“Forgot
to tell you Glennagene (Berger) was married in May. Her husband is in the army so she is staying
at her folks.”
--Letter from my grandmother, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Salina, Kans., Wednesday,
July 15, 1942.
Glennagene’s wedding took place during a
surge in marriages that happened as the U.S. went to war. We can imagine many reasons for this upsurge: economic
optimism as government spending on the war effort practically eliminated unemployment
and a desire to enjoy the present given an uncertain future. One other reason may have been to avoid
conscription or combat. Americans
expected, rightly to some extent, that draft boards would be less likely to
draft married men than single men. Marriage
rates shot up (by 50% in one survey) when Germany invaded France and talk of
conscription began in the spring of 1940.
They shot up again after Pearl Harbor.
Similarly births spiked nine months after Germany invaded France and
again nine months after Pearl Harbor.
Although most of these marriages lasted, the haste to marry also led to
a doubling in the divorce rate from 1940 to 1946. (Berger was my grandmother’s maiden name;
however, I am not sure who Glennagene was.)
(Sources:
William L. O’Neill, A Democracy at War:
America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II [New York: The Free
Press, 1993], 86; John W. Jeffries, Wartime America: The World War II Home Front
[Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996], 87-88).
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