Depictions of families in the 1950s were extreme in a myriad of ways. The notion of a “nuclear family,” in which a husband, wife and their children were considered the smallest unit of our society, became incredibly popular. Husbands and wives each seemed to have particular roles and duties from which they couldn’t stray. The husband, of course, was a working man responsible for bringing money to the household. His wife worked on something else: their household itself. She cleaned, cooked, and decorated. She bought groceries and clothing for everybody. She watched their children, fed them, and took care of them. In the 1950s, advertising advocated these roles and these roles alone: straying from them was rather unthinkable. The “nuclear family” had a facade of perfection, hiding any troubles within. To challenge it was to ostracize oneself. More than half a century later, notions of family have loosened considerably, but the influence of the 1950s lives on. In the attached advertisement from 2011, Coca-Cola supports its consumeristic goals by presenting a modern twist on classic 1950s family ideals via a brazen acceptance of the negative effects of its products. The most obvious continuation of 1950s ideals is visible in the familial roles presented in this contemporary advertisement. The person pushing the shopping cart is presumably a woman; even though her face is obscured, she is dressed according to modern maternal stereotypes in a light pink sweater and skinny jeans. This is a direct continuation of the 1950s ideal of a mother handling grocery shopping for the family. In addition, she has a child with her, evoking the role of a mother in childrearing. The mother seems to have taken her daughter on her errands with her, which... ... middle of paper ... ...e for irresponsibility and error within a family, albeit subtly so as not to ruffle too many feathers. In this way, Coca-Cola presented an advertisement that, while updating 1950s ideals for our modern world, managed not to stray too far from safety. In this way, their ad can build trust and encourage consumption of their products. Works Cited ! Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York, NY: Basic, 1992. Print. ! Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1983. Print.  Works Cited Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York, NY: Basic, 1992. Print. Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1983. Print. 
This phenomenon suggests that all women are required to remain loyal wives and stay at home mothers who aspire to achieve perfection. In “Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation and Identity in Advertising Images,” Jonathon E. Schroeder and Detlev Zwick claim that “highly abstract connections are made between the models, a lifestyle, and the brand” resulting in a need to associate these products with a specific way of living (25). Instead of simply displaying these luxurious bracelets and handbags, the ad creates an elegant environment through the incorporation of sophisticated items. The women are dressed elegantly in dresses and blouses, adding a conservative element to the ad. The ad presents a rather stereotypical image of the very successful heads-of-household type mothers who have brunch with other elite women in an exclusive circle. Everything from the merchandise they sport to the champagne glasses down to the neatly manicured fingernails provides insight into the class of women presented in this ad. The body language of the women strips the image of the reality element and instead appears to be staged or frozen in time. This directly contributes to the concept of the gendered American dream that urges women to put up a picture-perfect image for the world to see. Instead of embracing individual struggle and realities, the American dream encourages women to live out a fabricated
Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. The "Family". Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams.
Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound weaves two traditional narratives of the fifties -- suburban domesticity and rampant anticommunism -- into one compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May discovers that cold war ideology and the domestic revival [were] two sides of the same coin: postwar Americans' intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was an outgrowth of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war -- Within the home, potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute to the secure and fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.(May, p. 14) Moreover, the therapeutic emphases of fifties psychologists and intellectuals offered private and personal solutions to social problems. The family was the arena in which that adaptation was expected to occur; the home was the environment in which people could feel good about themselves. In this way, domestic containment and its therapeutic corollary undermined the potential for political activism and reinforced the chilling effects of anticommunism and the cold war consensus.(May, p.14)
It’s not easy to build an ideal family. In the article “The American Family” by Stephanie Coontz, she argued that during this century families succeed more when they discuss problems openly, and when social institutions are flexible in meeting families’ needs. When women have more choices to make their own decisions. She also argued that to have an ideal family women can expect a lot from men especially when it comes to his involvement in the house. Raymond Carver, the author of “Where He Was: Memories of My Father”, argued how his upbringing and lack of social institutions prevented him from building an ideal family. He showed the readers that his mother hide all the problems instead of solving them. She also didn’t have any choice but to stay with his drunk father, who was barely involved in the house. Carvers’ memoir is relevant to Coontz argument about what is needed to have an ideal family.
As early as the nineteen fifties women were identified and targeted as a market. In a consumer culture the most important things are consumers. Advertisers convinced homemakers that in order to be a “good” wife and mother you must have their products and appliances to keep a clean and perfect home. The irony of this ploy is that consumers must have money to buy, and so trying to improve their quality as homemakers, off into the workforce women went. This paradox left women ...
By leaping into the societal messages of the popular 1980s show, Full House, one is able to learn a great deal about what the cultural direction of society was like at that time. Full House was a kind of, makeshift sitcom because it expanded on the typical formula of the age-old conventional “nuclear” family and made room for the idea of a non-traditional family that revealed it’s unconventional nature. As viewership grew, so did the acceptance of such a family structure in American culture.
As mentioned before, sociologists Coontz and Hochschild further elaborate upon Parsons and Bales’ concepts of the American family, but they mostly critique the idea of the male-breadwinner family. One of the main arguments Coontz and Hochschild present is the decline of the male-breadwinner family due to the economic changes of the United States and the arising social norms of consumerism. Because Parsons and Bales never considered how the changes throughout society would affect family, they believed the male-breadwinner family would continue to be a functional type of family for everyone. However, within her text, “What We Really Miss about the 1950s,” Coontz specifically discusses the major expense of keeping mothers at home as consumption norms...
Throughout time, family dynamics continually adapt to fit an always changing society. Using the sociological imagination, I can analyze my family’s history to understand the shift between Puritan farming life to the Industrial Era to the modern-day family I live in now.
The 1960s provided a reality time of suppressed females and overindulgent males within the society spectrum. Yet the nostalgia aspect of this manifests in the idea of the perfect housewife and the graci...
As century pass by generation also pass their traditional values to the next generation. some people still think the way their ancestors thought and believe in what they believed in. During the beginning of 1890 people couldn’t have premarital sex, women had to be the caretaker while men was the breadwinner. during this century those perspective have changed argued Stephanie Coontz the author of “The American Family”. Coontz believe women should have more freedom and there should be gender equality. Robert Kuttner, the author of “The Politics of Family” also believe that women should not be only the caretaker but whatever they want as a career. Robert Kuttner 's text does support Stephanie Coontz’ arguments about the issues related to traditional
Wetzel, JR. N.p.: n.p., n.d. American Families: 75 Years of Change. 1990. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
Having a harmonious family is a part of the American Dream. In The American Dream, written by Jim Cullen, a soldier wrote to the newspaper that he would “relate to” their “wives and children, parents and friends, what” they “have witnessed…” (Cullen, 114). Willa Cather introduces Rosicky’s family, which emphasizes on close relationships and positive community impacts in “Neighbor Rosicky”, and F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that Charlie wants his role as a father back in “Babylon Revisited”. Even though both Cather and Fitzgerald value intimate families in integrity, they have different attitudes toward life.
THOSE OF US WHO grew up in the 1950s got an image of the American family that was not, shall we say, accurate. We were told, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were not just the way things were supposed to be—but the way things were
The early 1940s to the 1960s truly exemplified the social constructs of a married couple, and with that, the stereotypes that followed. In this 1960 Mr. Leggs ad (see page 3), blatant stereotypes can be shown. The advertisement shows portrayals of chauvinism, strict gender roles, and gives a message to the mass on what is “normal” at the time.
In the 1960’s, the general population experienced a massive shift in the way they reacted to advertisements. Society no longer wanted to be addressed as a mass and this resistance brought a sense of individualism and non-conformism. In reaction to this resistance, advertisers moved away from the concept of one large consumer mass and decided that in order to properly appeal to the consumer, they would have to segment the market. Starting in the late 1960’s, advertisers shifted their focus from a personal format to a lifestyle format, by using social context, by focusing on consumption, and by fully utilizing the advent of the television, in order to properly respond to the new cultural desire for identity and distinction.