Canada's Wage-Earning Wives and the Construction of the Middle Class, 1945-60

Abstract

The 15 years after World War II were far from the perceived simple precursor to the tumultuous 1960s. Shifts in the work experience of both sexes prompted uncertainty about the direction society was taking in the Cold War world. In particular, English-speaking Canada's popular press was drawn to the fate of the working sexes within a broadly based and obscurely defined middle class. Fears about men's roles provided a frequent subtext, but overt public concerns commonly focused on shifts in female experience. This article examines debales about wage-eaming wives and mothers within the popular press in anglophone Canada between 1945 and 1950. During this time magazines and newspapers were filled with dire forecasts and happy prognostications about the meaning of married women’s paid work. The fate of the poor, of women (immigrant and otherwise) employed because of economic necessity, was largely ignored in publications like Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and the Star Weekly Magazine. Above all it was supposedly middle-class while women faced with a choice of labour, whether al home or in the labour market, who disturbed post-war commentators. In the construction of the modem nation by the popular press, the realities of class and race were conveniently ignored.