1. Do you think it is important to have a school dress code
Do you think it is important to have a school dress code? Why or why not? Are there any rules you think are unnecessary?
Bell Ringer

2. The New Morality
The struggle between tradition and modernity

3. A shift in the beliefs of many Americans during the 1920s on their ideas of family, relationships, gender roles, religion, and especially, war.
The New Morality

4. Causes for the “New Morality”
World War I
Increasing role of women in politics
Mass Media

5. Human Psychology Mental illness in America
Believed that mental illnesses were untreatable
Social stigma (eugenics)
Causes for changes in mental health
WWI vets suffering from “shell shock”
Social conflicts increased fear and paranoia
Sigmund Freud
Conscious and unconscious mind
Id, ego, superego
Life and death instincts
Defense mechanisms

6. Women’s Suffrage Some success at local/state levels
Protests get more aggressive after Wilson’s war speech for “preserving democracy”
National Women's Party (led by Alice Paul) picket the White House
Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
Women’s Suffrage

7. Founded the American Birth Control League (would later become Planned Parenthood)
Inspired by mother’s hardships with pregnancy and uterine cancer
Eugenicist
Believed that families standard of living would improve if they limited the number of children they had
Advocate of “the pill”
Margaret Sanger

8. La Vie Boehme!
"Bohemian”: People who lived unconventional, usually artistic, lives.
Sought to break social barriers, refuting traditional gender norms and sexual stereotypes.
Greenwich Village, NYC

9. The New Morality for Women
Not the kind of girls you bring home to Mama!

10. Changes in Society Women in the workforce Women’s colleges
During the war, women took over jobs men left behind
Female occupations post-war
Teaching
Nursing
Telephone operator
Secretary
Women’s colleges
Pre-WWI: Genuine fear that college made women unfit for marriage and motherhood
Post-WWI: new “modern woman” was intelligent and independent

11. New Roles in the Home and Family
Women became the “purchasing agent” of the family
Household tasks become much easier with electric appliances
Romance and relationships
Highly inspired by the romances on the silver screen

12. The New Girl
1900
1920

13. What’s wrong with
this picture?

15. The Century:
The Roaring Twenties