Pol Sci 143C - Ch.2 Family and Gender in the Making of Suburbia - Reading Notes PDF

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Chapter 2 Family and Gender in the Making of Suburbia — Reading Notes: Week 1 Page 45 Introduction By the 19th century, new ideas about family life and gender provided a potent social context for the suburban trend For the white middle-class, visible acceptance of these ideals became a badge of middle-class respectability and identity Suburbia represented the spatial for of this evolving set of social relations Families evolved from an outward institution that served community functions such as trainmen apprentices and caring for the destitute, to a more inward focus on privacy, affection, and the nuclear family Families shed their earlier function as an economic unit to become a more purely domestic entity Gender roles changed in accordance to promote these new family meaning in 2 stages 1. women and men’s spheres separated men worked while women took care of the home woman beca,e the keepers of Christian and republican virtue, and it became their responsibility to instill these values in husbands and kids NEW GENDER IDEOLOGY BECAME KNOWN AS ‘CULT OF DOMESTICITY' 2. Men reentered the domestic sphere, finding a new place in the workdays of the home and family the emergence of companionate marriage emphasized egalitarianism between husband and wife rather than patriarchal rule family togetherness based on affection was new paradigm division of #1 essential broke down husband and wife fix-it jobs Insulated from neighbors, purified by the natural environment, and separated from the supposed immorality of the city, suburban homes represented a sacred space in which morality and family privacy could flourish suburban ideology and imagery promoted nuclear families as the normative household arrangement Page 46 Ironically, the maintenance of this realized nuclear family and landscape often relied on the paid labor of domestic servants most of whom where women of color or immigrants who often had kids of their own

REMINDS US THAT THE IDEAL SUBURB WAS HIGHLY CLASS SPECIFIC, AIMD AT MIDDLE- AND UPPER-CLASS AMERICANS The middle-class suburban family paradigm became the standard by which many would define “the American dream” itself Page 47 2.1 Catharine Beecher Outlines the Proper Role for Women, 1865 The tending of kids and doing house-work exercise those very muscles which are most important to womanhood But in these days, young girls, in the wealthy classes, do not use the muscles of their body and arms in domestic labor or in any other way instead, study and reading stimulate the brain and nerves to debility by excess, while the body wants exercise As a result, universal lamentation over the decay of the female constitution vast numbers are without honorable employment in wealthy circles, unmarried women suffer from aimless vacuity in poor classes, from unrequited toil and consequent degradation and vice It is believed that the remedy for all these evils is not in leading women into the professions and business of men, but to train woman properly for her own proper business Each department of women’s profession is a science and art as much as law, medicine or divinity In a democracy it is assumed that every class is to work for their own welfare and enjoyment work is honored assumed that both rich and poor are to work, and that to live a life of idle pleasure is disgraceful DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARISTOCRACIES AND DEMOCRACIES Page 48 The democratic principle is no other than the grand law of Christianity, which required work and self-sacrifice for the public good, to which al private interests are to be subordinate Children are to be trained to live not for themselves but for others The family is the first commonwealth where this training is said to be carried on, and only as a preparation for a more enlarged sphere of action Family training and school training are democratic and Christian only when the great principle of living for others more than for self is fully recognized and carried out In order for change to triumph over the aristocratic and unchristian, the wealthy need to change and follow suit Style of house building will be one of the changes Woman’s work will be honorable and tasteful and agreeable when cultivated women undertake to make it so

When women of refinement and culture build houses on the Christian and democratic plan, work themselves, and train their kids to work, they will never suffer for want of domestic helpers they will have refined and sympathizing friends to train their kids, nurse their sick, and share in all the comforts, joys and sorrows Every family, as the general rule, includes the parents as the educators, and the children to be trained to Christian life Aged, infirm or homeless relatives will be regarded not as a burden and annoyance, instead the Christian parents will welcome them as suffering helpers aiding to develop the highest Christian virtues in their kids House details site - dry spot with a cellar sun shining on rooms of use all day Close packing of conveniences save time and energy front faces south sun all day to the 2 large main rooms Page 49 There must still be the class of servants, to carry out a style of living and expenditure both lawful and useful a real wealthy family will invest in help then a woman who prefers a style of living demanding servants, will be so trained herself as not to be dependent on hirelings at the sacrifice of selfrespect A woman who chooses another style of living, so as to work herself and train her kids to work, can do so without fear of losing any social advantages she can secure highly cultivated and refined friends to share all her family enjoyments instead of depending on a class inferior in cultivation and less qualified to form the habits and tastes of her children It is not the married alone who are privileged to become ministers in the home church of Jesus Christ single women could adopt and take a well-qualified governess to aid training of the kid, then adopt another when success is reached When houses are built on Christian and democratic principles, happy homes will multiply with our increasing wealth and culture Page 51 2.4 A Doctor Explains the Virtues of Suburbia for Children, 1910 We must not expect to be able to raise healthy babies where trees and grass are stunted in their growth, as in some of the city parks, where they are subjected to the influence of smoke and coal-gas

On the other hand, the green grass, the shrubbery, the plant life, and the trees of the suburbs, are a guarantee of atmospheric purity Next to pure air, there is probably no single influence so mightily influencing child growth and health as sunlight Page 52 Lack of sunlight produces both plants and babies which are pale, sickly and emaciated The outdoor life and physical freedom required for the healthy upgrading of children is practically impossible in the city “God made the country; man made the town; and the devil made the city" There can be no doubt that the incessant noise of the city has a tendency to somewhat dull certain special nervous sensibilities (hearing) Sleep of the suburban child is found to be much more even, normal and refreshing as compared with the rest of the city City life tends to breed childish discontent and unnatural love for change and excitement The suburb tends to produce the spirit of joy and contentment without in the least quenching the natural desire for exploration and childish adventure The cities must be reckoned as the strongholds of vice the suburbs and rural communities as the hope of virtue The people of the suburbs as a rule love kids Suburban communities are “the land of promise" 2.5 An Experienced Suburbanite Counsels Young Women About the Problems of Suburbia, 1909 Page 53 The Young Wife in Lonelyville your husband is away all day you know nobody there is nothing to do nowhere to go Everything is flat, stale and unprofitable Turns back into the house, to face a day devoid of interest and companionship Torn from all her natural environment, her problem is how not to droop too discouragingly in the process of transplanting The Church a Social Center Safest and best way to gain a foothold into the prosperity and fun dreamt about is through the church Every suburban town of any pretensions has a church and a schoolhouse and probably a clubhouse

A Thorn in the Flesh One serious thorn in the flesh of the suburban woman is her husband’s love of a quiet evening he is tired and wants to rest She is feeling perfectly fresh, after a dull day, and wants a social life Page 54 He was so tired that he forgot absolutely that she had been lonely and bored all day, and, thinking each of his or her own hardships, they spend a strained and uncomfortable evening The Servant Problem She must herself know how to handle all the affairs of her own home if she expects to be happy or to maker her husband contented When the Children Come Home She must train the kids unhealed, and must form for them a mental image of the father from home they many not be separated in though for love’s sake She must decide alone all minor matter of conduct and like Page 55 2.6 Harriet Beech Stowe Exhorts ment to be “Handy" A handyman is so practice in the regulation of the little utilities of the house he inhabits The handyman not only can do all these things which properly belong to me’s department, but in cases of sickness or other causes that disable the female part of his household, he can distinguish them in the peculiar department can cook But in the same manner that it is desirable that a man should understand and be able to occasionally do the work of a woman, and as he can do it without becoming unmanly so woman can learn to understand and do may things which pertain o the work of men, without becoming unwomanly Woman may find it to be an advantage to learn to use the more ordinary tools of a carpenter Page 60 Essay 2-1 Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America This who moved to the new suburbs were assured of an escape from the problems of poor health, social unrest, and vice associated with urban life Picturesque site planning and natural building materials evoked a retune to nature, to

a ;out innocence and an earlier stability The great migration began in the 1870s and gathered momentum as the century wore on In the decades after the Civil War, suburbs took on a new meaning and social organization Subdivisions of small or derate-sized lots, near transit lines, were intended to attract the families of salmon, schoolteachers, clerks and carpenters Page 61 Most of the new communities were implicitly segregated by income and ethnic group By no means were all suburbanites able to buy their houses Yet the move itself was considered crucial, whether the household had a lease or a mortgage, whatever size lot or caliber of suburb could be afforded The suburban home, how it was furnished, and the family life the housewife oversaw, contributed to the definition of ‘middle class' as much as the husband’s income did Victorian ideology perceived women and kids as especially close to nature much more so than men During the last decades of the 19th century, cult of domesticity reached its pinnacle Novels, poems, lithographs, children’s books and domestic guides extolled the virtues of domesticity so much that the good family and their suburban home became almost interchangeable concepts Victorian Americans worried about the rising divorce rate and the declining number of births among white women of the educated classes trend the called race suicide they recognized the restlessness of many homebound women, and a child’s desire for excitement that could lead that son or daughter astray It was fashionable for women to spend afternoons going about town enjoying theaters, museums, shopping or calling on one’s friends pastimes available in the city The streetcars that took husbands to work also carried their wives and daughters to the downtown corner With the expansions of the suburbs, concepts of the home as a private refuge, a place of peace and inspiration, a reward for diligence and thrift, became something more than abstract images The spheres of men and women, city and suburb, were cast as fiercely antagonistic to one another in every way Home was to be a setting of luxury and comfort, softness and frivolity, at once a place of refinement and exotica Page 62 A mother’s guiding clause and the indelible images of home were supposed to carry her son or daughter safely though the difficulties of adult life

The mother was responsible for education, as well as character training and social skills the home was the principal place for every aspect of this training The suburban home was part of a strat to keep kids far from the world of the city streets to ensure their entry into the proper, disciplined class of present and future suburbanites Artistic pieces the wife purchased scuptures vases chinoiserie all manner of bric-a-brac Since the mother bought to teach her kids values in and through the home, she spared no expense in acquiring beautiful works of art that were both interesting and instructive In order to make the home an alternative to the commercial world, the housewife had to become a diligent consumer Ironically, the home as haven from the world was actually filled with worldly goods, industrial products and fashionable details Each room with a specific function had its own aesthetic Page 63 It was primarily in well-to-do families that the husband and wife would keep separate rooms As the family size decreased, so did the pressure of domestic space separate rooms for each individuals were not considered necessary Within the home, there was also somewhere to retreat from the intensity of family life Names of these many rooms were a further statement about family life Essay 2.2 Marsh, Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity Page 64 Hingham argues that one of the most significant American cultural constructs at the turn of the century was a growing cult of masculinity attended by the insecurities of middle-class men about their own virility and manliness Beginning in the 1890s, Hingham argues the country witnessed a national “urge to be young, masculine and adventurous” when Americans rebelled against “the frustration, the routine, and th sheer dullness of an urban-industrial culture" growing popularity of boxing and football disaffection from genteel fiction Claims to find another ‘image of man' a contented suburban father, who enjoyed the security of a regular salary, a

predictable rise through the company hierarchy and greater leisure Cult of masculinity (model of) Masculine domesticity - hard to define, easier to say what it is not than what it is not equivalent to feminism not an equal sharing of all household duties nor did it extend to the belief that men and women ought to have identical opportunities in the larger society A MODEL OF BEHAVIOR IN WHICH father would agree to take on increased responsibility for some of the day-to-day tasks of bringing up children and spending their time away from work in playing with heir kids, teaching them, taking them on trips would make his wife his regular companion on evenings out HE WOULD TAKE A SIGNIFICANTLY GREATER INTEREST IN THE DETAILS OF RUNNING THE HOUSEHOLD AND CARING FOR THE KIDS THAN HIS FATHER WAS EXPECTED TO DO 3 conditions for emergence of masculine domesticity 1. an ideal of marriage that emphasized companionship instead of either patriarchal rile or the ideology of domesticity 1. both of which encouraged gender separation 2. an economic system that provided sufficient job security for middle-class men so that husbands could devote more attention to their families 3. a physical location in which the new attitudes toward family could find their appropriate spatial expressions Page 65 not until above 3 occurred then did the development of masculine domesticity was possible early 20th century During 2/3 of 19th century, the ideal family life had depended on the ideology of domesticity a social theory articulated most persuasively by Catharine Beecher in the 1840s Simply: “The isolation of women in the home away from full participation of society" Doctrine of separate spheres began to break down after the civil war as women entered the masculine world, men began to enter the sphere assigned to women By the 1890s, women advice-givers were arguing that men should heliport around the house and stop expecting their wives to wait on them male clubroom would rise again later, but for the moment suburban men sought their desire closer to home, in tennis and country clubs that welcomed the whole family, and in social groups that included their wives Page 66

How male advice changed Urged men to trade the burdens of patriarchal authority and work-induced separation from family life for emotional closeness to their wives and the pleasures of spending time with their children as companions Page 66-68 skipped...