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Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era Review

Elaine Tyler May's text "Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era", remains a classic in American Studies-and example of relevant, clear, well-written scholarship utilizing a variety of data to make a interesting and important case. This is not to say that the work has no weaknesses, but it remains in many ways an enduring, if somewhat superceded landmark in American cultural studies.
Tyler May's central thesis of the book is that the foreign policy of the "containment" of communism, summarized and popularized by Secretary John Foster Dulles, paralleled the rise of a domestic politics of containment, where the home space became a way to contain the economic, sexual, and social desires of both women and men. Moreover, the construction of this home space necessitated the casting of gender, sexual, and social roles in rigorous, socially compulsory terms that effectively marginalized many people from ethnic, sexual, and ideological minorities. These roles, constructed through the politics of domestic containment, were held in majority American culture to be necessary to the social survival and maintenance of capitalism in the Cold War struggle against the Soviets. Women in particular, are focused on, as the strong, independent, single role models of the 1930's gave way to increased imagery of the married, safely domesticated woman, who were under heavy societal pressure to give birth and raise children. Men too were constrained by corporate superiors, and looked to home as the one place they could exercise full influence over their wives and children. Not everyone, of course, was happy with this.
A number of surprising arguments are made and defended in this book as sub-theses to the greater point. Birth control achieved social acceptance quickly during this time, albeit "contained" in such a way as to officially promote family expansion and lower the marriage age. Fulfilled eroticism, albeit only in marriage, becomes a central point of majority discourse, to the point that women were counseled to pour more energy into their mates' fulfillment, sexual and otherwise, than the children of the household. (this is not to say those actual sexual attitudes and practices always reflected these images, as she points out on pg. 102) The Cold War demanded that the excesses of capitalism (in promoting huge differentials between rich and poor) had to be checked, lest communism breed and flourish in the nation's slums (147). Fewer African-American women went to college than white, but more of them graduated proportionately. May even shows that the so-called Baby Boom didn't start after the war, but rather in the early part of WWII, thus dispelling the common notion peace and affluence alone created the baby boom (these conditions also existed after WWI, but with no population boom.)
Another excellent aspect of this study, besides nuancing the role of the Cold War, is the inclusion and careful use of quantitative data, the Kelly Longitudinal Studies---these were surveys taken among housewives and husbands (white ones, to be sure) and they reveal a wealth of data. Rather than painting a picture of comfortable domesticity, these surveys reflect a great deal of dissatisfaction among women (and men) coping with these rigid gender roles. Women who worked in industry during the war had mixed feelings at best being relegated back to the home. Sexuality, motherhood, all of these things proved ultimately unfulfilling for many women in the surveys, causing guilt and resentment in the supposedly "placid" generation.
Tyler May leaves important parties out of her study. Black women, for example, are discussed rarely, and the labor and civil rights movements (which start in the 1950's, not the 60's) are not part of this story. Subsequent scholarship ("Not June Cleaver", "Tupperware") has demonstrated that even in this time, women created counternarratives to compulsory domesticity, that allowed many to ameliorate and contest, if not wholly counter, these discourses. But what Tyler May demonstrates is that these majority discourses of political and domestic containment maintained a definitive hegemony over the public discussions of the day, and held wide sway in the larger culture. Especially through media representations of that time period, these operative models of domestic containment and placidness tend to guide, somewhat incorrectly, popular collective memories of that time period. This fact only serves to further underscore their continued influence.
Christopher W. Chase - PhD Fellow, Michigan State Univ.

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