Normalizing the Ideal

Homemaker mom, breadwinning dad who played hockey with his son on the weekends, one brother or sister, this was normal Canadian life in the fifties, right? Well, not quite, but author Mona Gleason argues that Canadian psychologists were in part responsible for this fiction of normalcy.

Postwar insecurity about the stability of family life became a platform on which to elevate the role of psycholog...