UNITED STATES HISTORY AND THE

CONSTITUTION

South Carolina Standard USHC-7.6Mr. Hoover

Abbeville High School

What were the causes and consequences of social and cultural changes in postwar America?

How did educational programs, consumer culture advances in medical and agricultural technology and expanding suburbanization help led to changes of standard of living?

In American society, how was the roles of women in the home and at work in changed?

Questions to Answer

As a result of World War II the United States entered a period of prosperity in the post-war period that was shared by many Americans.

Although the fight against communism at home and abroad threatened the practice of democracy, broad-based prosperity, and government programs helped to expand democracy.

Period of Prosperity

Government investment in educational programs expanded the middle class and narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor in the postwar period.

Veterans took advantage of the GI Bill [Servicemen’s Readjustment Act] to attend colleges and trade schools thus providing a more educated and skilled work force that would, in turn, promote economic growth in the postwar period.

GI Bill

The end of the Great Depression and World War II and the resulting prosperity of the 1950s contributed to an explosion in the birthrate.

This baby boom led to an increase in the number of school-aged children and placed a strain on the educational system so that new schools were needed.

Baby Boomers

The Cold War, intensified by the launch of Sputnik in 1957, resulted in an increased emphasis on quality education, especially in science and math.

Prosperity allowed young people to stay in school longer, at least through high school, and more young men and women attended college.

Quality Education

The GI Bill also made available federal loan guarantees to veterans buying homes or starting new businesses.

The wide availability of the automobile and the expansion of highways by the national government [Federal Defense Highway Act] during the Eisenhower administration accelerated the suburbanization.

Federal Defense Highway Act

Shopping malls, motels, and fast food restaurants followed.

The baby boom of the late 1940s and 1950s also contributed to the growth of suburbia.

As a result of the concentration of war industries in cities of the Northeast and the west coast, many African Americans moved from the South during the war and continued to move in the 1950s and 1960s to escape poverty and racism.

Modern World

These population shifts contributed to white flight from the cities that also spurred suburbanization.

As middle and upper class people moved to the suburbs, so did jobs and businesses, leaving the cities with high unemployment, limited services, and a shrinking tax base.

This set the stage for the race riots of the 1960s.

Suburbanization

Pent-up demand for consumer goods that were unaffordable during the Depression and unavailable during wartime created markets for a wide array of goods and services and helped to recreate a consumer culture.

The baby boom also contributed as parents bought items designed specifically for their growing families.

New Markets

Demand led to an increase in production, more jobs, and consequently an economic boom during the 1950s.

The Cold War contributed to economic growth as the government spent more money on weapons systems and growing defense industries hired workers.

Americans had the highest standard of living in the world by the end of the 1950s.

Economic Boom

The expanding consumer economy offered more jobs in ‘white-collar’ occupations such as clerical, professional or managerial positions in sales, advertising, insurance, and communications rather than traditional ‘blue-collar’ manufacturing jobs.

White Collar Jobs

As middle class Americans had more money to spend, businesses offered more products to buy and advertised through expanding print and television mediums as well as billboards along new highways.

Advertising

Television played a significant role in fostering the a national consumer culture and promoting a ‘buy now, pay later’ mentality based on a heavy use of credit cards, first introduced in the 1950s, which resulted in rising consumer debt.

Credit Cards

The postwar period also saw advances in medical technology that impacted the health of the American people.

Penicillin was used extensively during the war and stimulated the search for more antibiotics and other miracle drugs.

In the postwar period, scientists developed various vaccines to prevent diseases such as polio

Medical Advancements

Surgeons who had treated wounded soldiers came home to develop new surgical techniques including advancements in heart surgery.

These life-saving techniques impacted demographic patterns as the infant mortality rate fell and Americans lived longer.

Such changes profoundly impacted society and politics

Longer Life Expectancy

The demand for foodstuffs during the war and prosperity of the postwar period led to advances in agricultural technology.

The widespread use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers provided a greater array of foods and improved nutrition which further impacted demographics while fostering the consolidation of small family farms into large commercial farms.

Commercial Farms

Reliance on chemicals to increase crop yields also had a long-term environmental impact and resulted in environmental legislation in the 1970s and, eventually, a worldwide concern about global warming.

Environmental Legislation

The expansion of the role of women in the workplace during the war helped to lay the foundation for the women’s rights movement of

the postwar period. When the war ended women were displaced

from their wartime jobs by returning veterans.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, many women returned to the traditional roles of stay-at-home wife and mother.

Women in the Workplace

The consumer culture impacted the role of women as increasingly their role as the chief consumer of the family was emphasized through advertising.

Media, both television and print, glorified the role of the traditional homemaker.

Suburban living increased women’s sense of isolation and many found consumerism unfulfilling.

Stereotypes

Although forty percent of women held jobs outside of the home by 1960, their career opportunities were limited to nursing, teaching, domestic service, social work, retail sales and secretarial work.

Few women were promoted to managerial positions and women’s pay was a fraction of what men earned.

Glass Ceiling

As more young women graduated from college, they were frustrated by their inability to find and advance in jobs that matched their skills.

The publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan in the early 1960s helped launched the modern women’s rights movement

The Feminine Mystique