No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its
human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment
is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to
our social order.1
Before entering the Second World War, the United States had been battling the Great Depression for the better part of a decade. The unpredictability of jobs, food, and the general way of life plagued American society. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States during the bulk of the Great Depression and World War II, created a set of policy reforms collectively referred to as the “New Deal” to help Americans rebound from the losses that the Great Depression brought. As historian Jenny Lumeng argued, “FDR’s vision indeed shaped America. His ‘New Deal’ that merged economic and social policy is entrenched now in Americans’ expectations of government responsibilities.”2 These policies ranged from the Civilian Conservation Corps, which facilitated the betterment of National Parks, to housing initiatives, such as the Better Housing Program. He understood that the way to combat unemployment and loss of morale was through the creation of jobs and opportunities for the American people. The logic behind this approach was that if Americans felt that they were actively contributing to the betterment of their country in a time where suffering was universal, how could morale be low?
The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, marked the entry of the United States into World War II, transforming a fragmented nation in economic recession into one unified and mobilized for war. Arguably, World War II saved the United States from additional years of the Great Depression and reignited their patriotism.
With widespread panic and uncertainty on the rise, the one aspect of American life thought to be essential to the nation’s survival was the idea of the “democratic family.” This family embodied the image the United States was trying to maintain for its citizens. The democratic family, as defined by historian Sonya Michel, included a mother who expressed traditional femininity through providing for her family within the home:
In this system of meaning, the family was regarded as a key link in the nation’s defenses and women were deemed essential to the family’s survival and stability. This discourse not only reinforced traditional views of women’s role but also invested the family with major political significance, thus making it more difficult for women to challenge the social division of labor without appearing to be virtually treasonous.3
Women were considered treasonous if they went against their prescribed wartime role, which indicates how much emphasis the United States placed on the democratic family. The family remained the model for families before, during, and after the war because “the connection between nation and family remained, confounding women’s attempts to redefine their roles.”4 The family also included a father, either off fighting for his country or working for the war effort at home, and children who were not supposed to come home to an empty house, ideally having their mother waiting for them with a hot supper. Eventually, during wartime, work outside of the home was added to women’s responsibilities, yet that was not meant to affect women’s work within the home. The democratic mother was supposed to find and sustain the perfect balance of working toward the war effort and, at the same time, acting as a nurturing maternal figure for her family.
Unsurprisingly, much emphasis was placed on the importance of maintaining this way of life: When a crisis arises, people control what they can. In her contribution to the collection of essays Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, historian Sonya Michel provides background knowledge on the phenomenon of the democratic family and the vital role it played in the lives of American women during the Second World War. Her research posed the question: What aspects of the democratic family were crucial to the success of the United States domestic front in World War II?
Other authors, such as William Tuttle, have written on providing childcare facilities during wartime, championing their importance to the success of the working mother. Tuttle’s analysis of wartime government plans gives a broader context to the reader of what plans were occurring at the time. In his article, “Rosie the Riveter and Her Latchkey Children,” Tuttle draws from more recent concerns in the United States about the disappearance of the nuclear family. He argues that the pressures to maintain this family model have been around for decades, and begins his analysis with the working mothers of World War II. Tuttle highlights influential figures such as “Father Edward J. Flanagan of Boys Town, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, and other defenders of the father-led family in which the mother dutifully stayed at home.”5 By referencing such influential figures in American history who expressed disapproval of working mothers, Tuttle shows how difficult it was for these women to maintain their positions with high spirits when their government could not even support them in their endeavors. Films such as It’s Your War Too provide a first-hand account of what women of the time would be viewing before entering the wartime workforce.6 They highlight what was expected of them and how to maintain their femininity and familial responsibilities during their time in the workforce.
This paper will explore the dynamics of the democratic family, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s emphasis on protecting the family model, the fears circulating the idea of the latchkey child, and the propaganda images used by the government to reiterate the stereotype of the mother’s role in the American family. It will also show the aspects of the democratic family which were deemed crucial, lay out how the democratic family provided a bridge to an ultimate return to domesticity in post-war America, and demonstrate how this Family was essential to the war effort.
Mothers at Work
In view of the urgency of the situation, enlistment in the military
service should take precedence, in my opinion, over any other
responsibilities except imperative family obligation.7
Long before World War II, women took on roles in various capacities in venues such as schools, store fronts, and factories. However, the war drastically increased the demand for female factory workers to support the war effort. Initially, President Roosevelt did not require women to leave their positions in the home to join the war effort. A government report from 1947 noted that during the war, “Women who [were] not normally in the labor market [were] drawn into factories, and as the war [was] prolonged, housewives increasingly form[ed] the backlog of war production services. All pressures upon the wage-earning women [were] intensified.”8 The national desire for women to remain in the home and maintain the role of domesticity during the Great Depression delayed their entrance into the workforce. However, the fact that so many women were already working during the Great Depression shows that they had already been asked by their families to take on the traditional role of the male breadwinner when he could not support their family. This financial pressure on women to work outside of the home to provide for their families—present in the lives of many American families during the Great Depression—transformed into a civic duty in wartime.9
General Marshall’s opening quote highlights the dual pressures of World War II womanhood: masterfully balancing obligations to their country and families. A related video clip also underscores the expectation to preserve their femininity while working traditionally male jobs. Balancing both grave responsibilities, duty to country and duty to family, was nearly impossible. The government’s need to ask female citizens to do such a strenuous task shows their desperation to win World War II. The democratic family was essential to the domestic success of the United States because it demanded that women balance their roles as mothers and contributors to the economy and war effort.
The US Government saw the employment of women as integral to winning the war, as shown through a post-war pamphlet on the effect of their factory performance and home life:
Such cumulative fatigue may show itself in illness, irritation, and general inability to carry on her job and her home duties with reasonable ease. When such a condition results, not only are the individual woman and her family affected, but the social implications are widespread and her fitness to serve the wartime needs as well as the peacetime needs of the Nation is greatly lessened.10
The language used in this pamphlet emphasizes how draining and unsustainable this way of life was for the women who lived it. Many of these women had been thrown into positions with limited training, and the work they were asked to do–building aircrafts, arms, and other mechanisms of war–required years of apprenticeships and experience before it could be mastered. Women were being asked to lead a life that was destined for burn-out and that provided unrealistic expectations for maintaining a family.
Testimonies from women who worked in the factories reveal the dread that came with being thrust into a job with little or no background knowledge. Augusta Clawson, who worked as an undercover agent for the government during the war, commented on the overall success women were having in their wartime positions in 1943:
Today was horrible. I went in expecting to conquer the world, and was thrown by a vertical weld. I’d get it smooth about eight inches up-and then let a huge bubble roll down and spoil it… My arm aches and every muscle in my hand is yelping. Isn’t it funny? Am I tired because I’m mentally discouraged? Or did I do a poor day’s work because I was tired to start with…?11
When managing a home, working a new position in which the training was insufficient, and having the pressure of supplying one’s country in the time of war all collided, female workers would be disheartened when they had difficulties in their new roles. The type of work that they were doing was also very physically different from being housewives, working out of the home, or working office jobs. The combination of physical and mental fatigue took a great toll on women working these positions.
The shifts that women were assigned to by their wartime position superiors delegated work based on the responsibilities within the home they needed to perform. According to the government pamphlet, Women’s Wartime Hours of Work, account was taken of what responsibilities the woman would have at home: if she was single, had many children, or was caring for elderly parents. These categories often dictated how and when women would work, and some were even asked to work two jobs.12
In Her War, Kathryn S. Dobie and Eleanor Lang enumerate women’s different wartime positions through a collection of testimonials written by women during the war. In a section on factory workers, they discuss how teachers were asked to work in the factories over their summer breaks to maximize their work towards the war effort. Two school teachers, Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen, observed that in 1943, “...people laughed when we announced that the aircraft industry wanted us to build bombers during summer vacation. Perhaps that was why they rolled on the floor and shrieked. ‘You build bombers!’ they howled. ‘An art teacher and an English teacher!’”13 Bowman and Allen’s work towards the war effort was crucial, and they continued their work even after being questioned if they were the right people to build such important war tools. Women like Bowman and Allen consequently had no break from their civilian jobs because of their dedication to the war effort. Their work towards the war effort was a constant reminder of how important these women were to the fate of the war and added a significant amount of pressure to their lives.
The Democratic Family
Its focus on the total community and family, on groups and
areas where the need is greatest, on the need for a network of public
and private services, and on the economic aspects of creating a better
society for children.14
A Mother’s Role
A mother’s role in the democratic family was to provide stability for her children by supporting them financially and emotionally. Roosevelt and his government were not only greatly concerned with the country’s state in the war, but also for the future of the country: its children. Pressures placed on mothers were different from those placed on fathers since men would typically be away fighting in a theater of war or working in other factory jobs that were needed during the war. They were rarely the ones in charge of taking care of the children. The democratic mother would have similar wartime work responsibilities as men, but also had a responsibility to her children and the home.
Even before the official entrance of the United States into World War II, government agencies were already discussing how best to support the democratic family in wartime. Historian Sonya Michel notes that
If democratic families had done best in the Depression, they also probably had the best chance for survival in war. Not only could the family serve as a school for democracy, it must positively be helped to do so. Family professionals attending the 1940 White House conference urged that parent education programs be extended to help bring about family relationships of a “democratic quality.”15
As reassuring as this seems—that the responsibility of the success of the Democratic Family would weigh equally on both parents—this was far from the truth in practice.
Research shows that wartime policy makers placed more emphasis on the psychological effects mothers could have on their children than they did on fathers. Michel emphasizes that experts in the United States government “believed that a mother’s presence in her child’s life was all important but doubted that every woman could determine how, or with which intensity, she should interact with her child. As disinterested professionals they could help women calibrate the amount and control of the flow of affection to their offspring.”16 The government’s overreaching into Americans’ lives is evident through this passage. Through their attempts to micromanage the mothering styles of female workers, the government created more stress in these women’s lives. Not only did women have to worry about the stressors of war and their lack of training for factory positions, but now, they also had to ensure that they were parenting with the balance of mothering of which their government would approve.
Figure 1. 7-Up advertisement for newspapers, April 1945, Hartman Center, Duke University.17
The image above is an advertisement from April 1945 which warns that “A good disposition helps to build a happy home…” and reminds mothers to “keep smiling!” (fig.1). Amid war and an environment of uncertainty, there is little doubt that the last thing on a woman’s mind was if she were smiling or not. This 7-Up advertisement, however, reminded her how important it was for her to keep up a smiling face and positive attitude for the sake of her family. Not only was the government encouraging women to uphold the psychological well-being of their families, but now soda companies were weighing in as well. Women were ceaselessly reminded of their duty to balance their roles as women and homemakers. In contrast, there was little discussion about the psychological impact on children from having an absent father.18
This control that the United States government imposed upon their female citizens is noteworthy because it suggests that the role of the mother in the democratic family was virtually impossible to execute. If a mother showed what the government specialists deemed to be too much love and affection towards her children, she was creating an unhealthy environment for them. Since she would spend a decent amount of her time working towards the war effort, she may neglect her children upon return to the home. No equilibrium was possible, and in either example, the blame was always placed on the mother.
Childcare Facilities
Along with her responsibilities towards her family, the democratic mother also had to ensure that there would be adequate childcare if she were not going to be home when they were done with school, or if she would typically be at home with the children but was called to work for the war effort. Testimonies from female factory workers show how difficult it could be to balance wartime work with finding sufficient childcare. Dobie and Lang document a situation from the 1943 diary of Augusta Clawson when she worked in a shipyard in Oregon evaluating the effectiveness of women’s training for their wartime positions:
Two trainees hire a woman to come in and take care of their youngsters for two dollars a day. Shortly asked, ‘Why don’t you take them to the nursery for a dollar?’ One mother replied: ‘But the nursery opens at seven, and I have to leave at six. How am I gonna get ‘em there? That nursery’s no good to any shift. Its hours are all wrong. It ought to be open twenty-four hours.’19
These women were actively working towards the war effort without sufficient childcare to meet their wartime requirements.
How can the government not provide childcare that meets the work hour requirements that they have set for these female workers? The image on the next page depicts a cartoonist’s interpretation of workers who were mothers and their lack of childcare.
Figure 2. Bob Barnes, “And then in my spare time,” 1943. 20
Cartoonist Bob Barnes depicts the wartime “superwoman,” dubbed so by Melissa McEuen (fig. 2):
Among the most closely watched women were those who had not typically worked outside their homes, in particular middle-class mothers…The wartime “superwoman” belied the fact that American society, despite the current emergency, would not budge on its expectations for working mothers to fulfill needs all around–to their families, to their communities, and to the nation.21
These pressures were universal among women working towards the war effort, but as described above, certain populations were at a higher risk of scrutiny than others. The image of the woman happily welding a ship together while caring for her gaggle of children is a striking image of what the United States thought was realistic to ask of their mothering citizens.
The emphasis from President Roosevelt had always been on the survival of the democratic family through the care of children. He argued in 1940:
A succession of world events has shown us that our democracy must be strengthened at every point of strain or weakness. All Americans want this country to be a place where children can live in safety and grow in understanding of the part they are going to play in the future of our American nation.22
This feature of the democratic family, the preservation of the next generation of Americans, was vital to the success of the United States during the war because the hope for the future came through the children. They would be the ones who would rebuild society in the postwar era, and it was of the utmost importance that they were cared for in the correct way. The pressure, therefore, was placed on the role of the mother in the lives of these children, since she would be taken as the traditional caregiver.
The childcare facilities mentioned were not necessarily the most helpful for many working mothers of the time; regardless, they were implemented with the intent to assist women working towards the war effort. This assistance ended, however, after the victory over Japan. As Sonya Michel states, the government deemed the childcare facilities only a necessity of war, and since the war had ended, these facilities became obsolete.23 Those women who had entered the workforce when their country needed them most were suddenly also expected to go back to full time roles as caregivers. According to the Department of Defense, The War Production Board lasted until October of 1945, which was only a month after Victory over Japan Day.24
While this turnaround might seem quick, there was still a transitional period in the postwar era for the return of wartime factories transitioning back into their civilian capacities. The men who used to work in these factories were coming back from war, or they had died during battle. The need for women workers did not end with victory, and these female workers still needed care for their young children. This characteristic of the democratic family, the ability for these women to somehow juggle the responsibilities of motherhood and play the role of Rosie the Riveter, was crucial to the successful preservation of the family model in World War II. Life was destined to return to what had previously been the norm before the Great Depression, and there was no haste in hurrying along this process. It was as if the government had suddenly forgotten about its female workforce in the wake of celebration at the end of the war.
The Latchkey Child
The sacrifices that women workers had to make to the war effort resulted from their imperative family obligations. It was easier for some than for others to make this sacrifice, and if children were able to care for themselves at home while their parents were at work, they often did. Paradoxically, the government feared the prospect of latchkey children, yet made no policy provisions for ensuring that children were cared for while their mothers were at work. According to the American Psychological Association, latchkey children were “children who return after school to a home that is without adult supervision because their parents or caregivers work.”25 Frequently, a mother or father would be able to schedule the hours they worked so they could manage both work outside the home and care for children.26 This, however, was not always the case, and there were instances where children would arrive home to an empty house.
As stated in Anderson’s 1947 assessment, Women’s Wartime Hours of Work, “The school child able to take care of his own physical needs was the child sometimes left without anyone in the home to guide him when he came home from school.”27 Although this child would be old enough to fix themself dinner or to even start on some chores, the overall fear about this prospect came from the lack of guidance that this child would suffer. Without a maternal guiding presence when the child arrived home from school, the fear was that they could face emotional and psychological neglect. This child would, in the eyes of the United States government, suffer at the hands of their mother’s dedication to the war effort.
The situation of the latchkey child posed a threat to the idealized image of the democratic family, especially in the case of the mother. Michel argues that “Because the dominant discourse linked the family, nurtured by a full-time mother, to democracy, most Americans simply yearned more avidly for the time when the war would end and women would be returned to their proper place.”28 This sentiment explains the swift closures of childcare facilities after the United States victory over Japan. The desire for a faster return to normalcy blinded policymakers to the ongoing need that American women had for childcare facilities and emphasized the need to eliminate the specter of the latchkey child as soon as possible. Sonya Michel reports that, “Although reports of mishaps or tragedies befalling ‘latchkey children’ periodically scandalized the public, they did not lead to widespread demands for more and better daycare, but instead fed prophecies of family disintegration.”29 Instead of providing for their female citizens who had halted their lives in order to contribute to their country, the government shoved them back into the home without time to transition out of their wartime positions. Many policymakers believed that this reinstatement of the democratic family was central to the United States returning to peacetime.
Contrasting Impacts on Female Advancement
The task of working towards the war effort was not only imposed on mothers during the war. This duty also extended to what the government viewed as the next generation of democratic mothers. All American youth were called to support their country in its time of need. Many young Americans left school to support the war effort, whether by working or fighting. While scholars have extensively documented men’s educational sacrifices, Taylor Jaworski notes a lack of research on the impact of this sacrifice on young women. Jaworski compares studies done on male students who went on to college after their service or after the war with “the sharp decrease in high school completion rates for women,” as well as noting the absence of studies on the “potential adverse effects on education, work, and family formation.”30 Women who might have received a high school diploma or college education were robbed of their opportunity to make a successful life for themselves through their education.
It also pigeon-holed women into a life where they would have to play their role for the democratic family because they had no other options due to a lack of education. By the time the war had ended, women found it difficult or nearly impossible to go back to school, especially if they had started a family. Jaworski continues, stating how many of the jobs that these women took during the war did not require a traditional education; rather, they were trained in jobs that were more factory oriented. She argues that “the experience [women] gained during the war came at the expense of education that would have increased wages in clerical, sales, and professional sectors, where female employment increasingly concentrated in the post war period.”31 As previously stated, men were also affected by their wartime responsibilities. However, if they wished to return to school, they still would not have the same familial responsibilities as female workers. It would be much more feasible for a man to continue his education in comparison with a woman of the postwar era. These women were stunted in their opportunities because of their duty to their country and were ultimately stuck in their role in the democratic family.
In the postwar era, the introduction of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I Bill, offered educational opportunities to male veterans alone. With this act, many male students in universities were veterans, and the rise in levels of education among their community changed marriage patterns in the United States based on education. Researchers from the Population Association of America explain how their “findings add to the mounting evidence that individuals’ education investments have important spillover effects and that the well-documented association between education and other measures of well-being are not simply an artifact of cross-sectional variation in innate characteristics.”33 Their research explains that educated veterans were more likely to marry women who had similar educational backgrounds. The G.I. Bill made it possible for many men to receive an education that they would not have had, if not for their service to their country. This act did not extend to female wartime workers, many of whom left school to support the war. Thus, these women were not only being cheated out of an education, but now their marriage prospects were increasingly shrinking because of their lack of education. This phenomenon was an unexpected consequence of the attempts to move mothers out of the workforce.
Propaganda and Image
My Heart’s Overseas, but my Hands are on the Job! 34
As well as their service to the country during World War II, the democratic mother was also supposed to be the perfect image of femininity and domesticity. Historian Melissa McEuen discusses in Making War, Making Women how women were expected to present themselves during the war. Her chapters have titles such as, “Tender Hands and Average Legs: Shaping Desperate Extremities,” which highlights the emphasis placed on female worker’s bodies, and “Sacrifice and Agreeability: Cultivating Right Minds,” which explained the pressures placed on female workers to work towards the war effort without compensation. Women, it was urged, should work for the love of their country.35 Once again, the image of the working female was equated with the responsibility of the success of the United States home front. As Melissa McEuen states, “Female bodies would require extra care in order to maintain the high spirits demanded of them in the sociopolitical culture of the early war years. Declining morale suggested the possibility of home front problems that could rapidly transcend one individual or family to affect the nation as a whole.”36 Women were not only meant to be workhorses during the war, but were also positioned as figures of beauty. Just as policymakers were concerned with the psychological effects a mother could have on her children; they were also concerned with the lack of morale that could come from a woman losing her femininity.
McEuen highlights how women’s bodies were idealized to inspire contributions to the war effort:
They could ensure their political status as objects worth fighting for, thus providing the personal edge they needed to maintain satisfying intimate lives “for the duration” and into the postwar years. Military service personnel, blue-collar wage earners, pink-collar workers, and homemakers saw their hands and legs inextricably linked with both public and private victory.37
If women showed signs of strain from their work, they were perceived as a threat to national morale. For centuries women have been lionized as symbols of beauty; soldiers needed assurance that they were fighting to protect an idealized home front and a beautifully intact woman. “Intact” meant that women should not show the wear and tear on their bodies and minds from working towards the war effort.
Soldiers were seeing mass destruction daily, and when images of the United States homefront came in, those at home needed to present a country worth defending, one filled with beautiful women. This sentiment was not unique to the United States, however. In a review of Sonya Rose’s book Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain, 1939-1945, Professor Kelly Boyd summarizes Rose’s argument, that “for a woman to be a good citizen required not only being a good mother and serving the nation--as, say a factory worker--but also maintaining a particular kind of sexualized identity in order to keep up the morale of British men.”38 The pressures facing American women were shared with their fellow women in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.
Government propaganda during the war depicts the visual pressure women suffered. Historian William Tuttle analyzes the fixation on women’s hands when he uses a comment from a writer on Rosie the Riveter: “‘The hand that holds the pneumatic riveter cannot rock the cradle--at the same time.’”39 Again, the dichotomy of the roles of working woman and mother are pitted against each other because one is bound to take over the other. McEuen points to an advertisement that focused on women’s hands:
Hands worked, yes, but they also functioned as time fillers, body parts to be kept occupied in worthy pursuits while men were away in training camps or overseas on the battlefronts. A Eureka Vacuum Cleaner advertisement featured a woman who claimed, “My heart’s Overseas but my Hands Are on the Job,” echoing the mythic trope of busy hands keeping temptation at bay.40
This fear that women would become idle without the supervision of men concerned experts throughout the war, and the propaganda issued, both by the government and by businesses like the Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company, reflects these fears. Pictured below is the advertisement mentioned above.
Figure 3. My heart’s overseas but my hands are on the job, 1943, The Saturday Evening Post.41
The image of the women above is reflective of the ideal woman worker: neatly done hair, clean uniform, and working, not idle, hands (fig. 3). This advertisement was displayed in a 1943 edition of The Saturday Evening Post that American women would have read. McEuen debunks the assumption that all women had previously only worked within the home or in jobs that were not physically demanding: “Mainstream media promoted the idea that women had rarely performed jobs outside the home that could compromise their hands, even though hundreds of thousands had previously worked in agriculture, textile mills, and other places where their hands were soiled regularly or damaged permanently.”42 McEuen’s claim supports the fact that women have always been part of the workforce, but during times of war, their images were fetishized to meet the needs of the male gaze. While the advertisement above depicts women avidly working towards the war effort, propaganda also warned about the dangers of women who refused to work for the war effort.
McEuen notes that the United States government targeted women who did not contribute to the war effort as responsible for undermining their country. She quotes one government official as saying, “Women who psychologically hold themselves aloof from war work or feel superior to it are unconsciously leading themselves to the Nazi propaganda machine.”43 This tactic of fear-mongering pressured women into the workforce through guilt, as evidenced in a World War II flier entitled “If Hitler Came to Mobile,” pictured on the next page.
Figure 4. WWII Flyer, War Manpower Commission.44
This flier shows the fear that the government, specifically the War Manpower Commission, attempted to place in the minds of female workers (fig. 4). The democratic mother would be responsible for not only caring for her family and working towards the war effort, but according to the pamphlet above, she would also be responsible for ensuring that her fellow woman was also actively working towards the war effort. The pamphlet presents women’s work as preventing Hitler from coming to the United States and urges women to share that burden with other women.
Along with the overarching responsibility of preventing the Nazi invasion of the United States, the democratic mother still had to worry about putting food on the table for her family. Propaganda addressed this in exhortations to women to provide food for their families at a time of scarcity. The poster below encourages a woman to take stock of what she has to feed her family and to make sure that she preserves food (fig. 5). The act of canning food ensures that she has enough sustenance for her family and that she is not wasting any precious food during wartime. Canning is a tedious yet rewarding process that preserves fresh produce.
The mother and child depicted in the poster exemplify what the government envisioned the average American family to be, and how they wanted to portray it. Their cheeks are full and pigmented, their hair is neatly tied back, and in donning their aprons, they are able to show off their bounty of canned goods behind them. This advertisement acknowledges the important role that the mother plays in feeding her family, however, it neglects to acknowledge the pressures put on the working mother of World War II.
Figure 5. Hélène Dantec-Lowry, Grown Your Own, Can Your Own,
Transatlantica 2.45
Figure 6. Hélène Dantec-Lowry, The Authentic Victory Cook Book.46
The idea of food propaganda was so widespread that Victory Cookbooks were created to supply working mothers with recipes that reflected rationing and goods that could be readily available in the time of war. Pictured above is an example (fig. 6). The cookbook pictured specializes in canning, as it was an effective measure to preserve foods, especially fresh vegetables, during wartime. As unhelpful as the government was in providing adequate childcare for working mothers, these cookbooks seemed to make the lives of these women easier, at least in the kitchen. Researchers note that:
Women were charged with cooking nutritious and balanced meals for their families at a time when the government was worried about the poor diet of most people after the Great Depression, including American soldiers…Cook books thus generally assumed that the proper role of wartime women was homemaking, even though some of them temporarily participated in the labor force.47
Wartime meals were crucial to the maintenance of the family structure because they solidified the roles everyone had to play. The mother would prepare the meal, the father would likely be the financial provider of the meal, although this was not always the case in wartime, and the children would sit happily around the table.
Other forms of propaganda aimed at female laborers came through film. An example of this is the Women’s Army Corps film, It’s Your War, Too.48 In this film, American women are called to fight for their country through domestic service and are shown what life in these roles can lead to. Women’s jobs throughout the war were highlighted, such as airplane mechanics, teachers of soldiers, and testers of machines such as the telegraph. Throughout the film, aspects of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) are shown to debunk the idea that women’s work towards the war effort offered no enjoyment, or that women would turn into war machines and lose their femininity.
The film discusses different hairstyles that women can wear, various recreational activities available on the military bases on which they might work, and how women can expect to maintain their femininity through their work in the war. McEuen’s discussion of the United States government’s fixation on the hands and legs of American women during World War II is relevant here. In It’s Your War Too, at three minutes and fifty-three seconds, the camera focuses on a woman’s leg as she is putting on a stocking. In the context of the film, this portrays how women can wear whichever type of stocking they please; however, it also points to the continuing sexualization of women, even as they take on men’s jobs.
Conclusion
Working women were at the core of the success of the United States in World War II. Arguably, if it had not been for their service and sacrifice, there would have been no chance of the United States and the Allies winning the war. It was thought that since these women had been trained in wartime positions that could easily translate into civilian peacetime positions, there could be a larger female representation in these fields.49 If there was a whole new population of skilled workers, why would the American labor market not welcome them?
This was not the case. As Jim Rose discusses concerning women workers in Pennsylvania: “The male workforce and the local unions conspired with management in its efforts to rid the mills of women when the war ended. The State of Pennsylvania, through its industrial board and Bureau of Women and Children in the Dept. of Labor and Industry, also influenced the view that women did not belong in the steel mills.”50 This decision, as well as many others like it around the country, sought to push women back into their pre-war, pre-Great Depression roles and pull them out of factories. Despite their immense sacrifices and contributions, these women were shunned from the jobs they had mastered during wartime. One of the most important aspects of the democratic family was its hopeful expiration date: there would be a time where this family model of the working mother would come to an end. With the end of World War II in sight, the women who had put their lives and aspirations on hold to save their country were thanked for their service and handed an apron.
