Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May weaves two traditional narratives of the 1950s—suburban domesticity and rampant anti-Communism—into a compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and their children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May finds that Cold War ideology and domestic awakening [they were] two sides of the same coin: the intense need of postwar Americans to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was a consequence of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war - Within the home, the potentially dangerous social forces of the new age could be tamed, where they could contribute to the safe and fulfilling life to which post-war women and men aspired. (May, p. 14). Furthermore, the therapeutic emphasis of the psychologists and intellectuals of the 1950s offered private and personal solutions to social problems. The family was the arena in which that adaptation was expected to occur; home was the environment where people could feel good about themselves. In this way, internal containment and its therapeutic corollary undermined the potential of political activism and reinforced the chilling effects of anti-communism and the Cold War consensus. (May, p.14) May begins by exploring the origins of this “internal containment” in the world of the 1930s and 1940s. During the Depression, he argues, two different visions of the family were competing: one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were clearly differentiated. Yet despite the many single women glamorized by 1930s popular culture, families eventually came to choose the latter option. Why? For one thing, according to May, for all its advocacy of women's empowerment, Hollywood has failed to point the way toward a restructured family that includes independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life: the two cannot be squared. On the other hand, New Deal programs aimed to increase the level of male employment, which often meant doing nothing about female employment. And finally, as historian Ruth Milkman also noted, at the center of the paper...suburban homeowners, were headed home. But, as the years passed, they also found themselves tied to home." (May p.207) Ultimately, it is clear that in recent decades, domestic ideology and Cold War militancy have risen and fallen together. Immediately After the World War II, a stable family life seemed necessary for national security, civil defense, and the struggle for supremacy over the Soviet Union. For a generation of young adults growing up amid depression and war, domestic containment was an answer logic to specific historical needs This has allowed them to pursue, in the midst of a tense and precarious world situation, the search for a sexually fulfilling and consumer-oriented personal life, free from difficulties. It remains to be seen whether the baby boomers will eventually have more successful than their parents in achieving a fulfilling life and a more just and tolerant world. One thing is certain: gender, family and national politics are still intertwined in the ongoing saga of post-war cultural change..