The 1950s

Gender and Some Social Science

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2274147
AutoresWini Breines (Northeastern University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1986
Volumen56
Número1
Páginas69-92
Fecha de publicación1986-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSociological Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0245 • E-ISSN: 1475-682X
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1475-682x.1986.tb00076.x
OpenAlexW2067779890
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas31

Among the literature considered for issues pertaining to gender in the 1950s is David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), John Seeley, et al., Crestwood Heights (1956), William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (1956), Jules Henry, Culture against Man, and essays by Talcott Parsons on the family. The paper shows how the authors apparently document the modernization of gender and the family by ignoring or downplaying conventional and conservative factors. In fact, they were more sanguine than even their own evidence warranted, although they seemed unaware of this. By seeing only progressive indicators they neglected the constraints on women, often identified as the 'feminine mystique.' Three gender and family issues are considered for actual evidence about what was happening in the 1950s but also for contradictions in the authors' work that yield insights as well. These are whether feminine and masculine sex roles were converging in modern America, the development of companionship marriage, and the issue of 'maternal overinvolvement' (or the domineering mother) in childrearing. The work under consideration suggests contradictory gender messages and developments in the postwar period, indicating a period in which possibilities for equality between the sexes were being both created and denied to women

Aesthetics · Happening · Interpersonal relationship · Modernization theory · Period (music) · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology