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Students: Christine Manich Bech, Charlotte Haun, Tiffany Fiil, Katrine Bonnerup, Sofie Engelbrecht
Subjects:
- Babyboom: Katrine Bonnerup
- Dr. Spock: Charlotte Haun
- Gender roles: Tiffany
- Role of the medias: Sofie
- Desperate housewives (Crittie)
Baby Boom (Katrine Bonnerup):
The Baby Boom is a name for the massive growth in births in the period 1946-1964. It was not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world. During the Great depression people had economical issues and the unemployment rate was high. This created a nervosity due to the views of an insecure future. This resulted in few marriages and few births.
Economocial situation after the second world war:
The gross domestic product began to increase after the second world war. In 1950 the gross domestic product had increased three times it’s value in 1930. America controlled more than 40 % of the worlds wealth. The economical prosperity resulted in “the babyboom”.
GI Bill of Rights:
The GI Bill of Right
s also called the Servicemen’s Readjustmen Act was signed into law in 1944. The law was meant to help war veterans and it allocated 13 billion dollars that were used on getting the soldiers home, pay for higher education, vocational training, medical treatment, unemployment insurance and loans for building new houses. This gave a possibility for them to return home and establish a family.
The Babyboomers represent 29 % of the population in U.S. The GI Bill of rights and the economical prosperity in general made people consider the future as bright and with possibilities. The American dream was awoken.
The influence of the baby boomers:
The huge population increase has affected the American society over time. In the 1950’s the manufactures of baby products had a huge profit due to the high demand from the families, who demanded food, furnitures, toys and so on. There was also a high demand for better living conditions. Many moved to the suburbs, had a car and there was a huge number of new positions in the institutional sector for example in teaching, health security and daycare. The baby boomers contributed approximately 20 billion dollars to the U.S economy every year.
The baby boom and the high birth rate also contributed to start the conflict about the traditional youth culture. The high number of teenagers lead to much focus and concerns on how the teenagers acted. The youth culture changed, which is shown in the new kin of music and also in statistics that show that the age of marriage had dropped. It meant that teenagers began to date earlier. The baby boom contributed to the generation gap and the beginning of a new living structure.
Sources:
http://www.enotes.com/1950-lifestyles-social-trends-american-decades/baby-boom
http://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/baby-boom/
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104575.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468301956.html
Dr Spock (Charlotte):
Benjamin Spock has had a great impact on our lives without us even knowing it. In 1946 he published the revolutionary book “Baby and Child Care”, which turned the art of parenting upside down. Before the book was released, parents were advised to teach their children discipline and respect for authority. Everything from bedtime to dinner was on a tight schedule. Children were to be seen, but not heard. However, Spock wanted to change this conservative way of parenting. According to him parents should nurture their baby or child based on demand and not on a schedule. They should basically “trust their common sense” as he said. Dr Spock believed that a child would be better prepared for the future if its childhood was full of affection and love from its parents.
Over decades Spock kept changing his book, and one of the larger alterations was in the fourth edition from 1976. In this edition he acknowledged that the father’s role in parenting should be as great as the mother’s. Radical and unconservative thoughts like this mark his books. This is also the reason why, in spite of many followers, many others resented Dr Spock’s books. However, when the book was released in the beginning of the post-war baby boom, it was an instant hit. The success continued in the 50s and 60s, and Dr Spock therefore had a huge influence on parenting in this period. Since its release in 1946 the book has sold over 50 million copies in 49 languages.
If Dr Spock had not revolutionized the art of parenting, one could not say if parenting still would have been based on love and care. A kiss, a hug or just a listening ear from your parents can perhaps be a result of the book “Baby and Child Care” by Benjamin Spock.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0502.html
http://www.legacy.com/ns/news-story.aspx?t=dr-spock-childcare-and-controversy&id=784
http://scienceblog.com/community/older/2003/A/20035828.html
Desperate Housewives (Crittie):
In the 1950’s the role of the women was to stay home as so called housewife. The idéa that women was homemakers, that had to stay home raising their families, was very influential in 1950’s USA, even though the number of women at work continued to rise after world war 2. Female workers were viewed with suspicious eyes by the majority of the population and newspapers and magazines encouraged women to return to their homes to become housewifes.
There was even popular tv-shows that had the same message, like for example “Father Knows Best”. In these tv-shows there were shown happy, well-functioning families with a stay-at-home mom who took care of the family.
In the literature it could also be seen that the career-women had triggered a reaction, fx by the book “Modern Women: The Lost Sex” by Maryinia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundgren. This book was very influential in the 1950’s and it claimed that many of the societies problems, like alcoholism, hologinalism and even war, was the consequences of women leaving home. The authors tried with the book to convince female workers to return home, because they believed that taking care of children was the sole basis of a healthy womanhood.
The suburbs were developed in the 1950’s and this was the perfect place for a middleclass-family with a stay-at-home mom. The houses were larger than in the cities and every morning the man could drive to town in his car while his wife stayed home preparing delicious food and cleaning the house. It was a picture-perfect society, where it was important that everything on the surface looked good. That can be seen by the photos from the period, where the housewifes, even though they were just staying home all day, was wearing nice clothes and jewellery.
In the 1960’s the women had had enough of their dreary life and so they joined the National Organisation for Women (NOW)
Sources:
http://www.learnhistory.org.uk/usa/women1950s.htm
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=paq.016.0573a
http://www.enotes.com/1950-lifestyles-social-trends-american-decades/womens-roles
Gender roles (Tiffany):
In the 1950’s there was a huge difference when it came to gender roles in the family. Men and women had a totally different responsibility. The women stayed at home and looked after the children, cleaned the house and cooked. The men went to work, to earn money for the family. People looked at it as a very negative thing if the men had to stay home to watch the children, and the women went to work. Also in the 1950’s divorce was a total no go. It wasn’t a very common thing. When couples got married, they stayed married even though they might have been miserable. Also if the women chose to get a divorce, they would have nowhere to go. It was hard to get a job which could give them enough money to take care of themselves and their children. So it was the economic reasons that made women stay married.
Sources:
http://genderroles1950.blogspot.dk/
http://genderroles1950.blogspot.dk/2008/12/divorce-in-1950.html
Role of the media (Sofie):
The 50’s are also known as “The Golden Age of Television”, because of the fast rising numbers of televisions in the US. In 1953 50% of households in the US had television sets.
The 1950’s developed differently than the previous decades, in which the media played a big role. Television became more normal in the everyday family life. It became a nightly ritual for a family to watch television. Television became the main media for entertainment and radio was by the end of the decade only given to popular music, news, and sports programming.
It became a trend for young people to watch television, and the numbers of hours teenagers watched television increased steadily during the decade.
People began to accept what was shown on television as normal, because they began to be “eyewitness”. Even though the ideal family, school, neighborhood, world and so on, which was shown on television only had partial basis in reality. The news changed from newsmen reading news out loud to videotaped pictures of events, which had happened anywhere in the world. Also advertisers began to take advantage of this new media.
The television also became an educational media for children with introductions or as alternative to attending preschool for children. Among the educational television shows was “Ding Dong School”.
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade50.html
http://answers.encyclopedia.com/question/some-facts-history-1950-141418.html
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