<P> Nursing became a highly prestigious occupation for young women . A majority of female civilian nurses volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps or the Navy Nurse Corps . These women automatically became officers . Teenaged girls enlisted in the Cadet Nurse Corps . To cope with the growing shortage on the homefront, thousands of retired nurses volunteered to help out in local hospitals . </P> <P> Women staffed millions of jobs in community service roles, such as nursing, the USO, and the Red Cross . Unorganized women were encouraged to collect and turn in materials that were needed by the war effort . Women collected fats rendered during cooking, children formed balls of aluminum foil they peeled from chewing gum wrappers and also created rubber band balls, which they contributed to the war effort . Hundreds of thousands of men joined civil defense units to prepare for disasters, such as enemy bombing . </P> <P> The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) mobilized 1,000 civilian women to fly new warplanes from the factories to airfields located on the east coast of the U.S. This was historically significant because flying a warplane had always been a male role . No American women flew warplanes in combat . </P> <P> Marriage and motherhood came back as prosperity empowered couples who had postponed marriage . The birth rate started shooting up in 1941, paused in 1944--45 as 12 million men were in uniform, then continued to soar until reaching a peak in the late 1950s . This was the "Baby Boom ." </P>

List 3 ways the government supported the homefront war effort