In Grant’s 1940s USA, however, this is exactly the belief of most of the characters, even the young women enlisting in the army. My aghast expression in response to my student’s comment was in large part because, in 2016, we cannot possibly still labor under the misapprehension that only a woman can do housework. This seems as good a place as any to start a review of Michael Grant’s Front Lines, a YA alternate-history novel which considers the impact allowing women into the military might have had on World War II. It was this last question which has stuck with me, because as the debate moved onto women’s roles in the military, one girl said, in utter seriousness, that women shouldn’t be soldiers because their place is in the home. Recently, I had a discussion with my fourteen- and fifteen-year-old students about war: what purpose it serves, if it can ever be justified, who should be fighting.
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