The Catholic Family in Postwar Rural France: L'Exposition de la Maison Rurale, 1947–50

This paper will examine the rural Catholic Action's efforts to re-shape agrarian families in the years immediately following the Second World War.  Between 1947 and 1950, the Jeunesse agricole catholique and the Jeunesse agricole catholique féminine -- Catholic Action's rural youth associations -- mounted an ambitious traveling exhibit, the Exposition de la Maison Rurale or Rural Home Expo.  The expo traveled to more than fifty towns and cities and reached more than half a million visitors during its three-year tour.

The exposition displayed the latest modern conveniences, like refrigerators and indoor plumbing, trends in furniture and home design, and new advances in farming equipment.  Organizers hoped to inspire rural French families to invest in home improvements and raise the primitive living conditions prevalent in many regions of the country.  Such material improvements, organizers believed, were the first step in a moral and spiritual renewal of rural families. 

Using exposition materials and accounts from visitors and organizers, my paper will examine how these young Catholics at the Jeunesse agricole imagined and promoted a new family model for rural France.  Their efforts reveal Catholics' changing views of the relationships between husbands and wives and between parents and children.  The Jeunesse agricole's "modern" Catholic family was rooted in traditional Catholic gender models that dated to at least the nineteenth century, but was also a response to contemporary trends, such as the rise of the nuclear family ideal and the expansion of childhood schooling.  Sanitation and hygiene, design and comfort, affection and sociability were wound together in the exposition's displays and materials.  Unraveling these threads sheds light on how young Catholics interpreted the Church's teachings in light of rapid social, economic, and technological change.