Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Essay

But even May admits that images such as the bomb shelter do not always convey an accurate picture of reality, given that few Americans built such shelters in their homes, although the images of the media might suggest differently, and the way people respond to surveys does not always reflect their lived experience (May 107).

May's analysis thus seems to fall into validating 'Leave it to Beaver' cliches about the 1950s, even when her own data contradicts it. She does remind the reader that the image of the 1950s as normal and iconic is in error: "It was not, as common wisdom tells us, the last gasp of 'traditional' family life...it was the first wholehearted effort to create a home that would fulfill virtually all its members' personal needs through an energized and expressive personal life" in American history (May 11). Some of the most interesting parts of her book are those that do not deal with cultural images of the 1950s still popular today, such as the rise of therapy culture and psychoanalysis, which can be said to parallel similar movements in our own environment today. Therapy "offered private and personal solutions to social problems" just like turning to family to solve all of one's problems and to fulfill all needs, as opposed to the community or vocational life (May 11)

Overall, May's method of argument seems more poetic than substantiated by real facts. She writes: "As the chill of the Cold War settled across the nation, Americans looked toward the uncertain future with visions of carefully planned and secure homes, complete with skilled homemakers and successful breadwinners....the family...could protect the nation by containing the frightening potentials of postwar life" (May 90). But although the middle-class white respondents may have expressed a desire to nest, a belief in traditional gender roles, and a lack of interest on the part of the women in expanding their life opportunities, one cannot help ask if they were merely saying what they felt they should say, and following a cultural script, or if this really reflected their lives as well as the attitudes they should express on the surface. The pervasive image of the bomb shelter but the lack of real bomb shelters in American basements is an example of how the media portrayal of life does not always accurately mirror reality, and many women worked, even though they were denied the promotions and salaries extended to men. Granted, the conformity of response in the Kelly Survey to the biases of the gatherer of information may point to a cultural trend -- or to a simple, human tendency to agree and say what one 'should' say. But if the sexual lives of 1950s young people, or even the desires for women to expand their consciousness through work and learning were as perfectly 'contained' as May suggests remains questionable -- they may have appeared so in the media, but not in fact, and the rapid cultural shift in the 1960s to the Beatles, the Feminine Mystique, and other cultural movements suggests that more have been…