ABSTRACT
The overriding theme of Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era is containment. She argues that the US foreign policy of "containing" the political and military influence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the 1950s and early 1960s carried over into the American suburban home. May demonstrates how these factors resulted, directly and indirectly, from societal upheaval and the increased presence of women in the workplace. May also shows how heterosexual marriage was promoted in the culture of the day as a defense against communism and social and ideological subversion. May discusses the complementary issues of consumerism, marriage and work patterns, sexual relations, suburban living, and child-bearing along this axis of domestic and political containment. May's analysis of American popular culture and the traces of lived suburban experience brings to life the central notion created by the themes of political and domestic containment.
