American Fatherhood: A History

Jürgen Martschukat

Published by New York University Press 2019

American Fatherhood

A History

Jürgen Martschukat
Translated by: Petra Goedde

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479892273.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Explores the surprising diversity of fathers and fatherhood throughout American history and society

The nuclear family has been endlessly praised as the bedrock of American society, even though there has rarely been a time in history when a majority of Americans lived in such families. This book deconstructs the myth of the nuclear family by presenting the rich diversity of family lives in American history from the American Revolution to the twenty-first century. To tell this story, Jürgen Martschukat focuses on fathers and their relations to families and American society. Using biographical close-ups of twelve different characters, each embedded in historical context, American Fatherhood provides a much more realistic picture of how fatherhood has been performed within different kinds of families. Each protagonist covers a crucial period or event in American history, presents a different family constellation, and makes a different argument with regard to how American society is governed through the family.

Author / Editor information

Martschukat Jürgen :

Jürgen Martschukat is Professor of North American History at Erfurt University in Germany. This book was originally published in 2013 in German by Campus Verlag and won the OAH’s Willi Paul Adams Prize for the best book on American history published in a foreign language.Goedde Petra :

Petra Goedde is Director of Temple University’s Center for the Humanities (CHAT) and Associate Professor of History at Temple University. She is the author of GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (Yale 2003), co-editor of The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (Oxford 2012), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (Oxford, 2013).

Reviews

This work, substantial in quantity and quality, as well as in ideas and methods, is interdisciplinary history at its very best.

Delivers a strong narrative on the American family as structured around the father.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Fathers and the New Republic, 1770– 1840 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
2 Challenging Love, Marriage, and the Nuclear Family, 1820– 1870 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3 Slavery, Family, and Fatherhood, 1830– 1860 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
4 Daughters, Fathers, and the Westward Movement, 1850– 1880 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
5 Being a Father and a Soldier in the Civil War, 1861– 1865 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
6 Bachelors in Urban America, 1870– 1930 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
7 Immigrant Families in Urban America, 1880– 1920 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
8 Indigenous and Modern Fathers, 1890– 1950 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
9 Unemployed Fathers in the 1930s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
10 Fatherhood in World War II and the Cold War, 1940– 1960 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
11 Families, Fathers, and the Black Community, 1950– 2010 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
12 Queer Parents and Fatherhood Movements, 1970– 2010 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
About the Translator Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343