ABSTRACT
When America looks back at the 1950s, its most vivid and enduring memories are of the domestic comedies that proliferated throughout the decade. This chapter examines mid-twentieth-century American life through a close reading of Father Knows Best (1954–1960). In discussing the series, the works of social theorists including, David Riesman, C. Wright Mills and William Whyte are considered alongside major film and literary productions. Contrary to the contemporary sociological portraits of consumer contentment, the chapter points to a host of subtextual tensions over shifting notions of work, family and traditional gender norms that lie below Father Knows Best’s ostensibly confident surface. Running against the widely held view that domestic comedies were little more than bourgeois propaganda, this chapter argues for a more nuanced account. Father Knows Best is as much an expression of enduring anxiety as of the innocent optimism and ‘the American celebration’ for which it is commonly known (Mills, 1956: 25).
