By: Elaine Tyler May

Return to "The Postwar Years"

In 1951, Charles Walter Clarke, a Harvard physician and executive director of the American Social Hygiene Association, published a major article in the Journal of Social Hygiene on the dangers of atomic attack. "Following an atom bomb explosion," he wrote, "families would become separated and lost from each other in confusion. Supports of normal family and community life would be broken down . . . there would develop among many people, especially youths . . . the reckless psychological state often seen following great disasters." The preparedness plan that Clarke devised to cope with this possibility centered not on death and destruction or psychological damage but on the potential for sexual chaos. "Under such conditions," he continued, "moral standards would relax and promiscuity would increase ." Clarke predicted that such postbomb sexual promiscuity would lead to a "1,000 percent increase" in venereal disease unless "drastic preventive measures" were taken. He then called upon public health professionals to help ensure that in the event of an atomic attack there would be adequate supplies of penicillin on hand in potential target areas, and "strict policing . . . vigorous repression of prostitution, and measures to discourage promiscuity, drunkenness, and disorder."

Clarke's preoccupation with sexual chaos may seem rather absurd in the face of the incomprehensible horror of nuclear holocaust. Clearly, he did not represent mainstream medical opinion, since his organization had been preoccupied with venereal disease for decades. Nevertheless, his ideas struck a responsive chord among many fellow professionals who shared his concern with sexual order in the atomic age. When he sent a draft of the article to over seventy experts in medicine and public health around the country, most responded that they shared his concerns and endorsed his preparedness plan. By linking fears of sexuality out of control with the insecurities of the cold war era, Clark articulated a symbolic connection that found widespread expression during these years, from professional writings to the popular culture. Indeed, he was one of many postwar experts who prescribed family stability as an antidote to these related dangers.

Historians should not be surprised to find fears over sexuality surfacing with the birth of the atomic age, for concern over the impending doom of the family has accompanied many crises in American history. Most scholars of the Progressive era, for example, have recognized that the combined forces of immigration, urbanization, and changing roles for women unleashed anxieties over sex and family life that motivated a great deal of reform activity. Progressivism lasted from 1900 to World War I and culminated in a number of measures intended to control these dangers, such as Prohibition, immigration restriction, women's suffrage, and the licensing and censoring of urban amusements. Presumably, by the 1920s the moral revolution had been institutionalized. Yet Clarke's article suggests that similar fears, coupled to the call for a renewed dedication to family life, had not died. Rather, the unresolved anxiety concerning modern sexuality and female roles continued into the postwar era as well.

Nor was Clarke's call for a revitalization of domesticity mere rhetoric, for it was accompanied by an astrounding rush into family life. Indeed, scholars have long noted the unprecedented rise in the marriage rate and the dramatic decline in the marriage age that occurred after World War II. At the same time, the birthrate climbed to a twentieth-century high, yielding an equally well-noted baby boom. In searching for an explanation for that change, scholars have usually argued that in the wake of a major depression and world war, Americans turned avidly to a newly affluent and secure home life. Yet this demographic explosion went far beyond what might be expected from a return to peace and prosperity. The trends appear especially perplexing when we consider the experiences of American women at the time. The female labor force expanded in the postwar years, providing a potential alternative to early marriage and child rearing. In addition, more women as well as men entered institutions of higher education. These opportunities, combined with the increasing availability of contraception, might have encouraged women--as they did in the sixties and seventies--to postpone marriage and motherhood in order to pursue educational or occupational goals. Why, then, after World War II did they rush into marriage and childbearing instead? This study seeks to answer that question by exploring a previously unrecognized facet of the postwar era: that profound connections existed among anxieties over sexual roles, the cold war, and a burgeoning family ideology.

In exploring that connection between private and public life, the writings of professionals offer a useful starting point. Whether or not all Americans read or believed the professionals, there can be little doubt that postwar America was the era of the expert. By articulating cultural norms, they expressed as well as helped to shape American values. Of course, Americans had valued expertise for many decades, but the postwar years marked a heightening of the status of the professional. Armed with scientific techniques and presumably inhabiting a world above popular passions, the experts had brought us into the atomic age. Physicists developed the bomb, strategists created the cold war, and scientific managers built the military-industrial complex. Science and technology seemed to have invaded virtually every aspect of life, from the most public to the most private. Whether in medicine, child rearing, or even the intimate areas of sex and marriage, expertise gained legitimacy as familiar, "old-fashioned" ways were called into question. As the readers of Look magazine were assured, there was no reason to worry about radioactivity, for if ever the time arrived when you would need to understand its dangers, "the experts will be ready to tell you."

Americans consulted experts not only in print but also in person. One recent study by a team of sociologists examined the attitudes and habits of over 4,000 Americans in 1957 and found that reliance on expertise was one of the most striking developments of the postwar years. Long-term individual therapy also reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1950s; fourteen percent of the population said they had sought the help of professionals--lawyers, clergy, social workers, psychiatrists, and the like--at some point in their lives. The authors concluded, "Experts took over the role of psychic healer, but they also assumed a much broader and more important role in directing the behavior, goals, and ideals of normal people. They became the teachers and norm setters who would tell people how to approach and live life.... They would provide advice and counsel about raising and responding to children, how to behave in marriage, and what to see in that relationship.... Science moved ill because people needed and wanted guidance." As other studies confirmed these findings, it seemed evident that people were quick to seek professional help for their personal problems. Clearly, when the experts spoke, postwar Americans listened.

Yet in spite of public perceptions of aloofness and abjectivity, professionals themselves were not far removed from the uncertainties of the day. Rather, they groped for appropriate ways to conceptualize and resolve them. Frequently, they framed public problems in terms of the family. For these experts, public problems thus merged with private ones, and the family appeared besieged as never before. The Massachusetts Society for Social Health, for example, focused its 1951 meeting on defense. It featured a panel discussion, "Social Hygiene in Total Mobilization." Bringing together physicians, clergy, social workers, military officers, and civil defense administrators, the Advisory Committee on Defense Activities outlined several areas for discussion, including "promiscuity and prostitution." The society saw that the increasing expression of female sexuality and women's entering the paid labor force were two sides of the same dangerous coin. The implicit criticism of both women's sexuality and employment was aimed at married as well as single women mingling in the world of men. Inside and outside the home, women who challenged traditional roles and restraints placed the security of the nation at risk. The experts warned that young women were drawn to public amusement areas, which would lead them to sexual promiscuity, while the employment of married women led to "unsupervised hollies where both parents are working." The society cited both trends as major causes for the decline of sexual morality among youth and a weakening of the nation's moral fiber at a time when the country had to be strong.

Despite warnings such as these, women remained in the paid labor force after the war, most notably vast numbers of married women who had joined the ranks of the employed for the first time. Yet anxiety continued to surround working women, especially since an essential ingredient in winning the cold war was presumably the rearing of strong and able offspring. Indeed, among many experts, the influx of women into jobs revived an older eugenic cry of "race suicide," a concern expressed by numerous observers who failed to notice that the baby boom was well under way. One scholar at Stanford University reported that the "talented" Americans were reproducing at a very low rate. Presumably, there would be a critical shortage of "talented "" scientists and experts to sustain American technical superiority and world leadership. In response, a writer in the Ladies Home Journal complained that the perceived failure of the educated to reproduce adequately undoubtedly has to do with the so-called "emancipation" of women. Every field is open to women today, and every year thousands of women leave our colleges and universities determined to make careers for themselves. They often marry, but find reasons to postpone having children. Often Nature, as well as birth control measures, assist them in this. Women who lead very active lives, under conditions of nervous stress and strain, often do not conceive, and when they do, they miscarry. These women are violating their own biological natures; and for this they pay a heavy price........The Feminist movement was an attempt to break from, and into a "man's world", and in the process, through envy, accepting to an alarming extent the values of men.

At the same time, many experts saw that the combined dangers of race suicide, sexual promiscuity, and careerism might be avoided by adhering to traditional family values. Above all, the containment of premarital sex was central to this effort. Although the idea of chastity certainly was not new in these years, the behavior advocated for achieving it was. Unlike the authors of the prescriptive literature of the past who called for the repression of sexual desires, the postwar experts recognized that premarital sexual experimentation was taking place to such an extent that calls for abstinence would lie futile. The goal now was to teach young people already indulging in "petting" how to achieve restraint and keep sex under control. Even the nicest outspoken advocates of heartily sexual expression, such as the noted physician Mary Calderone, advised young people to save intercourse for marriage. It is also worth noting that, for her advocacy of sex education, Calderone was labeled a "communist." One method of containing sex was through elaborate courtship etiquette. Dating became a ritual in itself. Until the mid-1950s, the term did not even appear in the guide to periodic literature, and only a few articl es were listed under the heading "courtship." After that time, however, it became a major category, with a proliferation of articles telling the do and dont's of dating. Experts repeatedly explained that it was up to young women to "draw the line" and exercise sexual restraint thereby safeguarding the stability of their future families.

Nevertheless, public health professionals, clergy, social workers, and popular NVl writers realized that appeals to moral rectitude and patriotism were not likely to eradicate sexuality among young people. The best way to contain sex w as through early marriage. Sex among young people would not be dangerous if the young people were married. Hence, for the first time in the postwar years, writers of prescriptive literature began to advocate early marriage as the prerequisite for a health y family and sexual life. As one professional explained, "Psychologists observe increasing difficulties of sexual abstinence for those who have not trained themselves in self-control and filled their lives with absorbing purposes and activities to th e exclusion of sexual experience.... Marriage is better late than never. But early marriage gives more opportunity for happy comradeship, mutual developing and physical adjustment, for having and training children, building a home, promoting family life as a community asset, and observing one's grandchildren start their careers."

Most guidelines gave twenty-one as a healthy age for marriage, and public opinion polls indicated that most Americans agreed. Moreover, it was the woman's responsibility to achieve it. One typical guidebook, entitled Win Your Man and Keep Him, stressed the need for young women to cultivate good looks, personality, and cheerful subservience. The authors advised, "If you are more than 23 years old . . . perhaps you have begun to wonder whether Mr. Right would ever come along for you. Your chances are still good; you can increase them appreciably by taking actions which this book advocates." Another text offered a similar rational, scientific formula: "A girl who reaches the middle twenties without a proposal ought to consider carefully whether she really wishes to remain single. If she does not, she should try to discover why marriage hasn't come her way, and perhaps take steps to make herself more interesting and attractive."

In order to provide this domestic quest with a sense of urgency, women's domestic roles needed to be infused with national purpose. It was not the first time that motherhood provided the female version of civic virtue. Indeed, as Linda Kerber has shown, ever since the era of the American Revolution, the nation's political ideology has held a special place for women as the nurturers and educators of future citizens. This idea of republican motherhood held unique power in the nineteenth century, when women were not allowed to vote but were encouraged to exercise their civic responsibility through enlightened motherhood. In the post-World War II years, this dimension of female domesticity took a new form to fit the cold war. One way to add new purpose to women's domestic role was to provide the family with special functions to deal with the possibility of nuclear war. Domestic responsibilities based on expertise might also serve to give women in the home an elevated role at one with national purpose, much as their work in defense industries during the war had served a patriotic cause. Experts called upon women to embrace domesticity in service to the nation in the same spirit that they had come to the country's aid by taking wartime jobs. To meet the challenge of the postwar era, women were to marshal their energies into a "New Family Type for the Space Age.

Fuller's experience watching the blast led her to develop a program of "Home Protection and Safety." With chilling cheerfulness, she called for "positive action instead of negative" to overcome anxiety about the new age: "I always like to do something on a positive basis and this new threat of the H-bomb certainly gives us an opportunity." She was critical of women's groups that opposed the tests, such as the American Association of University Women, and urged them instead to contribute to preparedness. Women should draw on their unique domestic expertise to find new roles suited to the cold war. Home nursing was one important area. Mothers could learn first aid in order to enhance and professionalize their nurturing role. In the event of a nuclear attack, they would then, presumably, be equipped to tend to in injured family members. Another skill to cultivate was the power of persuasion. They should convince public officials to become interested in civil defense by approaching them "in your own feminine way--but never be belligerent, please." Fuller appealed to rural as well as urban housewives, and particularly to church women: "It's second nature for them to put on large dinners. Aren't they just perfect naturals for our mass feeding groups?" Along with learning how to feed the survivors of a nuclear attack, women had to teach the children, too: "Civil defense training is almost akin to religious training.... We must teach our children protection.... A mother must calm the fears of her child. Make a game out of it: Playing Civil Dfense."

The campaign appealed to time-honored values and rested on conservatism and nostalgia. Evoking memories of a simpler past, the slogan read, "Grandma's pantry was always ready. She was ready when the preacher came on Sunday or she was ready when the relatives arrived from Nebraska. Grandma's Pantry was ready--Is Your Pantry Ready in Event of Emergency? Drawing on traditional virtues to face the unthinkable, the brochure featured a picture of an old-fashioned and well-supplied kitchen and included a long list of foods, canned goods, medical supplies, and other helpful items such as first-aid kits, soap, candles, buckets, and pet foods. Instructions taught women to rotate canned goods regularly, change bottled water every three months, and wrap glass items for protection: "With a well-stocked pantry you can be just as self-sufficient as Grandma was. Add a first aid kit, flashlight, and a portable radio to this supply, and you will have taken the first important step in family preparedness."

Grandma's Pantry was only one way women could draw on their traditional skills to protect their families in the face of an atomic blast. There were also a number of widely publicized disaster feeding drills that took place around the country. Women were instructed in the art of cooking with makeshift utensils, "how to use this and that to make do with bricks and rubble and grates that you might find so that you could cook." Women were assured that, if they learned first aid, home nursing, fire fighting, and how to supply a bomb shelter, they could face the danger of an atomic attack without fear. Fuller taught women how to construct simple shelters in their basements from a large board leaning against a wall. To underscore the importance of this project, she showed detailed photographs taken at the Nevada test site which depicted child- sized mannequins under shelters still standing after the blast, while those outside the lean-tos were maimed.

high school. The reason for this concern was articulated by the authors:

Early in January, 1957, Russia exploded an atomic bomb, and American scientists monitored its fallout of fission products. Non-stop simulated bomber flights in the upper atmosphere were now reported by the U.S. as traveling around the world in about forty-five hours. Trouble arose in the Middle East. Hungary broke into revolution. Then came Sputnik, space vehicles, ICBM's and crash programs for training more scientists. The world is like a volcano that breaks out repeatedly.... The world approaches this critical period with a grave disruption of the family system.... The new age demands a stronger, more resolute and better equipped individual.... To produce such persons will demand a reorganization of the present family system and the building of one that is stronger emotionally and morally.

Here, we come to the heart of the concern, for it was not just the cold war that worried these professionals, but the "grave disruption of the family system." The key to successful families, the authors concluded, was moral homes in which men a nd women adhered to traditional gender roles. Even civil defense strategies infused the traditional role of women in the home with new meaning and importance, which would in turn help to fortify the homes as a place of security amid the cold war. In the ultimate chaos of an atomic attack, appropriate gender roles would presumably prevail. A 1950 civil defense plan put men in charge of such duties as fire fighting,, rescue work, street clearing, and rebuilding, while women were to attend to child care, hospital work, social work, and emergency feeding.. Above all, women, as professionalized homemakers, would fortify the home as a place of safety, In addition, parents should set good examples for their children, stay together and not divorce, and associate with like-minded families who shared common values and moral principles. Stable families conforming to respectable behavior held the key to the future. In keeping with the American tradition of republican motherhood, it was up to women to achiev e successful families: if they fulfilled their domestic roles as adapted to the atomic age, they would be able to rear children who would avoid juvenile delinquency, stay in school, and become future scientists and experts to defeat the Russians in the cold war.

Nowhere is the image of the home as bulwark against the dangers of the atomic age more vivid than in the bomb-shelter boom of the postwar years. Jean Fuller and the civil defense establishment were not the only ones preoccupied with family bomb shelters. Contractors commercialized the idea by creating a variety of styles and sizes to fit consumer tastes, from a "$13.50 foxhole shelter" to a "$5,000 deluxe 'suite' with telephone, escape hatches, bunks, toilets, and geiger counter." These private shelters symbolized family security and togetherness in the face of a frightening world. The popular press poured out numerous articles on the uses of home bomb shelters during peace as well as war, which centered on women's homemaking tasks. As one woman wrote of her new shelter, "It will make a wonderful place for the kids to play in. And it will be a good storehouse, too. I do a lot of canning and bottling, you know." Similarly, the New York Times reported that a boom in rural real estate was occurring because the countryside offered the appeal of escape from nuclear attack and a retreat into a vision of old- fashioned family life--much like Grandma's Pantry.

In these ways, civil defense merged with widespread popular wishes for family security. Frequently, creators of popular culture portrayed marriage itself as a refuge against danger. In one of the most explicit symbolic representations of this fusion, Life magazine featured a newlywed couple about to descend into their own new bomb shelter just after their wedding. Under the boldface headline that proclaimed "Their Sheltered Honeymoon," a large photograph depicted the smiling young couple seated in front of their shelter, where they spent the next two weeks. Even their honeymoon was purposeful, setting the tone for what promised to be a life of usefulness. For, even in their newlywed bliss, they were advancing the cause of science and civil defense. As Life noted, "Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Minonson this month subjected their budding marriage to the strain of 14 days (the crucial period of fallout danger) of unbroken togetherness in a 22-ton steel and con crete 8 x 11-foci shelter twelve feet underground. When they emerged last week the Minonsons were in fine spirits and the stunt had produced sonic useful evidence on underground survival."

By coping with the threat of nuclear war through familiar and tangible realities suck as Grandma's Pantry, a retreat to rural life, or home shelters, civil defense strategies served to tame fears of the atomic age by linking survival and security to tradi tional family values. In keeping with these values much of tile postwar social science literature connected the functions of the family directly to the cold war. In one study funded by the Ford Foundations, two Harvard sociologists examined 60,000 " successful Americans families" to determine what made them successful.. Family success was defined in the study as the ability to keep children in school through high school. The reason for this concern was articulated by the authors: Early in January, 1957, Russia exploded an atomic bomb, and American scientists monitored it's fallout of fission products. Non-stop simulated bomber flights in the upper atmosphere were now reported by the U.S. as traveling around the world in about forty-five hours. Trouble arose in the Middle East. Hungary broke into revolution. Then came Sputnik, space vehicles, ICBM's and crash programs for training more scientists. The world is like a volvano that breaks out repeatedly...The world approaches this critical period with a grave disruption of the family system...The new age demands a stronger, more resolute and better equipped individual...To produce such persons will demand a reorganization of one that is stronger emotionally and morally.

Here, we come to the heart of the concern, for it is not just the cold war that worried these professionals, but the "grave disruption of the family system." The key to successful families, the authors concluded, was moral homes in which men and women adhered to strict traditional gender roles. Even civil defense strategies infused the traditional role of women in the home with new meaning and importance, which would in turn help to fortify the homes a a place of security admis the cold war. In the ultimate chaos of an atomic attack, appropriate gender roles would presumable prevail. A 1950 civil defense plan put men in charge of such duties as fire fighting, rescue work, street clearing, and rebuilding, while women were to tend to child care, hospital work, social work, and emergency feeding. Above all, women, as professionalized homemakers, would fortify the home as a place of safety. In addition, parents should set good examples for their children, stay together, not divorce, and associate with like-minded families who shared common values and moral principles. Stable families conforming to respectable behavior held the key to the future. In keeping with the American tradition of republican motherhood, it was up to women to achieve successful families: if they fulfilled their domestic roles as adapted to the atomic age, they would be able to rear children whp would avoid juvenile delinquency, stay in school, and become future scientists and experts to defeat th Russians in the cold war.

So pervasive and lasting was the connection between fears of the atomic age and worries about disruptive sexuality that as late as 1972 a civil defense pamphlet published by the goverment actually personified dangerous radioactive rays as sexy female "bombshells". The pamphlet made explicit the message that sexually liberated women were potentially destructive creatures who might, like atomic energy, be tamed and domesticated for social benefit. To illustrate the dangers of fallout, the authors wrote; "Radioactivity is also energy - but this time the rays come invisibly, alpha, gamma, and beta rays cause varying degrees of silent damage. Alphas cannot penetrate, but it can irritate the skin: betas cause body burns; and gamms can go right through you - and thus damage cells, which can make you ill, or kill you. Like energy from the sun, these rays are potentially both harmful and helpful".

Beside this explanation was a drawing of the three "harmful and helpful" rays, personified as sexy and flirtatious women in seductive poses. The large-breasted battling beauties wore ribbons across their torsos as if they were beauty queens, with the names "Alpha," "Beta," and "Gamma" em blazoned across each figure's chest. On the following pages of the pamphlet, other drawings indicated how to find safety by avoiding or containing these dangers: mom, dad, and baby huddled together in a home bomb shelte r as chaos reigns above, and a detailed drawing of a well-equipped basement bomb shelter with "Home Sweet I Home"" tacked on the wall. Even though the fervor of the cold war had waned considerably by 1972, the images used as illustrations in this government pamphlet are powerful testimony to the symbolic connections among the fears of atomic power, sex, and women out of control. 20 In this vision of the atomic age family, women were the focus of concern: recognize their increasing sexual and economic emancipation but focus those energies within the family. Outside the home, they would yield a dangerous, destructive force. This subtle message was not so subtly expressed in the literature surrounding the cold war, civil defense, and the family.

These images were not confined to the civil defense literature but surfaced throughout the wider culture. Appropriately, during these years, a slang term for a sexy women was a "bombshell." Although the term had been in use since the 1930s, female sexuality as a dangerous force found additional symbolic representation in World War II, when pilots named their bombers after their sweethearts and decorated their planes with erotic portraits. The wartime emergency called for fashion adaptations that would conserve fabric, giving rise to the two-piece bathing suit, which also appeared dangerous. The Wall Street Journal noted ominously that "textile savings has been effected in region of the midriff.... The difficulties and dangers of the situation are obvious." A photograph of Hollywood sex symbol Rita Hayworth was actually attached to the bomb dropped on the Bikini Islands. The island itself provided the name for the abbreviated swimsuit the female "bombshells" would wear. The designer of the revealing suit chose the name "bikini" to suggest the swimwear's explosive potential. 2 Similar images infused popular culture. Movies in the film noir genre portrayed more ominous visions of the destructive power of female sexuality. But this power was not so dangerous if it was contained and domesticated.

In response, symbols of sexual containment proliferated in other areas as well. Even the female fashions of the fifties reflected that change. Gone was the look of boyish freedom that characterized the flapper of the twenties, along with the shoulder-padded strength that appeared in fashions of the thirties and early forties. Now quasi-Victorian crinolines and frills were back, along with exaggerated bust lines and curves which provided an aura of untouchable eroticism. Female sexuality was once again pushed into stays, girdles, and padded bras which pinched waists and elevated breasts. But the body itself was protected in a fortress of undergarments warding off sexual contact but promising erotic excitement in the marital bed.

In marriage, however, female sexuality could be safely unleashed, where it would provide a positive force to enhance family life. Domesticity would not only protect the public world from chaos; it would infuse the private world with excitement. It is no wonder, then, that professionals attempted to promote a vision of the family that would harness the social, sexual, and political dangers of the day.24 At the same time, it appears that Americans at the time were not unresponsive to this prescriptive advice. The study of 30 postwar couples suggests that both sexes turned toward marriage as their own personal form of containment and that efforts to restrict sex to marriage may well have contributed to the drop in the marriage age during these years. Typical was the comment of one respondent who wrote, "The fact that we had been intimate, I am certain, made my mind set for marriage to him . . . made me feel I must marry this boy with whom I had been intimate." ; Another concurred:: "Probably because I became sexually dependent on my wife before marriage was one of the reasons I married her, and also my guilty feelings toward a terminated pregnancy was another reason for marrying. However, neither of these two reasons were good ones for getting married."

Yet a study of over four thousand adults in the period found that the majority believed that people who did not marry were sick, immoral, selfish, or neurotic. Women in particular frequently viewed homemaking as a career, much as the experts advocated. Many saw their domestic role as having significance beyond the walls of their individual homes. As one woman in a postwar survey wrote of her decision to give up an outside career, "I think I have probably contributed more to the world in the life I have lived." Another former career woman wrote of her new position as wife and mottler: " The new career is equally as good or better than the old." Many men in the same survey claimed that their families gave them a sense of purpose in their lives; some said it inspired them to hold religious and patriotic values. One respondent actually described his family in quasi-cold war terms: it provided "a sense of responsibility, a feeling of bein g a member of a group that in spite of many disagreements internally always will face its external enemies together."

As the poll and survey data indicate, many undoubtedly believed in the formulas for successful family life expounded by experts. And no doubt because of the Depression and war, many focused their wishes for affluence and security on the home. Yet, equally important, the continuing anxiety surrounding women's changing sexual and economic roles helps explain the unprecedented rush into family life and the baby boom of the postwar era. Such concerns were reinforced by the rise of a domestic cold war ideology and by the culture surrounding it as well. Stable family life not only seemed necessary to national security, civil defense, and the struggle for supremacy over the Soviet Union; it also promised to connect the traditions of the past with the uncertainties of the present and the future.

The postwar experts articulated these connections in concrete and symbolic terms. They expressed sentiments that were widely shared throughout the population as a whole and gave substantial clues to what drove Americans into young marriage and pronatalism .. Although further research is necessary before we will fully understand the origins and implications of this connection, it is clear that the ramifications are still with us today. For, as the twentieth-century moral revolution revived in the sixties, traditional gender roles and sexual mores once more came under attack. Reversing the immediate postwar trends, the marriage age began to climb, the birthrate dropped, and premarital sex increased anion" youth. In addition, the long-dormant fe minist movement emerged as a powerful force, assaulting the domestic ideology that had been prevalent since 1945. Nor did critics of the postwar status quo fail to see the connection between this moral experimentation and its implicit questioning of cold war assumptions. To cite one famous example, Stanley Kubrick,, in his very successful film, Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, equated the madness of the cold war with Americans' unresolved sexual neruoses.

It is also no accident that amid this attack on traditional sexual roles and militant anticommunism, the Moral Majority emerged in the 1980s as a powerful political force with the dual aim of reviving the cold war and reasserting the ideology of domesticity. The most vigorous opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, for example, was Phyllis Schlafly. Sounding remarkably similar to Jean Fuller in the 1950s, Schlafly began her career as an avid cold warrior and stated in 1983 that "the purpose of nuclear weapons is to protect lives." Her concerns move easily from attacking Henry Kissinger for being too soft on communism, to opposing the ERA for its alleged threat to the family, to pointing to herpes and AIDS as the most recent form of punishment for sexual promisciuity. In essence, as the cold war reaches new heights of reckless rhetoric in the 1980s, the incomprehensible is again reduced to the tangible. We have come full circle from Grandma's Pantry to four feet of backyard dirt as protection against a nuclear attack; from fire- fighting training for housewives to new civil defense home first-aid manuals, and from the call for penicillin in target areas to a new condemnation of female sexuality as leading to epidemic venereal disease. Although historians are still far from comprehending these complexities, it is clear that sex, women, and the bomb are still explosive issues.