Suburban Lifestyle and Television
Few inventions have had as much effect on contemporary American society as television. Before 1945 the number of U.S. homes with television sets could be measured in the thousands. The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.
1956 Ford Commercial
In the 1950s, Americans loved their cars. Suburban living made owning a car a necessity. Most of the new suburbs, built in formerly rural areas, did not offer public transportation, and people had to drive to their jobs and to go shopping. Television became a powerful medium to advertise cars to consumers. Not just for transport, cars were marketed for fashion and fun. The advertising of the age was indicative of society’s materialistic mood. Women were frequently the target of advertising, as they were considered the main “shoppers” for the family and therefore the primary consumers. |
1957 Swiss Creme Sandwich Commercial
The majority of Americans accepted 1950s uniformity and prosperity and this acceptance was no more obvious than in gender roles in the 1950s. Commercials portrayed women as the perfect housewives. With soldiers returning home from the war, women who had been working during and before the war were expected to return to a more traditional role. The baby boom and the emergence of the nuclear family steered women towards a new expression of domesticity. One popular magazine of the time, Modern Women, explained that a woman could only truly be happy if she embraced her femininity and her womanly role. Commercials did an excellent job of communicating the social expectations placed on women in the 1950s. |
1959 newsreel of model homes in Denver, CO with fallout shelters
As the Cold War escalated throughout the 1950s, fear of the bomb and anxiety over the possibility of nuclear war drove many Americans to dig deep into the earth in an effort to survive what seemed at the time to be the inevitable nuclear attack from our enemies. Ordinary Americans built bomb shelters in their backyards, sometimes hiding them from their neighbors. In the new suburban communities, nervous families were taking survival into their own hands. Bomb shelters costing from $100 to as much as $5,000 sold fast. Some suburban divisions came with bomb shelters already constructed. |
1961 episode from Leave It To Beaver
By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing number of television stations in the country could watch any number of sitcoms. The power of television sitcoms cannot be over exaggerated, because it was through this media that American culture shaped its fifties family values. Leave It to Beaver was a sitcom about an inquisitive boy, Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver, and his adventures around his suburban neighborhood. The show has attained an iconic status in the US, with the Cleavers exemplifying the idealized suburban, white family. In a typical episode, Beaver got into some sort of trouble and then faced his parents for reprimand and correction. |