(The Invention of) Traditional Family Values
California’s recent passage of a gay marriage ban suggests that many Americans subscribe to the idea of the “traditional” family — caregiver mom, breadwinner dad, and 2.5 children. But whose tradition is it, really? In this hour, the Guys hear dueling viewpoints — first from Focus on the Family, and then from a Columbia University historian of families. Historian Marie Jenkins Schwartz discusses the pressures and triumphs of enslaved families, and Stephen Talbot, who played Gilbert on Leave it to Beaver, talks about what it was like to grow up in the iconic American family.
Show Highlights
Family: Myth v. Reality
Historian Steven Mintz busts some myths about “traditional” family values and their so-called “Golden Age” – the 1950s. He argues that contrary to popular belief, American families are more stable now, on the whole, than they’ve ever been.
Leave it to Gilbert
Filmmaker and former child actor Stephen Talbot, who played Beaver’s friend Gilbert on Leave it to Beaver, tells the History Guys what it was like growing up in the quintessential American family.
Related Links
- Read Stephen Talbot’s article, “Living Down Beaver”
- Find out “Why Children Need Father Love and Mother Love,” by Glenn Stanton
- Learn more about Steve Mintz’s “Family Images and Realities”
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US History Survey Class: Coventry University 2011-2012 « Andrew Smith's Blog :
[...] (The Invention of) Traditional Family Values http://backstoryradio.org/the-invention-of-traditional-family-values/ John Lewis Gaddis “The Origins of the Cold [...]
Quote -- July 5, 2011 @ 9:56 am
Please check your pronunciation of
Quoteuclear. Eisenhower got it wrong and set a bad example, Bush II of course got it wrong, Obama gets it right: noo klee are.
Please check the pronunciation of \nuclear.\ Preferred is \noo klee are.\
QuoteI’ve just learned about your show and I’ve been listening to
podcasts. In the show about family values there was a fair
amount of discussion about how much shorter lives were in
the 18th century and how that made marriage-for-life not
really for all that long on the average and how there was really
no chance for 3-generation households.
My impression had been that while life expectancies definitely
were lower, this was largely related to infant mortality, plus
disease, violence, accidents, etc. But all of these together don’t
mean that old folks were entirely unknown. I’m sure lots of
children didn’t have any living grandparents but wouldn’t
many have at least one? Especially given younger ages
of parenting?
Thanks!
QuoteInfant mortality was certainly crucial, but so was child-bearing for women & various afflictions (yellow fever epidemics, etc.) for everybody. Old people (including me!) constitute a growing demographic, but were comparatively rare in the early period. You might check out David Hackett Fischer’s classic Growing Old in America (1977) for fascinating discussion of attitudes toward old folks (\angels\!) in the old days. The scholarship of the nw old \new\ social history of colonial New England showed that the \extended\–multi-generational–family was largely mythic.
QuoteA look at old graveyards in New England, for instance those in Concord, Massachusetts, gives a realistic picture of what family realities often were in the good old days. A gravestone with a man’s name is often surrounded by stones for more than one wife (not simultaneous and often short-lived) and several for infants or young children. Not exactly a big, old-fashioned, happy family.
QuotePlease keep me on your list.
QuoteAfter talking about the families of slaves, Brian asked Ed and Peter about the difficulty if dealing with such a horrific issue as part of their daily work. As stomach-turning as it is, I agree that we must continue to examine this part of our history in order to learn from it.
Having lived in Germany, I visited several former Nazi concentration camps, and was surprised to find that school children are regularly taken on field trips to these historical sites. As ghoulish of an experience as it is, I have never seen such as impressive effort to learn from history – they make every effort to ensure that these horrors don’t fade away with time and become disembodied concepts in a textbook.
In contrast, I remember visiting an historical farm estate house near Lexington Kentucky, and found that they had removed the chains from the walls of the slave quarters in fear of offending some visitors. Quite a different philosophy of honoring the history of those who suffered.
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