The late 1950s into the early 1960s was supposedly a halcyon time in American history. But was it? The war was over and men returned home to take back the jobs women had done in their absence. As a result, women were pushed into more subservient roles. What influences do you think played a part in encouraging women to accept their place as only in the home? And why, in today’s world, when women are in the workforce in record numbers, are they still doing most of the housework and child-raising in your opinion?
I think the men hadn’t been gone long enough for opinions about gender roles to have changed much in the interim, Once the crisis was over, most Americans resumed their roles.
And when you think about it, women have largely been responsible for raising children and keeping the house for most of human history. This made sense until the last couple of hundred years, since most “jobs” were physically demanding. Now that they’re not, women are making inroads - but they’re still swimming upstream against the current of tradition, so it’s not surprising to me that things aren’t changing quickly. And then every now & then you run into someon who wants to return us to the 1950s, negating a lot of the progress women have made outside their homes.
I believe that the women went back to roles expected of them because they knew the men needed jobs to support the family. This was ingrained in them.
Some may have wanted to go back to taking care of the kids and the house. They were basically a single parent during that time and they were exhausted.
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I think part of the reason has been that a man’s income has been likely to provide better financial support for a family. In more recent years, women’s income is a somewhat higher percentage of men’s, but it probably was about half of a man’s income in the 1950s and 1960s. When I was growing up then, for the exact same job it was often accepted that a man would be paid more. This was supposedly justified by referring to the man as the family breadwinner although women were family breadwinners in many situations. So, women focused on the family and if they worked outside the home, they often worked around husband’s schedules carefully balancing childcare needs. I do see changes today in some families, with husbands and wives more equally sharing outside work and child raising responsibilities more than in the past. I think this comes with working towards equal wages and good childcare availability. (Most people don’t have a “Harriet” in their lives!)
I agree with the other comments plus think the service members returning to home were so glad to be getting home and the women at home had postponed marriage or having children for so long that all they wanted was to get married/ start or increase the family.
I think Americans were happy in a good job market, many families could afford to purchase a house, maybe buy a car and do it with only one person working. As families grew , many women realized staying home with babies and young kids was difficult, especially if they didn’t have a car. They missed the company of other women and especially before reliable birth control, found themselves pregnant when they didn’t want to be. When Betty Friedan wrote “The Feminine Mystique “ it resonated with so many women and brought so much into the open.Reliable, available birth control has changed the world!