Throughout history, the state had imposed government policies and political ideologies affecting the family, many of which have perpetuated traditional gender roles. Coincidentally, my blog posts during this last year have delved into topics concerning this issue.
My first blog post for 2021, “Eleanor Roosevelt, The Road to Equality” (which I co-wrote with Dhritiman Banerjee) was a story to pay tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt on International Women’s Day. The story began with the discovery of a letter written by ER (as she was often referred to) to a female journalist who also appeared to be her close friend (in real life, ER was once very close to, or may have been in a relationship with, a female American journalist).
The story highlights ER’s career. She was an advocate of women’s right to work and to serve in policymaking positions. She had tried to use her influence, among other means, through her appointment as chair of President Kennedy’s new Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW). When she interviewed Kennedy, she reminded him of the fact that the country lacked women in policymaking positions and that his administration should make special efforts to change this situation. However, ER had passed away in 1962 and the commission had lost an influential leader. Although the commission’s report in 1963 supported women’s equal opportunity to work, in line with the dated discourse of gender equality of the era, it also tended to support women’s double burden of domestic work in the home in and in working outside the home.
Eleanor Roosevelt: The Road to Equality
While traditional roles are hard to change, the state and political leaders, as we know, have long used traditional values on motherhood and gender roles to justify policies to achieve their political objectives. For example, women’s reproductive capacity became a vehicle for fascists leaders, Hitler and Mussolini, to expand the nation’s population and to deploy women to nurture families that will be the next generation of fascists. Mothers were awarded by the state by the number of children they could produce. Inspired by this, my next post the “Strongman’s Espresso” was my attempt to write a ‘historical fiction’ on Mussolini’s dictatorship and the Italian espresso (yes!) during the Second World War.
What may have been forgotten about World War II history is the quality daycare centers in the US, ones that would never to be relaunched again. During the last two years of the Second World War, the US faced a labor crisis. This had forced the government to deploy more women in the defense industries to replace men serving the war. This meant that the government had to adjust policies and create campaigns to justify changes in traditional gender roles in the family. Not only that, but to make it possible for women to show up at work, over 3,000 federal-funded daycare centers were set up in the US through the Lanham Act, which provided quality daycare programs.
When the Federal Works Agency ended funds for daycare centers after the war, a wave of national protests emerged and organizations advocated for the 1946 Maternal and Child Welfare Act, and even the former first lady, ER, appealed for the daycare centers to be kept open. However, all these efforts proved to be unfruitful.
"The influence of political ideology, as opposed to evidence-informed policymaking,
had contributed to the government’s mishandling of childcare."
This is discussed in more detail in my blog post, “War, Politics, and Childcare in the US”— this time, a nonfiction. However, I would just like to highlight that although the recent studies in the 1960s rejected the notion of the negative affect of maternal employment on children—a view supported by the PCSW—efforts failed to gain enough support for a universal childcare policy. Entering the next decade, Nixon, perhaps due to the Cold War politics of the day, vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, citing collective childcare as incompatible with America’s family-centered approach to childcare. The basis of his statement was of course unclear.
War, Politics, and Childcare in the US
What is clear, however, is that the influence of political ideology, as opposed to evidence-informed policymaking, had contributed to the government’s mishandling of childcare. The image of the nuclear-type, white middle-class family, which represented stability and the success of capitalism in US Cold War propaganda, had distorted the childcare and employment issues faced by women.
Now that we are on the subject of the so-called middle-class, we can carry on to my last post of 2021, “The Graduate and the Middleman”. The last post was a take on two films: the Hollywood classic, The Graduate (1967) and a critically praised Indian classic, The Middleman (1976). The grand narrative of both films is about being male, educated, and privileged; however, the first film is situated in a postwar, First World setting, while the second, in a postcolonial state context. Both films illustrate how middle-class families struggle to safeguard traditional values and their position, or to break free from conventions.
The Graduate and the Middleman
Before ending this post, I would like to mention that this year was a brave year for me in terms of writing. I say this because I tried a couple of things that were outside of my comfort zone as a nonfiction writer to be. These include attempts at writing historical fiction. I know it is still far off from what historical fiction should be, but I give myself credit for trying, at least. Secondly, what I also rarely do is give my take on a film (although my very first blog post was a take on a TV series, La Femme Nikita). Writing about Indian films, especially, is not my area of expertise. So, trying new things will hopefully help expand my horizon as a writer. So, have you tried writing anything outside your comfort zone? Maybe it’s time.
Top picture: Kenne Gregoire, Lunch with Mackerel 2009 (Pinterest)
Pictures 1–2: Pinterest
Picture 3: "Milk time” at the daycare center in June of 1943 (wwiimemorialfriends.org)
Picture 4: YouTube
