From Baby Boom to Population Bomb: The American Family in the Cold War 11.7.23

• HIS 379 The Family in America
• Year 4

From Baby Boom to Population Bomb: 

The American Family in the Cold War

The History of Family in America (HIST 379)
Dr. Caitlin Wiesner
Main Hall Room 213
November 7, 2023 (Week 9)

Check Feedback for Secondary Source Essay #1 (Cott and Briggs) on Blackboard

Common Errors and Issues...

1. Thesis statements should be argumentative, not descriptive
   
2. Select examples/quotations from the sources carefully and unpack them fully
3. Go for depth, not breadth
   
4. Use your FAQs!
   

Between January and July 1942, employers raised their estimates of the proportion of new jobs acceptable for women from 29 percent to 55 percent. 

“ WACS and WAVES and women welders… after the boys come marching home, and they marry these emancipated young women, who is going to tend the babies in the next generation?” - Minneapolis Tribune (August 1942)

“The rule is: the less a woman’s desire to have children and the greater her desire to emulate the male in seeking a sense of personal value by objective exploit, the less will be her enjoyment of the sex act and the greater her general neuroticism.”

- Marinya Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (1947)

4,000 acres of potato farmland, Long Island, NY (c.1940)

In 1950,  36 million Americans lived in suburbs

Levittown, NY, (c.1959)

17,311 single-family homes with over 70,000 residents

By 1970, 74 million American lived in suburbs (1 in 3)  

According to a 1959 poll, what were the primary reasons given by residents for moving to Levittown?

Why did an open debate about the superiority of capitalism versus communism take place in front of a model kitchen? 

What does this "Kitchen Debate" have to do with the American family?

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (left) and U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon (right) tour a model suburban kitchen display at the American National Exhibition in Moscow (1959)

80% of high schools students polled in 1959 had one consistent dating partner.
Between 1940 and 1957, out of wedlock births from white teenagers tripled.

White Teenage Mothers: Maternity Homes and Adoption

Black Teenage Mothers: Keep Your Children, Go on Welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)

Discuss: 

Enovid Trials in Puerto Rico (1955-1964)

How does Dr. Edris Rice-Wray’s account of the Enovid Trials in Puerto Rico differ from that of Conchita Santos and Delia Mestre?

 

What can the Enovid trials tells us about the "family planning" movement and the Cold War?

Were the Enovid Trials in Puerto Rico (1955-1964) empowering or exploitative?

Empowering

Exploitative

Both

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

We will begin discussion of readings each class with an FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise. All students will free write the following:

     A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
    An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
    A question that the reading raised for you

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise

All students will free write the following:

1.  A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
2. An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
3. A question that the reading raised for you

Discussion: Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (2015)

Discuss how Stephanie Coontz debunks the following myths about the "traditional" American family?

o    Privacy (Chapter 6)
o    Working Moms (Chapter 7)
o    Childbearing as a Milestone of Adulthood (Chapter 8)
o    Toxic Parenting Practices (Chapter 9)
o    The "Dysfunctional" Black Family (Chapter 10)