Bachelors in Urban America, 1870–1930

Abstract

Chapter 6 depicts the history of urban bachelorhood and discusses the different visions and representations of the bachelor as non-father: from the pious Christian shepherd to the urban bohemian and the incorporation of modern masculinity out of control. These many potential facets of being a bachelor in turn-of-the-century urban America merge in the life course of YMCA director Robert R. McBurney. Historical writings by and on him as well as his archival papers provide ample material to unfold the history of unmarried men in the context of the history of sexuality and of what historian George Chauncey called “the gay male world.” The chapter also discusses how the perception of bachelorhood changed against the backdrop of the evolving sexual and social sciences, which depicted fatherhood as the “natural” development of every man’s life and pathologized any other form of male existence.