The Guardians of Civilization: Neo-Republican Motherhood in Post-World War II
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Guardians of Civilization: Neo-Republican Motherhood in Post-World War II America, 1945-1963 A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Eryn M. Kane August 2013 © 2013 Eryn M. Kane. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled The Guardians of Civilization: Neo-Republican Motherhood in Post-World War II America, 1945-1963 by ERYN M. KANE has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Katherine Jellison Professor of History Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT KANE, ERYN M., M.A., August 2013, History The Guardians of Civilization: Neo-Republican Motherhood in Post-World War II America, 1945-1963 Director of Thesis: Katherine Jellison During World War II, American women entered the labor force and fulfilled masculine roles in both industry and the military. Yet the majority of American women remained within the home and the completion of daily domestic tasks were elevated to acts of patriotism. For women with families, precisely 1/3 of women war workers by the end of 1943, their most important duty to fulfill was that of motherhood.1 The association between women and participation in the war effort was not unique to this era but harkened back to the American Revolution. According to historian Joan R. Gundersen, “the only distinctly female form of patriotism [or political identity] available when the War of Independence began, was that of a mother‟s influence over a child to shape morals and patriotism.”2 This relationship between eighteenth century female citizenship and motherhood was most notably defined by historian Linda K. Kerber, under the term Republican Motherhood, and introduced to a broad readership in 1976. This thesis argues that J. Edgar Hoover revived Republican Motherhood—in a 1944 article for Woman’s Home Companion entitled “Mothers...Our Only Hope”—to reinforce traditional gender 1 Doris Weatherford, History of Women in America: American Women and World War II (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1990), 161. 2 Joan R. Gundersen, To Be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 206. 4 roles during World War II. Hoover‟s articulation of mother as the only hope for the nation‟s future echoed the eighteenth century belief that a citizen‟s political socialization began in childhood and was derived from a mother‟s instruction. Yet it was Hoover‟s belief that a mother was the true guardian of the nation that created a new interpretation of Republican Motherhood ideology. What I have termed neo-Republican Motherhood relegated women to the domestic realm to maintain a sense of normalcy and subdue anxieties over unintentional female advancement in the postwar era. Neo-Republican Motherhood did not reach its pinnacle until the early years of the Cold War. Through adherence to the ideology and the indoctrination of children in American virtues, women became the guardians of civilization—the bulwark against Communist subversion. The association of motherhood with national security confined women to the domestic realm and fostered feelings of frustration; these feelings ultimately led to the emergence of the second-wave feminist movement. 5 DEDICATION To the loving memory of my grandmother, Lois “Mae” Hiatt. The epitome of nurturing motherhood, her warmth is reflected in the character of her daughter and, for this, I am incredibly grateful. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Women in World War II ................................................................................. 16 Chapter 2: The Defense Decade ....................................................................................... 36 Chapter 3: WSP and Betty Friedan ................................................................................... 66 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 96 References ....................................................................................................................... 104 Appendix I: Even a Little Can Help A Lot-NOW .......................................................... 113 Appendix II: Of Course I Can ....................................................................................... 114 Appendix III: Life: The American Woman .................................................................... 115 7 INTRODUCTION Well-ordered home is my chief delight, and the affectionate, domestic wife, with the relative- duties which accompany that character, my highest ambition.3 -Abigail Adams to John Adams June 20, 1783 Carrying placards reading “Kill Bill 1776” and white crosses symbolic of gravestones, a group of American women identifying as The Mother‟s Crusade Against Bill 1776, picketed the White House on February 20, 1941.4 Singing “Our Boys Shall Not Lie in Foreign Graves” to the tune of “John Brown‟s Body,” over three thousand women over a two week period protested a United States House of Representatives bill designed to prepare America for potential entry into World War II.5 Founded by three Southern California mothers of draft age sons—Frances Sherill, Mary Sheldon, and Mary Ireland— in the wake of Adolf Hitler‟s German invasion of Poland in 1939, the National Legion of Mothers of America (NLMA) assembled to protest “any attempt to send [their] sons to fight on foreign soil.”6 Composed of mostly white upper- and middle-class, middle-aged women, the NLMA grew out of the right-wing America First Movement. Operating independent of the America First Movement, as a decentralized confederation of nationwide groups, the NLMA employed maternal imagery and rhetoric to advance the 3 Abigail Smith Adams to John Adams, June 20, 1783, in Letters of Mrs. Adams, The Wife of John Adams, 3rd ed. vol. 1, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1841), 208. 4 “Mothers Picket White House to Protest Bill 1776,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 21, 1941, 2. 5 Known as Lend-Lease, the bill was created to aid Britain‟s efforts in World War II, allowing the nation to purchase arms on credit or borrow them from the United States for the duration of the war. See Ibid. and Laura McEnaney, “He-Men and Christian Mothers: The America First Movement and Gendered Meanings of Patriotism and Isolationism,” Diplomatic History vol. 18 (Winter 1994): 52. 6 Glen Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mother’s Movement and World War II (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 45. 8 goals of American neutrality and isolationism.7 Defining patriotism as adherence to traditional gender roles— man as breadwinner and woman as mother— and the protection of the family unit, the mother coalition argued against involvement in a war to “sacrifice American soldiers and interests to an ill-gotten internationalist foreign policy agenda.”8 For both the America First Movement and the NLMA, true patriotism was not involvement in a foreign war to make the world safe for democracy—as stipulated by former President Woodrow Wilson—but as isolationism in the preservation of home and the American family.9 The larger movement‟s association between patriotism and the protection of the family unit was a product of eighteenth-century American political ideologies that identified the domestic realm as a fundamental institution of democracy and the breeding ground for responsible citizenship. According to historian Laura McEnaney in her analysis of America First movement strategies, American isolationism was more than a foreign policy position for its female members. In McEnaney‟s view, isolationism “was a philosophy that defended the rights of families and validated the insight and experience of motherhood as a political force for [American interests] and the preservation of democracy.”10 7 By 1940 NLMA chapters existed in thirty-nine states and the founding Los Angeles branch claimed a membership of over 75,000 women. Joining the NLMA were other mothers‟ organizations in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York. Altogether, it is estimated that five to six million women across the nation claimed membership to a mothers‟ organization to protest American involvement in World War II. See Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 23. 8 McEnaney, “He-Man and Christian Mothers,” 48, and Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism, 23. 9 McEnaney, “He-Man and Christian Mothers,” 48. 10 Ibid., 53. 9 The NLMA‟s adoption of a maternal framework to oppose American involvement in World War II was significant in that it allowed the movement a platform to challenge effectively United States foreign policy. Although the movement lost public support in the wake of the Japanese bombing of the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, ending United States isolationism in the global conflict, the framing of patriotic duty enshrined in maternal obligations to the protection of children made female political