how suburbia re-narrated the gender roles of domesticity

It can be argued that the emergence of post-war American suburbia re-generized domestic roles. Society had changed radically during WWI and WWII, women were taken out of their standardized roles as homemakers and were often thrust into the work force while the men were off fighting the war.  I would argue that post-war society saw a return of men to the work force and therefor a desire or perhaps nostalgia for women to return to their classical gender roles and suburbia was a symptom...or perhaps catalyst of this.

It starts out perhaps through advertisements and when these ideologies of the heteronormative society are fully saturated in the collective mind of the public, these stigmas are then fed back through social norms and society themselves. Suburbia, whether it being the cause or effect, was subject to the standardized nuclear family the classical consisted of a husband/ father who worked a 9-5 job, a wife / homemaker, and their children. Each of whom claimed certain territories of the house according to their domestic roles. For the father/husband perhaps he laid claim to the study, for the mother/wife it was often the kitchen that was seen as her domain.  Suburbia not only tried to reintroduce these roles that suppressed women's roles housewives as not only as the norm but as the desirable. Suburbia also projected the idea that this idealized family structure could only exist within this architectural archetype.

The recommended film 'Revolutionary Road' could be summarized as an example of a young suburban couple who tries to break out of these societal norms of man as bread-winner and woman as home-maker.  In doing so, they are met with great confusion by their fellow suburbanites, it is only the man who has spent time in an insane asylum who praises them for this change. The couple inevitably fails, and this tragic ending only reiterates the challenges of breaking of the productive family societal structure.