All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s

by Robert O. Self

In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty promised an array of federal programs to assist working-class families. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP the party of "family values" and promised to keep government out of Americans' lives. Again and again, historians have sought to explain the nation's profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, five decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right. The award-winning historian Robert O. Self is the first to argue that the separate threads of that realignment―from civil rights to women's rights, from the antiwar movement to Nixon's "silent majority," from the abortion wars to gay marriage, from the welfare state to neoliberal economic policies―all ran through the politicized American family.

Based on an astonishing range of sources, All in the Family rethinks an entire era. Self opens his narrative with the Great Society and its assumption of a white, patriotic, heterosexual man at the head of each family. Soon enough, civil rights activists, feminists, and gay rights activists, animated by broader visions of citizenship, began to fight for equal rights, protections, and opportunities. Led by Pauli Murray, Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, and Shirley Chisholm, among many others, they achieved lasting successes, including Roe v. Wade , antidiscrimination protections in the workplace, and a more inclusive idea of the American family.

Yet the establishment of new rights and the visibility of alternative families provoked, beginning in the 1970s, a furious conservative backlash. Politicians and activists on the right, most notably George Wallace, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and Jerry Falwell, built a political movement based on the perceived moral threat to the traditional family. Self writes that "family values" conservatives in fact "paved the way" for fiscal conservatives, who shared a belief in liberalism's invasiveness but lacked a populist message. Reagan's presidency united the two constituencies, which remain, even in these tumultuous times, the base of the Republican Party. All in the Family , an erudite, passionate, and persuasive explanation of our current political situation and how we arrived in it, will allow us to think anew about the last fifty years of American politics.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, Feminism, 20th Century, Gender

544 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2012

Reviews

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid overview of political, social and cultural realignment on some hot-button social issues from the Great Society to today, namely gay rights, feminism, and abortion.

It's really a 3.5 star ... given so few other reviews, I almost rated it 4, not 3. But, if necessary, I'll come back and change it.

Issues?

1. There's little new, especially if your politics is to the left of today's neoliberal Democrats and you read outside the normal boxes.
2. It's a bit dry at times.
3. For all of Self's asides about white feminists and white gays/lesbians relating to their minority cohorts, in hindsight, it doesn't seem like he got that deep into that issue, except tangentially. That's not to mention not getting further into black civil rights' leaders often thorny-at-best connection with gay rights.

[Andee Nero · Rating 5 out of 5]

I told myself that I wouldn't get as angry reading this book as I did the first time, but nope. *totally pissed* Fuck straight white dudes.

[Jared Lancaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and unique interpretation about the political shift from the 1960s into the 70s. Pretty valuable for me, because when I was in school we emphasized the civil rights movement and the cold war, but we did not spend so much time talking about the reevaluation of gender, sexuality, issues of woman's bodies in the '70s nor the resistance to those movements. Self provides an analysis of the family and their relationships to ideologies that encompassed the cultural dialogue.

He posits that in the latter half of the 20th century there were debates about gender/sexuality that became intertwined with redefining citizenship. Women were fighting for positive rights - the right to open up their own bank account, the right to go out into the workforce and work, the right to comprehensive child care, the right to terminate a pregnancy. Gay men and gay women fought for their own citizenship by trying to decriminalize gay relationships. Often at odds in these movements feminists distrusted certain lesbian feminists, and lesbians distrusted the gay movement. White feminists were at odds with black feminists. Meanwhile, a potent ideology of breadwinner conservativism was striking hot and framed these newly developed calls for citizenship as an affront to the traditional family.

What strikes me the most about this period is there is a lack of intersectional politics between the different identities, and unfortunately the movements suffered from intra-party confrontations with each other. There was an inability to recognize a shared struggle in a complex web of their different identities.

Anyway, really fascinating to me. Learned a lot about the 70s.

[John Wetterholt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustively researched and generally engagingly written examination of the shifting sociopolitical attitudes in the United States from Kennedy through Clinton.

Professor Self is particularly adroit in describing the archetypes that politicians and pundits used in framing their rhetoric. As an outgrowth of the booming post-World War II society, the idea of "breadwinner liberalism" gained a strong foothold, canonizing the dynamic of Dad going to work while Mom stayed home to raise the children. While this scenario was never as pervasive as the "Leave It to Beaver" script writers would have us believe, it became an entrenched aspirational ideal for many citizens and policymakers in the 1960s.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, the push for greater positive rights protections for women and gays in the '60s and '70s, and the shifting economic focus of politicians in and out of power realigned the debate. "Breadwinner liberalism" gave way to a market-driven laissez-faire antithesis, "breadwinner conservatism," which sought the reaffirmation of cherished family archetypes against what were perceived as encroachments by groups (blacks, women, LGBT individuals) seeking positive rights protections. These protections were often characterized by those in resistance to them as pleas for special rights and threats to venerated ideals, when in point of fact these rights protections had historically been enjoyed only by a minority of the population (white heterosexual men).

A well-done work of political history.

[Tim Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty balanced account of social changes in the U.S. from the 1960s through the 1980s.The theme of family and its redefinition during these years (which coincided with my childhood and youth) is novel and persuasive.

[Laura]

Looks fascinating but i probably will never get through all 528 pages.

[Geoffrey Kabaservice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for The New Republic in December 2012:

http://www.newrepublic.com/book/revie...

[Kylie Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an interesting approach tracking political debates around family values, I felt the book often lost its way with Self going off on tangents without fully connecting everything to the key arguments. It's possible the book itself was just too ambitious, as it required delving into so many topics, events, people, organizations, etc. that everything started blending together because they were only mentioned broadly and briefly. Overall could have been more clearly organized and less repetitive. With that, the book's biggest strength was in the first half, highlighting issues of intersectionality and clearly laying out how this complicated social movements.

[Debbie Howarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent analysis of the US political climate that explains the widespread support for the GOP agenda. As liberals moved to include the protected classes the conservatives became disenfranchised. Instead of closing the gap each party does its best to widen the gap. By understanding the duality hopefully we can move past the divide to return to a United States.

[Chris Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit long to get through, and it was breadth than depth about the subject matter--how breadwinner liberalism became breadwinner conservatism, and led to the development of the New Right in American politics--but I appreciated how he layered so many events in the narrative so that we could see the themes and motives he mentioned as they developed through the 1960s-1980s. To think that 30% of the nation has been able to use their influence to create a right-oriented conservative government in a country that is 70% liberal-leaning...

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

despite how long it took me to finish, this was an excellent book and created a lot of research opportunities for me. Definitely give this a read if you are at all interested in finding out why our political atmosphere is the way it is today.

[Kendall Berdinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

long but worth every word.

[Anna Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wanted to like this so bad

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

asking for so many rights they heard ya!! right wing decided to take over

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So well-researched and so timely. The neoliberal order says it's on solely you -- the individual -- to make ends meet, because that neoliberal order was built brick by brick as a response to social movements that just wanted liberalism (maximizing the social good) to do more good than just for (white) men; now we don't even have liberalism (thanks Moral Majority) OR social movements that can get anything done because the Dems just won't do anything worthwhile even if they get elected for four years (you sucked, Biden admin)

(Gutted for class)

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent premise, with good supporting evidence. Self argues that the realignment of American politics from liberal to conservative over the past four decades was driven by challenges to gender and sexual roles and which vision predominated. The book explores the various male and female roles, how traditional roles came under assault during the 1960s, and the conservative counter-reaction. These roles, Self argues, are one of society's guiding mythologies, and shape how society is ordered. Rather than being a sideshow, how the culture-war battles play out shape our broader politic landscape.

Before the 1960s the three masculine norms were breadwinning, soldiering, and heterosexuality; women's norms were mothering, domesticity, and heterosexuality. From the New Deal through the Great Society, "breadwinner liberalism" which assisted families was the prevailing mythology. In the 1960s this vision came under challenge, mostly from the left itself. The 1960s, driven by the Civil Rights movement, became more inclusive of different social groups and expanding individual rights. By the late 1960s different versions of feminism and gay rights were on the agenda, challenging gender roles and sexuality. The questionable intent and execution of the Vietnam War challenged the myth that manhood is defined by soldiering. These forces threw the traditional versions of American manhood and womanhood into turmoil.

Conservatives, of course, defended the traditional gender roles and sexuality. Their version of "breadwinner's conservatism" proposed to protect the American family and gender roles from moral harm. Liberals, as seen by conservatives, supported big government and promoted abortion, condoned broken families, and advocated equal rights for women and gays (as well as blacks)
A return to traditional values required reducing the power of the federal government; families could flourish only if government stayed out of their way. Breadwinners, in this mythology, are not dependent on the state for either welfare or rights. This aligned with conservative market-oriented policies.

[Dave Ciskowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid and comprehensive review of US political history from 1960 through 2008. The book is an excellent overview and paints a full picture of how politics has evolved (as Self casts it) from breadwinner liberalism to breadwinner conservatism -- and how politics of other identities has both reacted to and shaped this arc. Self chooses comprehensiveness over narrative, and the result is a book that tends to wander between time periods, topics, and frames. This gives it a somewhat zig-zag feel. It's not a 'popular history', and the reader will have work to do to get through it. But it provides a vital understanding of the forces that have shaped and continue to shape US political discourse.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustively researched and detailed narrative of the years from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s in the American realms of politics, sex, education, labor, gender and religion. The usual suspects: Nixon, feminists, gays, Carter, Reagan, et al make appearances. Good, but kind of academic.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was alright. It was interesting to see the social changes that occurred in America between 1960 and 1980. If you're into American politics and movements, you'll probably enjoy this book a whole lot more than I did. :)

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Comprehensive look at the shift from breadwinner liberalism to breadwinner conservatism starting with the 1960s Great Society and ending with the early 2000s.