The Way We Never Were, American families and nostalgia trap by Stephanie Coontz. Cover features a 1950’s style illustration of a suburban family’s outdoor barbecue. Where the father is grilling, the mother is setting a table and son and daughter are playing in the yard a suburban home.
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This is fantastic breakdown of just how fake much of the mythology around what America and American families looked like. It also deconstructs the myth of rugged individualism, from settler “pioneers” to 1950s suburbanites relied heavily on government subsidies.