History 143 Assignment Guide, March 3-5, 2009

Reading: America: A Concise History, 671-678; Discovering the American Past, 165-87

Background information: After reading this assignment, you should know the following:

1. How and why a mass national culture emerged during the 1920s. (Be sure to note the influence of mass media, especially movies.)

2. How women’s roles and responsibilities were changing—and not changing—during the 1920s.

3. Why women were divided on the issue of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.

Discussion: In class, you should be able to answer these questions, based upon the primary sources in Discovering the American Past:

1. Why were social scientists interested in studying the roles of women during the 1920s, and why must we examine with care their findings?

2. What did the social scientists have to say about female sexuality? What kinds of assumptions were made about women and sex?

3. Why did family prosperity and happiness presumably depend on “efficient housekeeping”?

4. Were working mothers bad mothers, according to these social scientists?

5. What did men and women have to do to have a happy marriage? What were the main causes of unhappy marriages?

Contemporary connection: In class, you should be able to answer the following question:

As the sources demonstrate, Americans in the 1920s had mixed feelings about the “new woman” who wanted an education, a career, and a family. Are these mixed feelings still around?