9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

Abstract

As a number of historians of masculinity have argued, despite calls for greater engagement with masculine subjectivities over the last thirty years, more work remains to be done if we are to understand how men and boys negotiated available social structures and cultural scripts at any given historical moment. 1 Such work demands that we look intimately at male emotional lives, that we concern ourselves less with elusive claims to representativeness and more with the particularity of individual responses to society and culture. In this way, not only do we gain insight into some of the richness, texture, and range of historical lived experience, but we also learn more about the viability of established socio-cultural themes and chronologies. The experiences of fathers and sons in the decades following the Second World War offer rich potential for engagement with these dynamics. As Frank Mort argued in his autobiographical reflection on a post-war father-son relationship, 'the narratives of the post-war years are so portentous and authoritative that they constantly threaten to engulf subjectivity'. 2 Drawing on father-son relationships in fourteen families from a range of social backgrounds, as they were narrated in oral history interviews, this chapter assesses how masculine selfhoods were reproduced intergenerationally by exploring adult men's memories of post-war family life. 3 The stories of post-war socio-cultural change are well known. Most families lived healthier, longer lives, in improved homes, with more time and money to spend on leisure; there was a substantial shift from blue-collar to white-collar work and a dramatic increase in average incomes; access to education widened and secondary, further, and higher education was transformed; and the arrival of rock and roll, the seven-inch single, television, and mass consumerism created hitherto unknown cultural outlets for a new generation. 4 However, rather than the ensuing generational rupture described in some cultural accounts, Selina Todd and Hilary Young have argued that the opportunities wrought by post-war British society fostered continuities of classed solidarities across generations, as parents supported