Reaction 9

According to C. Wright Mills, Americans during the 1950s were Cheerful Robots. Using his excerpt, what you've read in the text, and heard in class, why is that description fitting (don't just repeat or rephrase what's in the Mills article)?

The 1950's were a time of change and conformity. While the economy got back on its feet, returning Veterans from WWII were beginning to receive federal aid, allowing for increasingly prosperous lives among them and their families. Help from FHA and the G.I. Bill gave soldiers the opportunity to move into Suburban areas, buy new vehicles, extend their families and afford household appliances to assist the wives in their daily chores. 

In Levittowns, thousands upon thousands of homes were built, all the same model and looking exactly the same. Veterans could put as little as $1.00 for a down-payment one of these cookie cutter homes. Auto production tripled, as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways built highways to make travel between Suburbia and work easier. The Baby Boom increased the average number of children per family from 2.4 to 3.2. This put an emphasis on importance on the Nuclear Family, pressuring women to stay home and play the role of mother and housewife as a career. Women began to marry at younger ages. Having more children younger, and not being allowed out of the house very often led women into depression, as many of their dreams of keeping war jobs were taken from them. They were heavily isolated, and consumed tranquilizers like Miltown and Valium at enormous rates. Worst of all, they took these drugs while also pregnant, always leaving them in a smiling submissive state. Yet nonetheless, these women were expected to fully accept their new lifestyles and were forced to conform to this robot way of life.

C. Wright Mills referred to these new and improved families as "Cheerful Robots" because that is essentially what they became. In the 1950s, when Veterans began expanding their sense of materialism, they also let their freedom of individuality cease. It was all about the nuclear family, the ideal family of the 1950s. And this new family was all about materialism and buying anything that made life easier and more pleasurable. And all this change was supposed to please American families, despite the fact that every family was the same in that they all had the same exact house, car and appliances. They were robots in the idea that they were all the same and had the same things. They were "cheerful" about it because they were so willing to conform to the lifestyles of the 1950s. Those who weren't cheerful were seen as abnormal and crazy. Mills fear was that men and women were becoming increasingly manipulated by contemporary social structures. He is afraid that these robots are happy about being robots- cheerful and willing robots.