MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

For teenage girl characters in sitcoms of the 1950s, the most important life goal was the acquisition of a suitable future mate. By doubling down on stereotypes and expectations, shows like Father Knows Best, The Goldbergs, and The Donna Reed Show depicted their daughter characters as irredeemably yet chastely “boy-crazy.” These small-screen mothers and daughters repeatedly emphasized the necessity of cultivating a feminine appearance and behaviors that would maximize the chances of finding a date (and a future husband). In order to truly grow into perfect replicas of their perfect mothers, they not only needed to learn domestic skills but also how to embody a specific form of feminine beauty and charm that was consistent with the prescribed image of the upper-middle-class white housewife and mother. The daughters had to become a virtual copy of their mothers.
In this paper, I will examine the ways in which the teenage daughter characters of 1950s sitcoms reflected larger societal concerns over teenage female sexuality and behaviors. The sitcom writers had to balance between depicting these young women as attractive, popular, and desirable in order to signal that they would be able to find a husband and fulfill their destiny of becoming a wife and mother while ensuring that there were no doubts about the chastity of the characters. At a time when to be a truly successful American woman was to be a married mother, rising rates of unwed pregnancy and fears about teenagers “going steady” created a sense of real danger as families feared their daughters becoming “fallen women.” These sitcoms reified the ideal of the virtuous mother-wife as well as a performance of femininity that was centered on chaste seduction, domesticity, and maternal desire.