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During its Second Red Scare (1947-1957) a distinct set of domestic policies and conservative social mores came to dominate popular culture and interpersonal relations in the United States.
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During its Second Red Scare (1947-1957) a distinct set of domestic policies and conservative social mores came to dominate popular culture and interpersonal relations in the United States.
In the aftermath of World War II, the birth rate spiked in the United States as millions of young men were discharged from the armed forces and began to establish new households. This Mid-20th century baby boom significantly increased the number of families in the United States.
Traditional explanations for the rise of this postwar family ideal focus on economic means: The GI bill increased soldiers' access to college education, greatly expanding college enrollment. In 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions. [1] The bill also increased access to low-interest home loans contributing to a large increase in home ownership: from 1944–1952, the Veterans Administration “supported nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans.” [1] However, closer examination shows that many people were left out of this new economic prosperity. Minorities who did not fit the ideal (including racial minorities, feminists, and homosexuals) were suppressed, unable to assert autonomy, and therefore contained.
African American men were eligible for GI Bill’s provisions and home loans, but many were prevented from buying houses in suburban areas because of redlining and other techniques of the racial segregation in the United States.
Other members of society who were excluded from the postwar ideal of middle-class employment and home ownership included, among others, women and Asian Americans. Women who had worked in factories to support the economy during World War II were pressured to leave the workforce and become housewives. Japanese Americans released from the World War II internment camps returned home to find their property confiscated.
 | This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: this is just ethnography, which says nothing about government policy.(June 2016) |
The G.I. Bill, formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans. The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, but the term "G.I. Bill" is still used to refer to programs created to assist some of the U.S. military veterans.
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing lifelong healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the country. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. The VA also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries.
Bikini Atoll, known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 1800s and 1946, is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km2) central lagoon. The Atoll is at the northern end of the Ralik Chain, approximately 530 miles (850 km) northwest of the capital Majuro.
The Culture of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th century in the United States. This value system emphasized new ideas of femininity, the woman's role within the home and the dynamics of work and family. "True women", according to this idea, were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The idea revolved around the woman being the center of the family; she was considered "the light of the home".
For the United States, 1945–1964 was a time of high economic growth and general prosperity. It was also a time of confrontation as the capitalist United States and its allies politically opposed the Soviet Union and other communist states; the Cold War had begun. African Americans united and organized, and a triumph of the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow segregation in the Southern United States. Further laws were passed that made discrimination illegal and provided federal oversight to guarantee voting rights.
The Fair Deal was a set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in 1945 and in his January 1949 State of the Union address. More generally, the term characterizes the entire domestic agenda of the Truman administration, from 1945 to 1953. It offered new proposals to continue New Deal liberalism, but with a conservative coalition controlling Congress, only a few of its major initiatives became law and then only if they had considerable GOP support. As Richard Neustadt concludes, the most important proposals were aid to education, national health insurance, the Fair Employment Practices Commission, and repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act. They were all debated at length, then voted down. Nevertheless, enough smaller and less controversial items passed that liberals could claim some success.
The term New Frontier was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Democratic slogan to inspire America to support him. The phrase developed into a label for his administration's domestic and foreign programs.
A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service". Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands.
The United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs deals with oversight of United States veterans problems and issues.
Edith Rogers was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who served as a Republican in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Until 2012, she was the longest serving Congresswoman and was the longest serving female Representative until 2018. In her 35 years in the House of Representatives she was a powerful voice for veterans and sponsored seminal legislation, including the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, which provided educational and financial benefits for veterans returning home from World War II, the 1942 bill that created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women's Army Corps (WAC). She was also instrumental in bringing federal appropriations to her constituency, Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. Her love and devotion to veterans and their complex needs upon returning to civilian life is represented by the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford Massachusetts that is named in her honor.
John Elliott Rankin was a Democratic politician from Mississippi who served sixteen terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1921 to 1953. He was co-author of the bill for the Tennessee Valley Authority and from 1933 to 1936 he supported the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which brought investment and jobs to the South.
The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It is responsible for administering the department's programs that provide financial and other forms of assistance to veterans, their dependents, and survivors. Major benefits include Veterans' compensation, Veterans' pension, survivors' benefits, rehabilitation and employment assistance, education assistance, home loan guaranties, and life insurance coverage.
The American GI Forum (AGIF) is a congressionally chartered Hispanic veterans and civil rights organization founded in 1948. Its motto is "Education is Our Freedom and Freedom should be Everybody's Business". AGIF operates chapters throughout the United States, with a focus on veterans' issues, education, and civil rights. Its two largest national programs are the San Antonio-based Veterans Outreach Program, and the Dallas-based Service, Employment, Redevelopment-Jobs for Progress, Inc. (SER). The current National Commander is Lawrence G. Romo.
Liberalism in the United States is based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, the right to due process, and equality under the law are widely accepted as a common foundation of liberalism. It differs from liberalism worldwide because the United States has never had a resident hereditary aristocracy, and avoided much of the class warfare that characterized Europe. According to American philosopher Ian Adams, "all U.S. parties are liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratised [sic] Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism and the proper role of government."
The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 is Title V of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, Pub. L. 110–252 (text)(PDF), H.R. 2642, an Act of Congress which became law on June 30, 2008. The act amended Part III of Title 38, United States Code to include a new Chapter 33, which expands the educational benefits for military veterans who have served since September 11, 2001. At various times the new education benefits have been referred to as the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the 21st Century G.I. Bill of Rights, or the Webb G.I. Bill, with many current references calling it simply the new G.I. Bill. President George W. Bush signed H.R. 2642 into law on June 30, 2008.
In the United States, housing segregation is the practice of denying African Americans and other minority groups equal access to housing through the process of misinformation, denial of realty and financing services, and racial steering. Housing policy in the United States has influenced housing segregation trends throughout history. Key legislation include the National Housing Act of 1934, the G.I. Bill, and the Fair Housing Act. Factors such as socioeconomic status, spatial assimilation, and immigration contribute to perpetuating housing segregation. The effects of housing segregation include relocation, unequal living standards, and poverty. However, there have been initiatives to combat housing segregation, such as the Section 8 housing program.
The United States military formerly excluded gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians from service. In 1993, the United States Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, a law instituting the policy commonly referred to as "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT), which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. Although there were isolated instances in which service personnel were met with limited success through lawsuits, efforts to end the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving either legislatively or through the courts initially proved unsuccessful.
Maternalism is the public expression of domestic values associated with motherhood. It centers on the language of motherhood to justify a women's political activities, actions and validate state or public policies. Maternalism is an extension of "empowered motherhood." It defines itself as the extension of feminine moral values of nurturance and care and the home's social caring into a larger community. Under maternalism, the mother-child relationship is essential for maintaining a healthy society. All women are seen united and defined by their ability and shared responsibility to mother to all children. Using the foundations of motherhood, mothers within maternalism provide a service to the state or nation by raising "citizen-workers." 20th and 21st-century scholars have shed light on women activists in the context of maternalist politics focused on policies designed to benefit women and children, such as maternal and child health care programs, mother pensions like the ADC program and other various welfare programs. Some scholars consider maternalism to be part of feminist movements and ideologies. On the other hand, others consider it to be different from feminism due to some maternalists incorporating a shared characteristic that the male figure in the household should be the economic provider and that a woman's central role is as a mother.
In World War II, many working-age men were drafted into the armed forces to fight abroad. During this time, women were drafted in to take their places in factories and construction. When WWII ended, most men came home; while many were unable or unwilling to return to their old jobs, there was not the same urgency for women to be in the workplace. As such, society had to deal with new attitudes and expectations regarding women’s employment.
