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Why Did America Create The Nuclear Family After World War II?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.พ. 2019
- To support my efforts to create more clips please donate to me at www.patreon.com/allinaday. The speaker is the famed professor and author Elaine Tyler May. She has written many books on the American family and is considered one of America's leading experts on the Middle-class families in the 1950s. I interviewed her in 1989. I post this now because so many viewers have reacted to my clip-America in 1957, many expressing a desire to go back to that time. Professor May will hopefully give viewers a sense of statistically, what was really going on. I will be posting other comments by her in the coming weeks. #1950sfamily #1950s #middleclass #americandream #elainetylermay
I could listen to her for hours.
Excellent. I'm not sure about the feeling in 1989, but this resonates today perfectly.
I guess I missed the last 9 world wars.
A little known thing called empathy!
A great man once said world war 11 would be fought with sticks and stones;)
goose e...This idea is supposedly from Albert Einstein, who was certainly a great physicist, who is credited with saying that he did not know with what weapons WWlll would be fought with, but WWIV would be fought with sticks and stones.
@@marbleman52 lol I know exactly who it was from I was making a joke about him either the "11" typo
Another wise man once said that if we need that extra push over the cliff, we go to eleven.
@@youngThrashbarg I mean if you think about it the last 20 years the world has been at war
@@goose33 Even wars have switched over to a monthly subscription model.
There at the end, I could hear Charlie Daniels in my mind:
"...and I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife!"
With all these word wars, we might run out of words :(
I am sure May knows a lot about the 50s but the idea that the nuclear family was "invented" after WWII is bunk. The nuclear family was certainly the norm in the midwest when my grandparents grew up in the 1920s. And it is certainly presented as the norm in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Maybe I don't know what is meant here.
I think she means that the nuclear was family became aggressively marketed as a cultural ideal and propaganda practically mandated that this was the way for a "Twue" American to be. If you look at the educational films of the period, it's practically brainwashing the viewer that a nuclear family is the only normal way to be and that only degenerates aren't from one.
@@Theomite I'm still not convinced. It isn't brainwashing if everyone already accepts it as normal. It's like saying that since all the films were in English they were practically brainwashing people into thinking English is the only normal way to be. A simpler explanation is that Americans speak English and so of course they are represented as speaking English. If the nuclear family is the norm in a society, of course artistic representations are going to reflect that. From our vantage when it has ceased to be the norm, it could seem to be propaganda.
@@frederickburke9944 Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? When does art imitate life, and when does life imitate art? Did the consumerism that arose in the 1950s reflect the family, or did it reinforce its notions?
Laura Ingalls Wilder did NOT have moving pictures- the 1920s were just beginning to harness that medium. Surely the rise of the Information Age influenced a FEW things.
Wrong. Before WWII extended families normally lived together. After WW2 the Big Oil car culture splintered these "tribal" households.
Theomite It should be the norm.
America did not create The Nuclear Family.
The concept of the nuclear family can be traced back to several ancient societies, each of which has contributed uniquely to the understanding and evolution of this family structure.
Ancient Rome, Greece, and China, while geographically and culturally distinct, showcased early instances of nuclear family units within their respective societies, laying the foundation for future generations.
Nope it's an American invention , you christmonkies are making up history to justify serfdom.
So the nuclear family was the home front in the cold war... never seen it like that before
You can also say it's one way to distinguish America with the Soviet Union. The nuclear family was seen as a moral and i guess "american" way to distribute or perpetuate security, welfare and social conditioning, compare that to the Soviet Union where those functions are the responsibility of the bureaucratic apparatus.
I love 1950s americana! Change in music, change in architecture, changes in the mid class family, change of civil rights,
(although that was mostly starting in the 60s). Everything was semi good for a while in the 50s till early 60s, just like between late 89 and early 01
The rest of the world was rebuilding from World War 2 much of which came from our manufacturing. Once other industrial countries caught back up our manufacturing wasn't needed as much anymore.
Unless you were black
@@thetachyon456 Who tf cares about those swartoids anyway? Watch the video of the monkey with the AK and tell me if you spot the difference😂
The traditional family with Conservative values are sponsored by;
Prime Minister Boris Johnson (4 marriages and ?? children).
President Donald Trump (2 marriages and how many affairs?)
King Charles III (cheating on his wife Princess Diana from day one of his marriage)
The big enemy was the ruling class.
The underlying assumption here is that individuals embedded within a particular culture make choices about social arrangements based on how they'll be perceived by future historians. Needless to say, people aren't like that, and there is no reason to think that their choices regarding such arrangements are fundamentally based on anything beyond basic material incentives & limitations, technology, etc. The extended family dominated societies around the world throughout most of history for these obvious reasons (in a dizzying variety of cultures with completely disparate, mutually exclusive beliefs and practices), and just as obviously, the nuclear family dominated during a unique period of increased affluence, relatively low income inequality, reliable and stable employment, etc etc. For the same reasons (increasing material affluence & abundance of resources, women in the workforce, etc), single and co-habitation households are now dominating the 21st century (people can afford to be single, women are economically empowered to pursue full-time careers, liberated from household labor due to technology, etc). Aside from particular cultural quirks (such as western proliferation of retirement/nursing homes for elderly vs family care for elderly), it's not a coincidence that European and US households increasingly resemble those of Japan (distinct cultures that have alien roots); affluence and age demographics are all that's needed to explain these changes.
And the bit about Americans being "uncomfortable" about technological progress?? Anyone who lived through the 50's and 60's knows that this is the exact opposite of reality. Americans were spellbound by technological progress, as deeply in love with the promise of technology and the future as they've ever been (and perhaps ever will be). For all the fear of nuclear war, there was tremendous (perhaps unrealistic) optimism about nuclear power, including the belief that it would power everything from automobiles to trains. For every "War of the Worlds," there were popular utopian visions of a future in which science and technology permeated every aspect of society. Trust and faith in science was arguably at an apex, and popular speculations about the future were as positive as they've ever been. It's noteworthy that in a world on the brink of nuclear holocaust, the "post-apocalyptic dystopia" genre was virtually unknown in popular media (whereas, ironically, it essentially dominates popular visions of the future today).
In the 50's and 60's, Americans believed we'd have space stations, and colonies on the moon and mars in a matter of decades. And importantly, they believed that these were GOOD things. Today, popular media depictions of the same are (without exception) gut-wrenching fear-fests where everything goes wrong, like "Gravity" or "The Martian."
The mention of film noir is odd, since this genre actually has its roots in the depression-era 1930s; the post-war "classic age" of film noir was the result of the past 20 years of growing popularity (and naturally appealed to the men who had grown up on popular pulp detective stories in the 20s and 30s). The rise of abstract expressionism is of little relevance, since trends in modern art over the last century and a half only reflect the ebb and flow of fads among a vanishingly small elite, and not the millions who comprised the American families being discussed.
The comments about attitudes toward communism are also odd given that Americans had just witnessed firsthand what totalitarian ideologies were capable of; the men alleged to be consumed by notions of masculinity and "softness" had just bled in Western Europe and the Pacific on behalf of fellow human beings from foreign countries, they'd seen the piles of corpses at Buchenwald and Auschwitz. They had every reason to be terrified by a totalitarian ideology that had just proven it could supply inexhaustible waves of men willing to die in order to defeat a materially superior enemy; and this ideology was armed with something Germany never had, nuclear weapons. Most importantly, they'd seen the terrible human cost of their isolationism. That none of this gets mentioned (in favor of comments about sexuality) is bizarre. My comments here are not about "right and wrong," merely about what is reasonable to assume about the beliefs and motivations of past peoples.
None of this is a criticism of your interview here, Dave (or of the fundamental value of Elaine Tyler May's views). Indeed, as you always say, the point is to understand the person being interviewed, for them to articular their own beliefs and perspective. The value of this interview, then, is in what it reveals about how baby boomers saw their parents. As stark a divide between two generations as there's ever been...
Taurus...Excellent..well said..!! I like the way that you counter-pointed some of the things that Elaine said; well thought out and to me, right on target.
@Taurus Londono Some caveats to this rebuttal:
*The underlying assumption here is that individuals embedded within a particular culture make choices about social arrangements based on how they'll be perceived by future historians. Needless to say, people aren't like that*
Average people, no. But there have always been influencers that try to steer culture in a direction, but they were more political and commercial powers in the 20th century, not individuals with distribution platforms. The Catholic Legion of Decency was a powerful one. Censorship and various legislation was largely based on maintaining a certain model of civilization that wasn't necessarily based on empirical evidence (nobody really did any research on pornography or psychoactive drugs yet they were banned anyway) but on an image they wanted to present and make available across time. Now, they were planning on making the future look like the present, but they still wanted the future to look back on them heroically according to their idea of what "heroic" was.
*Americans were spellbound by technological progress, as deeply in love with the promise of technology and the future as they've ever been*
Very true (I dunno how she made this assumption) but only as long as it perpetuated the mores of the period. I think she's referring to the fear of social change that technology brings, such as the fear that technology will allow avenues of access and expression that were previously controlled/restricted to prohibit disruptive attitudes and dissent from emerging. On that note, she'd be very right.
* the post-war "classic age" of film noir was the result of the past 20 years of growing popularity*
Ah, but you're also forgetting that the post-war noir genre was also where the first effects of the 1952 Paramount Decree started to show. Noir was popular and the literary roots for it were rife with moral ambiguity that the films weren't allowed to show under the Production Code. With the Paramount Decree there were more independent theaters and now more independent fare was being produced that wasn't bound by these restrictions. This is where the "grindhouse" theater started: 24-hour theaters in urban areas showing stuff that the big chains couldn't, and a lot of filmmakers did fly-by-nite exhibitions that raked in cash and got out of dodge before the censorship boards could catch them. Noir was a popular and cheaper genre that served as a delivery system for that trend.
I'd also argue that Russia's conversion of China is what wrecked our isolationism. After the War, everybody wanted to get back to the way things were before and the Soviets proved they weren't going to let it go that way anymore.
It's trivially true that people who consider themselves "good" also presumably hope that they're on the "right side of history," but this isn't any social influencer's *primary motivation* (otherwise, they would keep a finger to the wind and change their views to match the changing opinions of the public, or academia, or whatever). It stands to reason that their primary motivations are their own inherited normative ethics. But that's all tangential to the issue of what motivated Americans to switch from extended families to nuclear families; I maintain that it's fully explained by economic and demographic factors. I think this is as just true for the fall of the nuclear family; despite insistent claims regarding what are perceived to be concerted efforts to "undermine traditional families," it seems to me that the decline of the nuclear family is instead fully explained by economic factors.
Also, I think that groups like the Catholic Legion of Decency were subject to simple status quo bias; from their point of view, the last 1000 or so years of cultural norms that had evolved in Europe (and, to their minds, provided the basis for more or less stable societies) offered ample "empirical evidence" on which to rationalize their advocacy of tradition and fear of change.
Regarding technology, I just don't see the fear of social change as a result of technological advances reflected in the prevailing attitudes of the American public. This is why I emphasized nuclear power; the world was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust, yet Americans were more in love with the promise of nuclear power than they've ever been. Can you think of specific examples?... Birth control might be an example of what you're talking about, but I'm not especially knowledgeable about the relevant history.
I'm relatively young at 44 but have looked at enough of the media of that time period that is very congruent with what you're saying. Even a lot of the nostalgia of later still reflected a lot of those ideas of the Space Age.
Plus I'm aware of the ivory tower syndrome- I think it's much better to look to folk media rather than scholarly dissertations about what a society was thinking and feeling. Of course, the scholars tend to cherry-pick folk references, if they much use them at all. I think that's what's been brilliant about the Internet; much more is available relatively unfiltered, although then the burden of critical thinking lies much more squarely with the reader/consumer.
5-7 children was a norm before WW2, but in her view family was artificially "invented" and a non-essential concept
What is wrong with one mate for life? There are even animals that mate for life.
Then we had others pushing ideologies that may overwhelm the children by the back door
l personally prefer to call it World War ii
America was never homogeneous except for before the British came in of course
This system has been around for millennia. It is the default. Wife and husband, children. That's the definition of a family.
I understand what you have written but in fact, the nuclear family is a relatively new idea. The family used to include grandparents and other family members (my parents grew up that way). Extended families live together. The nuclear family developed in the post-World War II 1950s suburban generation.
David Hoffman
The *word* war didn't start until the advent of the internet twenty years ago and the invasion from the corresponding onslaught of the hordes of grammar nazis.
Can someone tell me how the nuclear family contributes to the rights between white and black Americans please it's for a project and need help
This title sounds misleading. People had tight families for centuries before WWII.
but the nuclear family is what my sequence is about. That developed after World War II. Prior to that my family, like most families, lives in extended family situations with relatives very nearby.
David Hoffman-filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker Yes, extended family, not Brad and Marsha from down the street will be giving you dinner and LaToya, the next door neighbor, will tuck you in. Children are better off with those who they have blood or adoptive ties to. No one takes care of your children like you or grandma/grandpa/auntie/uncle take care of them.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker Yeah, I see on BLM's mission statement, they want to disrupt and reject many home structures where children are cared for by those who have blood and adoptive ties to them. And apparently, they think that being around a mother and father is a WHITE phenomenon! An ignorant thesis that is absolutely insulting to all POC! THAT is wacko! Smdh
@@betsycollins601 is that really what it says or is that your understanding of what it says?
Deprived little girl who thinks that everyone has a mixed up confused life like hers.
The US was still pretty homogenous after WW2...
WORLD WAR 11 LUULLL
Wanna ride the world like a merry go round ;)
My, my...from the comments below, I didn't know that the letter "L" ...or lack thereof...was so powerful..LOL..and using the number "1" instead of the small cap letter "L" to designate the 2nd World War...Wow..!! I think that Mr. Hoffman knows how to type the abbreviation for the 2nd World War correctly; maybe this was just an honest typo. But..."Word War 11"..is kinda funny...this woman certainly was engaging in a somewhat 'war of words'. Her very first statement where she says that... "In the years after WWll , Americans "needed" to define themselves in some way that was new". I respectfully disagree. Americans did not "need" any 'defining'...any 're-defining', of who and what they were. Americans knew full well who they were and what they were...hard working, mostly morally & ethically strong ( we will always have the 'bad guys' within our midst ), honest and Freedom loving people who believe in self determination and the inalienable rights embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This belief..this philosophy...did not "need" re-defining...it was never lost in the first place. WWll just confirmed, in a very violent way, just how important these values and beliefs were to freedom loving people all around the world. She waged a war of words with her very first sentence. And then the next sentence .." And all the old definitions of the past no longer worked, the country was different, technology was different..." Oh, so this country...all of the people who ARE the country..suddenly found themselves morally and ethically rudderless...without a compass...nothing worked any more...? I very strongly disagree... this was a laughable statement for her to make. I don't care how many degrees she has...this was just way off the mark. Yes, Social changes were developing, as it does with any developing Nation of people as time passes, but the core principles and values that this great Nation of people was founded upon, never got lost...never needed 'defining' or re-defining...it was always there. And this..." this new sense of technology out of control..." Okay...just who was having this out-of-control-technology...? Was it the typical family that was starting to be able to afford some of these out of control technology devices such as electric refrigerators and electric dish washers and electric stoves and better vehicles and...the T.V...?? Oh my...What an Orwellian and psychologically damaging effect these out of control technological devices had on the people of the 50's...!! And when jet aircraft started replacing prop aircraft. Oh, the Social upheavals, the Social disruption, the loss of any 'defining' of who & what America was, that this must have had. How on Earth did America EVER survive...incredible...!! And....this is not even 1 minute into her 'war of words'..!! And my final thought, at least for this post...LOL...the "nuclear family" has been around and doing well for thousands of years; it didn't need re-creating after WWll, and it has been a very important part of the foundations and principles of this great Nation that helped it to become prosperous and successful, and free.
Thank you for understanding. I have a head cold and it was 6:30 in the morning and I made a typo.
David Hoffman - filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker That's what I thought, but I also thought that you might have been having some fun with satire, which would have been a hoot..!! You sure did stimulate a good discussion with this one...!!
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker...Thank goodness for your headcold, it served as a catalyst
for a more interesting comment section. May it feel better tomorrow for you.
Well America didn't start nuclear family system it was there even before the existence of America😊
That is not my understanding. In fact most of the people I know generations back lived in extended families and those extended families lived in small towns very near each other. Nothing like what happened with the nuclear family of the 1950s where families separated from their in-laws and other relatives by moving.
David Hoffman - filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker well sir I don't know about what is your understanding about the family structure, but joint families are extended version of nuclear families, People are migrating to cities long before American existence, and if you think cities didn't exist before 18th century then you need a very serious reality check. Well we can say the term "nuclear family" was first introduced by USA in probably 1940's.
@@manasmahalik973 cities that exists prior to the industrial revolution were mostly inhabited by traders, craftsman, peasants etc who still were dependent on their extended family structure as they are the main apparatus that determined distribution of land and wealth through the system of inheritance. That changed however in the 19th century, the creation of industrialized machines has made wealth to be abundant, and the distribution of those wealth is determined by the people who have the ownership over the machines (i.e capital owners). New advancements in societal structure shatters the old way of economic organization, as people would rather take opportunities to obtain more wealth in the cities working for capital owners than the to work in the fields for themselves when the farmed goods are becoming more and more cheaper. What america had prior to Roosevelt was mostly still comprised the former, that is farmer families working for themselves in small towns, but mass rapid industrialization caused by the war accelerated progression and in the same time diminishing old structures of society, and families have become just a tool to perpetuate social conditioning and welfare.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker I am from a small village in Scotland and no! I did not live with my grandparents or my uncles like you are suggesting! That is not the culture in my village and my family in someway have been living in this township for 400 years. Usually, what happens is everyone gets their own house. My grandparents all had their own house, my uncles and aunts all had their own house ect .....I hardly saw my uncle and he lived in the next town 15 minutes away because going to the next town was always seen as so far away.
Main reason why we don't live in extended families is because most of the houses are only built for a family of about 4-5. They are tiny houses, you can't get an extended family in a tiny house.
And back to the cave man days
It was there long before wwii, the word was created bcos it sounds special after it.
Bro why she look like that Vegan teacher
World war 2 not ii