Women's Studies Commons^™

Painted Faces And Picket Fences: One Woman’S Confrontation With Her Role In Society In Post-World War Ii America, Jillian Mullen

Senior Honors Projects

To counteract the potential harm vulnerable young men and women faced in a new age of postwar economic and social uncertainties, couples turned to the suburbs in unprecedented numbers as a place to raise their children in a safe and secure environment in the 1950s. Many turned to the home as an escape: a world in which they could live unaffected by the threat of nuclear war, radical politics (i.e. Communism) and more liberal definitions of female sexuality. Family was, in their minds, the one thing all Americans could rely on to be a guaranteed presence in their everyday lives. …