Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up Read Online Free PDF

rare moment to consider their role in the chain of generations of mothers and fathers, they often sensed a certain uniqueness in their experience. First, it gradually became evident that more of them were having children, and the numbers of children were larger in an American society that until recently had seemed to be moving toward fewer and later marriages, and fewer children. Second, they were being assured in books, films, and political speeches that their experience was vital to the nation’s welfare and future prosperity. Third, they were aware that demographic and technological changes were rapidly redefining the kind of life they would live and where they would live it. If Benjamin Spock opened a new frontier in the experience of parenting, a fast-talking, chain-smoking former naval construction engineer opened a new portal on the kind of home life where many of them would raise these new families. William Levitt’s transformation of a vast expanse of Long Island potato fields into a planned, child-friendly suburban community would inaugurate a new family experience for the Baby Boomers and their young parents.

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HOME AND FAMILY IN EARLY POSTWAR AMERICA
    ONE OF THE MOST endearing films of the immediate postwar era gained much of its box-office popularity by recounting a modern fairy tale in which the prize is not a throne or riches but a “castle” in a new form of community that would come to define a newly emerging American lifestyle.
Miracle on 34th Street
is a story of the hopes and dreams of a little girl, played by Natalie Wood, living in a Manhattan apartment with her single mother, a Macy’s employee played by Maureen O’Hara. Cautioned by her mother to be skeptical of belief in Santa Claus, the little girl is coaxed into revealing her one true wish by a department store Santa who calls himself Kris Kringle. Dolls, toys, and cycles hold little interest for a girl who dreams of escaping the restrictions of apartment life for a new home in the suburbs, preferably with a new father who will complete a traditional family. When Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is fired as Macy’s Santa and nearly committed to a mental hospital, a young bachelor lawyer played by John Payne choreographs a brilliant defense that acquitshis client and sparks the beginning of a romantic interest with the single mother. As mother, daughter, and bachelor drive home from a suburban Christmas morning celebration, Natalie Wood orders Payne to stop the car and runs across a lawn into her “dream home,” which is empty and for sale. Payne and O’Hara run after her and discover their love for each other in an empty living room that holds only the cane used by Kris Kringle. The “miracle” is an escape from Thirty-fourth Street and a new beginning in a new family and a suburban home.
    While few early postwar families could match the miraculous nature of this transition from urban crowding to a spacious suburban home, the film struck a major chord in the desire for young parents to establish themselves in a new frontier of lawns, picture windows, and barbeque pits—a lifestyle that seemed especially congenial to growing families of the new Baby Boom.
    Postwar suburban development had its antecedents in the rise of earlier “bedroom communities” adjacent to large cities. Earlier in the twentieth century, the emergence of railroads, trolley cars, and other forms of public transportation had allowed workers in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities to commute from suburban homes to downtown jobs. The depression and World War II, however, had brought suburban home construction nearly to a halt. Even in a more positive economic environment, early suburbs had often been tethered to rail lines, and huge swaths of land beyond the range of public transportation remained underutilized. Then, just as the G.I. Bill expanded veterans’ educational frontiers with its tuition grants and