The 1950s: Gender and Some Social Science*

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.