shrinking in size due to lack of need. Technological advances were causing people to buy the new and throw out the old. This led to a decline in large scale manufacturing, and an increase in retail and service position jobs.(Present Tense 112) There was a superficial belief that during the 1950s the family was this perfect entity that was founded on traditional gender roles. This belief was enforced through television shows, newspapers, religious leaders, and school. Television shows, such as, I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, and The Waltons, all depicted this perfect image of the household wife and working father. This was a distorted vision of reality because it did not deal with everyday problems that the typical family would encounter. Yet the family strived to fulfill this belief of the traditional American family. Since this image was engrained in many women, they began having more children and were marrying younger. During this period there was a baby boom that continued until the 1960s. Even though women were having more children, and there was this ideology of the perfect family, more women were entering the workplace. Most women did not just sit at home and care for the kids. In fact, one third of all women worked for wages, and during the 1950s there was an increase in female employment from 16.5 million to 23 million. (Present Tense 113) Yet during this era the belief was women stayed home with the kids, which was not the reality of the family. Music during the 1950s was responsible for cultural change among Americans. During this era the birth of rock and roll developed within the record industry. This new age music appealed to the younger generation of white youth, which encouraged the record industry to find more recording artists. The music that was popular was "race music" or more commonly called R&B, which was the style of music taken from African-American artists. Artists like Elvis Presley helped t...
