Title: Suburbanization in the 1950s | World History
Headings: Suburbanization in the 1950s
Suburbanization in the 1950s
The Baby Boom
Creating Suburbia
Popular Culture Glamorized Suburban Life

Content: According to Steven Mintz, author of Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, “family togetherness quickly became the national ideal, seized upon by advertisers, ministers, and newspaper editors.” Creating Suburbia
All of these blossoming new families needed someplace to live, and suburbia was the perfect answer to the drastic housing shortage engulfing the nation at the end of the 1940s. With names like “Crystal Stream,” “Robin Meadows,” and “Stonybrook,” suburbia met a need and fulfilled a dream. During World War II, both government and industry played up the image of the suburban house to the families of absent servicemen. Between 1941 and 1946, Ladies Home Journal featured several “dream houses” for young wives to fantasize about until after the war when their husbands would return and they could start living again. Popular Culture Glamorized Suburban Life
Popular culture began to glamorize the life young couples could live in suburbia, and the postwar economic boom made it possible for many Americans to satisfy their desires for a stable, secure family life with a brand new home. People who grew up during this period recall the images they saw everyday in popular culture. Selma Golub, one of the first to move into Levittown, Pennsylvania in the 1950s, says, “I grew up in the 40s and 50s, when you went to the movies a lot, and that was the culture you saw. You grew up with certain things in mind: