History of the American Bachelor: 20th and 21st Century. Welcome back to our series on the history of the American bachelor.
In Part I of the series, we took a look at the bachelor during colonial and Revolutionary War America. In Part II, we discussed the emergence of a distinct bachelor culture at the turn of the 20th century. Today, we’ll jump ahead to describing the position of the bachelor at mid-century, as well as take a look at the state of the American bachelor today. Post-WWII America: The Bachelor Settles Down As we discussed in our last segment, the bachelor population swelled in America in the decades after the Civil War.
After the bachelor boom of the late 19th century, the median marriage age for men and the proportion of all adult males who were unmarried began to decline slowly and eventually leveled out during the Great Depression. During both World Wars, the United States used conscription and relied primarily on bachelors to quickly raise their troop levels. During the 1950s, family life took center stage in America. A History of the American Bachelor: Part II — Post-Civil War America. Welcome back to our series on the history of the American bachelor.
Last time we discussed the bachelor in colonial and Revolutionary War America where we learned about his origins as well as the laws and taxes levied specifically against single men. Today we turn our focus to the state of the American bachelor after the Civil War. Post-Civil War America: The Golden Age of the American Bachelor As urbanization and industrialization began to take off in the first half of the 19th century, thousands of young, single men migrated from farms to cities. The large immigration of European men, particularly from Ireland, only added to the growing pool of urban bachelors in antebellum America; in some cities bachelors made up more than 50% of the male population. The bachelor population in urban areas only grew faster after the Civil War. Living Arrangements of Urban Bachelors Five Points, NYC To house all these unmarried men, boarding houses were built.
Bachelor Hangouts The Sporting Male John L. History of the American Bachelor: Colonial and Revolutionary America. Many of you who read the Art of Manliness are bachelors.
And if you’re married, well, you were a bachelor once, too. Bachelorhood has become such an ingrained part of the male experience, that we usually don’t give it too much thought except to make jokes about bachelor pads or married men “batching it” when their wives are out of town. While it might not seem so at first blush, the history of the bachelor in America is complex and truly fascinating.
When colonists first settled America, the bachelor as an identity didn’t even exist. But as time passed, bachelors became one of the driving forces in shaping our concept of manliness. What’s also interesting is that the discussions we’re having about the state of young, single men today are very similar to the discussions our colonial, post-Civil War, and WWII ancestors had as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring the history of single men in America.
Bachelors as Dependents Towards a More Accepted Notion of Bachelorhood Sources: