Mothers of Conservatism

Women and the Postwar Right

Michelle M. Nickerson

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780691163918, 9780691121840
• eBook ISBN: 9781400842209
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Mothers of Conservatism tells the story of 1950s Southern Californian housewives who shaped the grassroots right in the two decades following World War II. Michelle Nickerson describes how red-hunting homemakers mobilized activist networks, institutions, and political consciousness in local education battles, and she introduces a generation of women who developed political styles and practices around their domestic routines. From the conservative movement's origins in the early fifties through the presidential election of 1964, Nickerson documents how women shaped conservatism from the bottom up, out of the fabric of their daily lives and into the agenda of the Republican Party.

A unique history of the American conservative movement, Mothers of Conservatism shows how housewives got out of the house and discovered their political capital.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Chapter I  Patriotic Daughters and Isolationist Mothers
• Chapter II  All Politics Was Local
• Chapter III  Education or Indoctrination?
• Chapter IV  “Siberia, U.S.A.”
• Chapter V  The “Conservative Sex”
• Conclusion
• Appendix  Conservative Bookstores Operating in Southern California in the 1960s
• Notes
• Index