As the life cycle began to expand after 1900, "old age" became a new twentieth-century site where, like the nineteenth-century factory, working-class males struggled to define and sustain identities as "men." By studying "the problem of the old man," this dissertation revises historians' understandings of gender and class -- showing how gender, class, and aging have fundamentally intersected and, in the process, shaped the histories of work, the welfare state, and organized labor.
The first three chapters explore how the rise of mass production catalyzed "the problem of the old man" during the 1910s and 1920s, and why state pensions emerged as the principal way to uphold manhood in later life. Chapter 1 examines how mass production employers emphasized youth and speed in the workplace, making "growing old" a major source of unease about manhood. Chapter 2 addresses why many experts in social provision concluded by 1929 that only pensions from the state could uphold the masculinity of the aging male breadwinner. Chapter 3 looks at how both the state and the workers tried to find ways to uphold the economic foundations of manhood during the Great Depression, ranging from Social Security to labor organizing.
The final chapters examine the shifting class and gender politics that accompanied the rise of modern "retirement" during the 1940s and 1950s. Chapter 4 discusses how expanding job opportunities, increasing incomes, and suburbanization made middle-class status a key foundation of manhood after World War II. As a result, aging professionals displaced factory workers in "the problem of the old man" discourse. Chapter 5 examines the strategies older men used to affirm manhood after retirement. As in their "working years," retired men struggled to be youthful and "productive." Many retired men busied themselves with rigorous routines of sports, "tinkering," and yard work in order to demonstrate their manhood. During the postwar years, as the average length of life continued to expand, men embraced a contradictory definition of manhood that depended on males' ability to sustain economic success and youthful bodies -- even as their bodies aged and they faced the end of their careers due to retirement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04052006-104156 |
| Date | 27 June 2006 |
| Creators | Wood, Gregory John |
| Contributors | Prof. Werner Troesken, Prof. Maurine Greenwald, Prof. Richard Oestreicher, Prof. Lisa Brush |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04052006-104156/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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