“I don’t think I’m bad, although I do things she would probably frown upon”: Tensions between a Mother and Daughter in the Transformative Society of the 1960s

American women who came of age during the 1960s experienced expanded expectations and fewer limita-tions than their mothers—women who had grown up during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s and who abided by a much more restrictive and family-oriented culture. Wini Breines, herself an adolescent during the 1950s and the author of Young, White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties, explains that the factor that led to these differences in the lives of women in the new generation, the generation of the ‘60s, was individuality. The women of the ‘60s generation were able to become individualistic to an extent that had never been seen before by women—an extent that greatly surpassed the generation of their mothers. It was this newly allowed ability for women to be individual that accounted for the great leap that took place between the ‘50s/previous decades generation culture and the ‘60s generation culture. Breines clarifies this point, writing, “Women, in other words, were able to join men in a culture based on individual desire at the expense of traditional institutions, including family and community.”1 The constraints that had been placed upon the past generations of women, both eco-nomic and family restraints, were lifted and the new generation was free to explore and participate in American society. At this same time, and as a result of the growing feminist movement within American society, the United States Army made considerable progress towards, according to Kara Dixon Vuic, “positioning itself on the side of progressive change in the lives of women. ” 2 Through changes made within the Army Nurse Corps, tradition