In the 1950s, the term ”containment” referred to the foreign policy-driven containment of Communism and
atomic proliferation. Yet in
Homeward Bound May demonstrates that there was also a domestic version of containment where the ”sphere of influence” was the home. Within its walls, potentially dangerous social forces might be tamed, securing the fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.
Homeward Bound tells the story of domestic containment - how it emerged, how it affected the lives of those who tried to conform to it, and how it unraveled in the wake of the
Vietnam era’s assault on
Cold War culture, when unwed mothers, feminists, and ”secular humanists” became the new ”enemy.” This revised and updated edition includes the latest information on race, the culture wars, and current cultural and political controversies of the post-Cold War era.
Background Information
The United States slid slowly into the position previously held by France in Indochina and became engulfed in a long war in Vietnam. The Cold War was the worldwide conflict between the western democracies and Communist states, particularly the USSR.
