Remember Rosie the Riveter? Women served on the homefront during WWII, performing many of the tasks left vacant as men went off to war. In the war era video seen below, Eleanor Roosevelt (then First Lady) celebrates the female contribution to the war effort. Aspects of this video are dated, including the language. But this newsreel shows the U.S. Zeitgeist at this unique era.
by Ralph LaRossa, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, Georgia State University
... I examined the culture and conduct of fatherhood from the early 1900s to the beginning of the Second World War. In a current project, I am studying fatherhood in the 1950s and am trying to get a sense of how involved fathers were with their kids back then. The work has been a journey of sorts for me, because I was a youngster in the 1950s, and am part of the cultural and behavioral fabric I now endeavor to understand.
