320.

5. May, 151 from George Katona, The Mass Consumption Society, pp. 14-15. New York: Mc Graw Hill.

6. May, p 150.

7. May, p. ix