Die USA durchliefen im 20. Jahrhundert einen enormen sozialen Wandel, im Zuge dessen auch Familienwerte und Geschlechternormen neu ausgehandelt wurden. Die Autorinnen und Autoren analysieren die damit einhergehende Veränderung von Weiblichkeits- und Männlichkeitskonzepten sowie von Mutter- und Vaterrollen. Am Beispiel von Immigration, Jugendkriminalität, Wohlfahrtspolitik, Reproduktion und Medien liefern die Beiträge ein anschauliches Bild von der Bedeutung der Familie als nationaler Kerneinheit.

ContentsIntroduction: Inventing the "Modern American Family":Family Values and Social Change in 20th Century United StatesIsabel Heinemann7Section I: Building the Nation: The American FamilyNationalist Middle-Class Women, Memory, and ConservativeFamily Values, 1890-1945Simon Wendt31"Americanization through Homemaking": Mexican AmericanMothers as a Major Factor in Americanization ProgramsClaudia Roesch59Mothering the Nation, Unmothering the Self: New Women andMaternal Narratives in the Progressive EraBarbara Antoniazzi82Section II: Social Experts and the American Family"Healthy" Men make Good Fathers: Masculine Healthand the Family in 20th Century AmericaTracy Penny Light105Social Experts and Modern Women's Reproduction: From "Working Women's Neurosis" to the Abortion Debate, 1950-1980Isabel Heinemann124Section III: Failing Parents and Problematic Youth"The Enemy Within": African American Motherhood and the"Crack Baby Crisis"Anne Overbeck155Looking for Fathers in the Postwar U.S. Foster Care SystemCatherine E. Rymph177"But recall the kind of parents we have to deal with": JuvenileDelinquency, Interdependent Masculinity and the Government ofFamilies in the Postwar U.S.Nina Mackert196Section IV: Fatherhood / Motherhood and the Media"You be a man if you can, Stan": Family Life and Fatherhood inCharles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977)Jürgen Martschukat223Is Mom to Blame? Anti-Communist Law Enforcement and theRepresentation of Motherhood in Early Cold War U.S. FilmOlaf Stieglitz244Family Man: The Popular Reception of Home Improvement1991-1992, and the Debate about FatherhoodAndre Dechert265Bibliography289Contributors326Index330