Following World War II, women of the 1950s spent most of their time in the home. After a large group of men returned home from the war, they began to start families. This period is referred to as The Baby Boom. The Baby Boom was a period in which 76.4 million babies were born between the years 1946 and 1964 (“Baby Boomers”). With so many babies born to these households, women had little choice other than to stay home with their children. The domestic life became extremely common for women of the 1950s. Women were to say home with the children and take care of the housework, including cooking, cleaning, laundry, and various other household chores. Although we can see through an analysis of the “Family Life Instructional Video,” women in the
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It became so bad, that society thought of women as incapable of doing anything other than housework, without relying on their husband. The sarcasm in the Del Monte Ketchup Ad from 1953 sheds light upon this issue of sexism during the Post-War era. The ad is captioned, “You mean a woman can open it?” implying that it is so easy, even a woman can open the bottle for themselves. This is how weak the society viewed women. We can only imagine the bitterness women of the era had towards such ads. This only added to the drive women had to overcome this idea of weakness and prove that they were independent and capable of much more than just …show more content…
Again, women were viewed as dependent on their husbands due to the breadwinner ideal. However, women did not accept such an image. Works like Anne Sexton’s poem, “Her Kind” depicts a strong, independent woman who is proud of her ability to be self-sufficient. The poem states, “I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods…A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind.” The narrator is explaining how she has been independent and self-sufficient, and woman like her are misunderstood. Women of the Post World War II era were misunderstood by society, more specifically men. These women simply wished to escape the image of their weakness and dependency but men were not able to accept women as independent and did not welcome them to the
It became so bad, that society thought of women as incapable of doing anything other than housework, without relying on their husband. The sarcasm in the Del Monte Ketchup Ad from 1953 sheds light upon this issue of sexism during the Post-War era. The ad is captioned, “You mean a woman can open it?” implying that it is so easy, even a woman can open the bottle for themselves. This is how weak the society viewed women. We can only imagine the bitterness women of the era had towards such ads. This only added to the drive women had to overcome this idea of weakness and prove that they were independent and capable of much more than just …show more content…
Again, women were viewed as dependent on their husbands due to the breadwinner ideal. However, women did not accept such an image. Works like Anne Sexton’s poem, “Her Kind” depicts a strong, independent woman who is proud of her ability to be self-sufficient. The poem states, “I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods…A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind.” The narrator is explaining how she has been independent and self-sufficient, and woman like her are misunderstood. Women of the Post World War II era were misunderstood by society, more specifically men. These women simply wished to escape the image of their weakness and dependency but men were not able to accept women as independent and did not welcome them to the