Being a Father and a Soldier in the Civil War, 1861–1865

The fifth chapter depicts the conflicting demands addressed to young men as family fathers on the one hand and as citizen-soldiers on the other hand. It discusses the Civil War and its effects on fathers, mothers, and family life through close readings of the diary and letters of Confederate soldier John C. West, who saw himself as fighting this war for his family and his country. While West was scared to death by the bloody battles and the fierce fighting of the Civil War, he nevertheless romanticized the war as a struggle for southern family life and patriarchal masculinity in his diary and letters. He portrayed his service in the Confederate Army as fulfilment of his masculinity in the name of white womanhood, southern culture, and family life, a message he sought to send to his wife and, in particular, to his four-year-old son back home.

Conclusion

The brief concluding chapter wraps up the arguments made with regard to the politics of family and fatherhood in US history. It also connects the historical analyses of the past to the questions and issues of the present and thereby comments on the importance of history writing for how we see the world today and how we live our life.

Families, Fathers, and the Black Community, 1950–2010

Chapter 11 looks at an African American family in 1970s Watts after the civil rights movement and the Watts riots. Its main character is the slaughterhouse worker Stan from Charles Burnett’s independent film Killer of Sheep (1977). In this film, Burnett makes a powerful counterargument in the debate on the “dysfunctional black family,” which a decade earlier was described by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Johnson administration as being mired in a “tangle of pathology.” Stan is neither shiftless nor lazy but tries to get ahead and secure a decent living for his family. He endlessly struggles for the survival of his nuclear family but is constrained in his efforts and their success by the racist conditions of his life in 1970s America. The chapter approaches the massive debate on the black family and fatherhood in contemporary America through the film and its public reception, both in the 1970s and 1980s and after its re-release in 2007. Thus, the author uses the film to explore this discourse from the 1960s to today, from Patrick Moynihan to Barack Obama, and analyzes their comments on black families and fatherhood as well as those by their critics.

Fathers and the New Republic, 1770–1840

Chapter 1 covers the era of the American Revolution and the Early Republic. As this chapter lays the groundwork for the observations to come, it is the only chapter that has no single actor in its center, even though it very much revolves around the thoughts and writings of Founding Father John Adams. The chapter shows how new understandings of the family, its composition and role, developed with the American Revolution and how the two-generation family became a powerful tool in the governance of the new American republic. In particular the chapter explores how this new kind of family related to specific notions of fatherhood. It also points to ambivalences of this new republican ideal of “governing through the family”—ambivalences that still cause political anxieties today: many men did not live up to the demands addressed to them as fathers in a liberal society, so that the state or philanthropic welfare organizations were formed to take over. The chapter also discusses the persistence of violence in American families and institutions, even though the republican family ideal professed a family of love, harmony, and parental guidance.

Challenging Love, Marriage, and the Nuclear Family, 1820–1870

Chapter 2 zooms in on the ideal of a loving two-generation family and how it was shaped and embedded in the republican society and its structures. The chapter unfolds this story from a contemporaneous critical perspective by presenting it through the eyes of John H. Noyes, the leader of the Oneida Community, which provided a religious and sexual countermodel to life in a nuclear family. Yet by looking at Noyes and his utopian and seemingly progressive commune, the chapter unfolds the meanings and significance of religion and sex in the republic, and it also shows how patriarchal patterns persisted in the new American society. The chapter draws on Noyes’s many writings and the papers of the Oneida Community in the Syracuse University Library.

Fatherhood in World War II and the Cold War, 1940–1960

Chapter 10 turns to World War II and the Cold War, and it is one of two chapters in the book with a nuclear family, as commonly understood, at its center. If there ever was an age of the nuclear family, it was in the long 1950s with the expanding American consumer and Cold War culture. The chapter is written from the perspective of Tom Rath, the main character of a 1955–56 best-selling book and movie, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a character who became an iconic figure in public and sociological discourse immediately. The chapter shows how in the 1950s the heteronormative ideal of family, work, and consumption was praised louder than ever and at the same time blamed for paralyzing American men in the conformity trap of their suburban homes and their inner-city offices. Thus, again, the chapter revolves around conflicting demands addressed to American men, here to serve as a reliable father on the one side and as an energetic explorer on the other side. The author shows how these demands are expressed by ambiguous understandings of how American manhood should safeguard the stability and progress of American society.

Unemployed Fathers in the 1930s

The ninth chapter puts its focus on the relations among gender, fatherhood, labor, and breadwinning. Based on interviews conducted by sociologist Mirra Komarovsky with unemployed white family fathers, their wives, and their children in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1930s, the chapter explores the impact of the Great Depression on white lower middle-class families and asks how the nuclear family ideal and its gendered and generational family structures depend on patterns and practices of wage earning and breadwinning. In particular, the chapter juxtaposes fathers’ attitudes toward their unemployment and the Great Depression to statements made by their family members on the fathers’ unemployment and the new division of roles in the family. Here the chapter reveals that what was experienced as a severe and depressing crisis by most husbands obviously had the potential to open up opportunities for their wives, as power relations changed and the tables were turned.

Indigenous and Modern Fathers, 1890–1950

Chapter 8 relates nuclear family and fatherhood ideals to the history of the American Indian. It takes off from the “crisis” of modern fatherhood in early twentieth-century America that was seen as the consequence of constantly weakening ties between fathers and their families, seen as dangerous for the nation. A back-to-nature movement and a temporary “going native” of fathers and sons promised to provide a solution to this problem. In the early 1900s, when almost extinguished, American Indian men among all people were presented as role models to modern Anglo-American fathers. Indian fathers were taken as embodying a “naturalness” that was described as being at the heart of the relationship between fathers and sons. The protagonist of this chapter is Joe Friday, an Ojibwe who served as front man for the YMCA Indian Guides program. This most successful program was meant to bring together “tribes” of suburban fathers and sons playing Indian. Thus, based on files at the YMCA archives, the chapter shows how a stereotypical image of “the Indian” was employed to depict a bond between fathers, sons, and the family as natural and to overcome what was perceived as a crisis of fatherhood and modern family life in general.

Slavery, Family, and Fatherhood, 1830–1860

The third chapter explores the history of slavery. It is written from the perspective of the slave father Tom Jones and uses his slave narrative and his letters from the early 1850s as source material. The chapter shows how Jones as a slave father fights against his coercion into bondage and how he acts to take control over his life, obviously driven by an urge to have a family to love and to care for. Yet in presenting Tom Jones’s desires, thoughts, and actions, his slave narrative clearly draws upon the image of an ideal republican, Christian, industrious, and caring father and citizen. Thus, it presents to a white northern audience a black slave who deserves freedom because he knows how to employ his liberties for the betterment of himself, his family, and, after all, society. The chapter argues that the story of the slave’s efforts to care for his family and gain recognition as father make a compelling argument for the injustice and wrongfulness of slavery in general, while at the same time reinforcing the nuclear family ideal with all its normative power.

Introduction

A brief introduction outlines the architecture of the book: the significance of the family for the governing of American society, the analysis of discourses with a simultaneous focus on historical actors and their agency, the scrutiny of power relations in American history and society, the entanglement of close-ups and long shots in twelve separate yet interdependent chapters, and the presentation of a history of continuity and change.