The 1950s

It was an economic miracle

Yes OP, if you were a white male or married to one. Everyone else- not so much.

Watch the movie Pleasantville, I think it does a good job of dismantling the idly of that period.

For the vast majority of Americans it was a wonderful time.

The Fifties were great economically for many, but that was due, in part, to unique circumstances. Many of our natural economic competitors had been devastated by World War II, and it would take them a while to recover.

And then, of course, we decided to blow the equivalent of a trillion dollars on the war in Vietnam.

[quote] aside from racism and the complete lack of gay and women’s rights the 1950

oh, that's all huh?

Incredibly repressed times, all cherry pie gloss and lots of creepy crawlies lurking underneath.

The spoils of ww2 made it possible. And it was mainly just available to white men.

The 1950s had what seems like a modern, somewhat tempered version of the crass materialism of the Gilded Age which let to the 1929 crash. Wealth got distributed to middle class (white) people, who spent it on homes and putting more kids through college than ever before in history.

But it was also the beginning of the Keeping Up With The Joneses culture of the middle class, which has insidiously led up to the shallow, nuclear family-centric consumer culture we have today.

Also OP, keep in mind that a lot of 1950s media idealized WASP middle class life. There were very few alternative stories marketed back then like there are today, so you have to dig deeper than Leave it to Beaver episodes to get a feel for what the 50s were like for black people, women who didn't want to be housewives, gays, immigrants, etc.

The 50s were actually horrible for a few reasons but the one that bugs me the most is what happened to America's cities. That's when the whole urban renewal thing began and that was disastrous. The creation of modern-day suburban American was horrible. We gutted large parts of our cities for bland, inneficient, wasteful, inconveient, sprawling suburbia. It's only in the past two decades or so where we've really seen our cities become attractive again. For decades, they were neglected ocmpared to the suburbs. We made a huge mistake in building these sprawling suburbs. They are financially disastrous and we haven't even seen the full impact of that yet.

A lot of the Trump types want the 50s back because it was a time when even the dumbest white person would graduate with a high school degree and get a middle-class job. Guess what? That time is never coming back, ever. Get over it. It's over. You now have to competed not just with minorities in your own country but other countries in the rest of the world. Oh well...

Well, the children who grew up in those "idyllic" homes turned into the hippies, revolutionaries, and druggies of the 1960s and 1970s, who spent their young adulthood breaking their parents hearts and doing their damndest to overthrow everything about the society they'd grown up in.

Quite frankly, while it was a great time economically for the middle and working classes, I think society was deeply fucked up. What with legal segregation, McCarthyism, sending women back to the kitchen and lynching uppity N-words, I think a lot of people were living in fear because the politics and laws were so repressive. And I think things were deeply fucked up on a personal level, and not just because a generation of young men had come back with PTSD and other psychological traumas from being through a depression and a war.

I grew up with Greatest Generation parents (I was born in the early sixties when my parents were in their thirties), and while neither had ever been in combat or suffered the direst poverty, they were cold, critical, neglectful, threw all but the favorite son out at 18, etc. I think that growing up with war and depression had blunted their capacity to feel, to form relationships or express emotion, and I don't think they were alone in that. I think there were so many dysfunctional families in those split-level affordable houses with two cars in every garage, that they produced a Lost Generation.

One feature of the 1950s that we need to bring back immediately is 90% marginal taxation of the ultra-wealthy. This enabled, among other things, the construction of the Interstate Highway System.

Also, private-sector unions need to make a comeback. Those unions enabled all those white WWII veterans to work single jobs while Mom stayed at home with the kids. But for some reason today’s GQP never waxes nostalgic about *that* reality of the 50s.

R12, taxes weren't really that high. They were on paper but that wasn't the reality.

I've always wondered what the style of music that tends to accompany media from that era was called. I'm talking about the kitschy, utopian sounding music. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's theme reminds me of it.

Unions aren't coming back either. They are declining in popularity in most of the western world. It's not happening.

I get what you’re saying, OP. If we could only bring back the ideals of beauty and dignified conduct, along with all the advances we have today. You’ll have a hard time convincing the cool kids, though. “But what about the seamy underside, maaaaaan!”

All of these negative things about the 50s are true but economic hardship is its own “oppression.” Perhaps worse then any other kind, actually, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

R13, the 90% tax rate was a *marginal* rate - meaning it only applied to income over a certain amount. Richer people paid a lot more than poorer people, which is how it should be. Not like now, when it’s pretty much the opposite.

And r15 seems unaware that the trade union movement is still not completely dead. Just this month, Amazon workers in Alabama voted to unionize.

People tend to romanticize the '50s a some perfect Leave it to Beaver existence. Besides the issues mentioned above, there were also issues within these middle class families that people just accepted and no one talked about, such as rampant alcoholism, spousal abuse, and depression. On the surface, it looked like a wonderful time for these people, but who knows what was lurking beneath the surface.

[quote] nuclear family-centric

Yes how awful

I'm sure there was PLENTY of economic misery in the 1950s. They just don't make a lot movies and TV shows about it.

Imagine having to live a completely closeted life and also living in fear of being "discovered." You lost your job, you could get arrested, etc. The 1950s were awful for gay people, even in cities like NY and SF.

My folks did real well in the 1950's. Mom was a home maker who didn't need to work outside the home or have a career, and dad sold insurance. He was one of the top men at his company, and had a nice side gig as a nota republic. You could live more comfortably on less back then, and we kids never wanted for nothing.

r18, poverty rates were significantly higher in the 50s than now despite the tax rate. Fewer than 10,000 households had to pay that high marginal tax rate you refer to because very few households back then actually made more than $200,000. And there were large loopholes as well which meant many people still were paying lower taxes than they should have been

[quote] Finally, it is very likely that the existence of a 91 percent bracket led to significant tax avoidance and lower reported income. There are many studies that show that, as marginal tax rates rise, income reported by taxpayers goes down. As a result, the existence of the 91 percent bracket did not necessarily lead to significantly higher revenue collections from the top 1 percent.

[quote] All in all, the idea that high-income Americans in the 1950s paid much more of their income in taxes should be abandoned. The top 1 percent of Americans today do not face an unusually low tax burden, by historical standards.

[quote] You could live more comfortably on less back then, and we kids never wanted for nothing.

Yes, white peopple had it very good back then. Next!

We gays couldn't exist as a people. It was a horrendous time for us.

R22, but according to the well-informed OP, things were great except for those small little details...

R9 The 50s were horrible for what happened to American cities?

Heard of NY , Miami, LA or Frisco recently? Shitholes. When were you born? Sorry I remember going to Radio City Music Hall with my parents in 1963 to see Bye, Bye Birdie and was frequently in the city in my teens and 20s and lived there from 1988-2006 Post 9/11 and thanks to Bloomberg it became more expense, over built, noisy, dirty, unsafe, crowded and filled with Adderall zombies blabbing away on their phones and generic corporate chains Walgreens, CVS, Five Guys, McDonalds, Forever 21, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts took over, Times Square became Disney and Broadway tourist fodder: jukebox musicals and film-stag in or no more And now it's teetering on collapse and was in trouble for years pre pandemic.

R19 Yeah they didn't have AIDS, foreign and domestic terrorism, school shootings, mass shootings, Covid, snowflakes, victimhood, cancel culture back in the 50s. Sounds like bliss!

Low crime rate.

And unlike today, people had privacy. Safety.

Theatre, music, art, literature...all booming.

[quote]Also OP, keep in mind that a lot of 1950s media idealized WASP middle class life. There were very few alternative stories marketed back then like there are today, so you have to dig deeper than Leave it to Beaver episodes to get a feel for what the 50s were like for black people, women who didn't want to be housewives, gays, immigrants, etc.

If you have HBO Max, there's a documentary on Gloria Steinem where she talks at length of how frustrating the 50s were and how insane it made people who did not benefit from the prosperity. It's worth watching.

Women were happy and content to be housewives. They didn't want or need personal fulfillment from working outside the home until feminists like Steinem and Friedan, projecting their own misery onto them, told them they were unhappy and unfulfilled.

R9, are you familiar with the author James Howard Kunstler? He is very critical of suburbia. He writes about the things you posted. His book The Long Emergency goes in to what may happen when we just don't have the fuel to keep suburbia going. He feels suburbia is the biggest misallocation of resources ever. I have not read his first book The Geography of Nowhere. It is supposed to deal with the junked cities and ravaged countryside.

Very true, r19. In those "perfect" suburban homes, there was a lot of problem drinking and mental health issues. It was idyllic on the surface, but lots of unpleasant shit was happening right underneath.

White middle class wealth created through the exploitation of nonwhite people, much more so than now.

What percentage of the population were straight white males? 35% maybe. OP probably worships Victorian England too -- absolutely awesome for 5%, maximum. Very bad metrics.

R28, the reason many cities are becoming more expensive is because of the neighborhoods that are highly desirable with a high degree of walkability. These neighborhoods are coveted because they have the walkability that so many Amercicans want to have now after rejecting this in the post-ww2 era. Zoning laws and high amounts of building regulations are why there is not more supply of these types of neighborhoods. Surbunization means more money is also spent on infrastructure on unnecessary highways and roads. The decay of American cities in the post WW2 time was basically CAUSED by white flight and suburbanization. There have been so many things written about this, Im not going to post them.

And seriously, Bloomberg made NYC more dirty and unsafe? You talk about NYC in the 60s have you ever seen pics of NYC from the 70s and 80s? It was FAR more disgusting and dangerous than it was now. And do you know how fucking high the homicide rates were in Eastern and midwestern cities during those decades? NYC has a FAR lower homicde rate NOW than it did in 1990.

R31 The 1950s made people insane? As insane as people are today Gloria?

R28 you realize there are other cities beyond NYC?

R33 - I’m familiar with Kunstler’s early work, and agree with most of what he says about suburbia.

Which makes it all the more baffling that he is now a hard-core Trumpist.

R33, very funny you mention that. I actually have Geography of Nowhere on my reading list. In the past few months, I have become increasingly interested in what happened to American cities to make them lag behind European and many East Asian cities in so many ways. The roots are basically the mass suburbanization that took place. Have you heard of Strong Towns? I strongly recommend you read this book. It is truly one of the most disturbing, page-turning books I have ever read. Kunstler is correct--modern-day suburbia may be the worst thing that happened to America. It makes many other problems look insignificant by comparison. By favoring low-density sprawl plus a "build it and they will come" mentality, we have built to much area that is financially unsustainable.

"I'm sure there was PLENTY of economic misery in the 1950s. They just don't make a lot movies and TV shows about it."

Rural poverty was dreadful, there were still plenty of rural homes without electricity in the US, even the white rural poor could still be pumping water from a well with a handpump, and wondering when rural electrification would get tot heir neck of the woods. The rural poor who weren't white, of course, were living in dire 3rd world conditions, working in someone else's field for barely enough to feed their kids and living in a shack like the one in the picture, and wondering if they could afford enough gas to get to Detroit and get a union job at a factory.

Economically it was a great age for the middle classes and unionized working classes, but I wouldn't chose to live there if I had a one-way trip on a time machine. You just couldn't be gay without living in constant fear, and even being a white liberal could get you labelled as a "Commie" and get you fired from your cushy middle-class job.

R39, WTF he's a Trumper now???? Ugh. Makes me apprehensive about reading Geography to Nowhere....but I still will.

I think many people think of it as the greatest time because that's when they were kids and that's when we're supposed to be happiest. If our parents are doing their jobs, we're not supposed to be exposed to too much of the rougher side of life. If you were a middle/upper class, straight white kid in the 50's, I'm sure your life was mostly peaches and cream.

We all see our childhoods through rose colored glasses at times. For example, I know I was spanked a few times as a kid and my parents had fights or other horrible things happened, but it's hard for me to remember those moments or why they took place. Only the really happy memories tend to come through.

Yes, r42, he is. What’s funny is that he built his career on mocking the American lumpenproletariat circa 1990- with its obsession with lawns and aluminum siding and huge suburban malls and huge Suburbans - but now he has become its tribune. Just go read his blog (if you can stomach a nonstop stream of pure undiluted Trumpist trash).

R41, the fact that anyone gay would concsiously want to actually go back to the 50s is mind-boggling. Maybe it's the fact that history is so badly taught in schools.

Watch "Far from Heaven."

Oh, and Kunstler is also renowned for being the world’s worst Cassandra. Every single year he predicts a catastrophic stock-market collapse, complete societal breakdown, a return to the Stone Age, etc., and every single year he’s wrong.

R41, also, places like Harlem and other black neighborhoods were neglected to the point of being third-world countries. Actually, I recall reading that Harlem at one point (as late as 1990 I think) supposedly had the same HDI as Bangladesh! If it was that bad in 1990, imagine how bad it was in the 50s when black people were living in apartheid conditions.

R45, for people like that, white trumps gay (so to speak).

R36 I was in New York from the 60s either, lived or worked in Manhattan and now live across the river. And you?

[quote]Yeah they didn't have AIDS, foreign and domestic terrorism, school shootings, mass shootings, Covid, snowflakes, victimhood, cancel culture back in the 50s. Sounds like bliss!

It does.

[quote] For the vast majority of Americans it was a wonderful time.

I was born in 1957 and was a teenager in 1972 when the musical GREASE opened on Broadway and AMERICAN GRAFFITI debuted the following year, and HAPPY DAYS on television in 1974. There was a huge wave of 50s nostalgia (The group Chicago even had a popular song 'Harry Truman' in 1975). My mother just shook her head and said it wasn't as rosy as it was made out to be on stage and screen.

Check out the movie NO DOWN PAYMENT (1957). It's very dark, despite taking place in the newly-minted sunny Los Angeles suburbs. It was written by Philip Yordan, who fronted for an uncredited and blacklisted Ben Maddow.

Oh yeah, while waxing nostalgically about the 1950s, don't forget about the blacklist.

In the 1950s the top marginal income tax bracket was 91 percent.

In 2020 it was 37 percent.

I would go back there and I was born in 1979.

Honestly, I'd be happy to take a time machine back to any era before computers and cell phones and 977 different cable channels.

So when did it all start to go to shit?

Who do you think are better off and have more advantages in life, millionaires who are members of oppressed groups, or white males who live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay the rent each month? Anyone who says the latter group is naive af.

Ultimately, green trumps all abs this biggest lie Americans are told by the media narrative everyday is that it doesn’t. Even before Roe v Wade if you had money you could get an appointment with a top doctor and get a safe abortion.

Money and upward mobility will always be the biggest “privilege” there is - more then race, gender, etc. Did we learn that with the OJ trial? So yes, these times are worse for that reason alone, with virtually no middle class and 5 people owning how much of our nations wealth? Give me a break.

If you knock out women (who, after a brief secretarial stint, were only deemed fit to stay home, cook and have babies); racial minorities, including Italians (who were only deemed fit for menial jobs); and out gays (who were only deemed fit for mental institutions), it was a great era for the subgroup remaining.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐞𝐫𝐞: 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐢𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐩

Sure, everyone hated gays back then, but at least they dressed well!

R32 most women went back to work because there was more to buy and everyone had to keep up with everyone else. Rampant consumerism was the reason and now everyone works themselves to death. At least in the '50s, there was a work-life balance. People mostly only worked from 9 to 5 and everything was closed on holidays. Life was great for kids in the '50s.

Many people, if they were white, Christian, and middle class lived wonderful lives during that era. It's no wonder that their kids turned out to be Trumpsters who want to return to that era.

R55, if you think computers are evil don't buy one. If you don't like cable don't get cable. If you think the internet is so evil, why are you posting here?

R61, I'm sure life was great for the kids who were beaten by the parents, the ones who were sexually abused but couldn't report it because talking about sexual abuse was verboten...

The specter of nuclear war and being attacked by the Commies loomed large.

R57 will pretend that people from "oppressed groups" are just as likely to be millionaires as white men. How many minorities do you think were millionaires back then? Even today, hardly any CEOs or billionaires are minorities

A lot of marriages soured after WWII because people had become so ruthless, including the women. Their (emotionally) neglected kids felt estranged from their parents and this had a huge influence on the 60s youth revolt.

R32, a gay man, is an expert on what all women thought or felt in the 1950s!

R14, Easy listening, lounge, exotica - all different names for the pleasant, hummable, frothy marches and the like that accompanied newsreels, commercials, trailers and provided the accompaniment for cocktail parties in the homes of "young moderns" Many of them are in the public domain or considered "studio library music" and as such, are used to great effect in films/series satirizing the relentless optimism of the era. See "Always Sunny", as you mentioned, and "Ren and Stimpy", too. A lot of the music is legitimately well-written and much has been rereleased in recent years. Look up artists Martin Denny and Les Baxter for a start. There are plenty of others, but simply by looking up those two, you'll go down a rabbit hole. (If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of 1950s cheese myself - not the realities of the era, of course)

R16 thinks Jim Crow laws, sodomy laws, and McCarthyism are dignified conduct

"For the vast majority of Americans it was a wonderful time."

I'm not at all sure about the "vast majority" thing.

I'm sure it was great for conservative white straight men who had good jobs and who'd never be suspected of being gay or a commie, but they aren't a vast majority, they aren't even a majority what with at least half the population being female. So I'm sure life was great for white straight conservative men who lived in cities or suburbs and white women who liked being housewives and kids whose families weren't totally dysfunctional, what percentage of the popolation was that? Half? Probably 1/3 or 1/4 or less, with all the racial and national minorities, gays and lezzes, discontented women, abused kids, rural poor, lefties and liberals, black people living in terror of the KKK, etc.

^^^ yaaaas kween.

r71, when people like that poser say "vast majority" they mean "mostly white straight males"....even if the poster was gay, that was clearly what they meant. Otherwise, how could they be so clueless? It was NOT a great time to be gay gay, female or a minority.

Gay gay?

"[R71], when people like that poser say "vast majority" they mean "mostly white straight males"...."

Yup! People like that consciously or unconsciously think that straight white men are the only people who matter, and I love giving people like that a reality check bitchslap. Maybe some of them get a clue, but even if they don't it's fun.

[quote]most women went back to work because there was more to buy

There has never been a time when there wasn't "more to buy." WTF are you trying to say?

What you all are forgetting is how recent World War 2 and all its horrors was at the time. Not to mention the Great Depression. In 1953, the war had only been over for 8 years. That's as if we had a world war that ended in 2013.

So you had an entire country in massive denial about the past. While understandable, it seemed to create an overall sense that people had to duty to always be happy and looking ahead and not dwelling on anything negative because at least there weren't bread lines and Nazis and Japs waiting to kill us all. Sort of a tightly enforced groupthink around patriotism and anyone who pointed out the problems got swatted down and called a communist.

Which was another issue--we'd gotten rid of the Nazis and the Japs but now we had a new enemy with nuclear bombs waiting to destroy us and it was your duty to conform and be happy and move to the suburbs or else the War would have been for nothing and the Commies would win in the end.

That seems to be why so many older Americans reacted so negatively to the 60s kids who were pointing out the problems. They had not realized that by ignoring the past and never talking about it, they'd created a generation of idealists who really did not understand the immediate past.

Plus, as R5 noted, the rest of the world was still in the process of recovering from World War 2 and rebuilding, so America reigned supreme.

My parents were born in the 50s but both my grandfathers were in the US Army in WW2 and they did not like talking about it. I remember once having to interview them for a school project and it was like pulling teeth, even though they were far from senile and I was a teenager at the time. They'd tell stories about other American soldiers and fun times they had off base--one grandfather served with Patton's army in North Africa and had great stories about the various places he'd visited along the way, but nothing about battles or death, even though they had experienced both. I got a sense that it had been drilled into them not to talk about it, to shield everyone back home from the horrors, something Europeans and Asians did not have the luxury of.

OP thinks the 50s were what he saw on television.

White women didn't have it so bad either. Most of them hung around in coffee klatches gossiping. My mom was always laughing and cutting up even though their marriages were a lot less than perfect. Things were much more stable back then.. I know gay people and black people had it bad, things were terrible for them but the vast majority of the population was white. But if you look at things today, there has been much progress for black people over the last 50 years, but in general, the people living in the ghettos aren't any better off than they were in 1950. The ghettos still look like 3rd world countries and the poverty rate among the general population now is horrendous. At least in the '50s, you could get medical care that was affordable.

Things went downhill in 1964.

[quote] At least in the '50s, you could get medical care that was affordable.

Yes R79?

How did this magically affordable medical care come about and what happened to it?

[quote] My folks did real well in the 1950's.

Except when it came to providing you with a proper education.

R76 I think what that person was trying to say is that it wasn’t necessary to have a dual income family to live a middle class life. Now it absolutely is - and prices for everything (real estate/rent, food, services, all consumer products), have that built into their prices (which is why everything is so astronomical).

Yes women wanted to be able to “break into the workplace” and rightly so, but just how “liberating” is it really that both husbands and wives not have to work their ass off these days just to pay the bills, and that women now have to be mothers, be “killing it” at the office, and of course look great while doing it because 50 is the new 35? Sure, NO PRESSURE AT ALL.

[quote]A lot of marriages soured after WWII because people had become so ruthless, including the women.

And lots of unhappy couples drank or popped pills to numb their unhappiness. Mother's Little Helper and the three-martini lunch, anyone?

R81, because until Nixion, medical care could NOT make a profit. Hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies were heavily regulated. (Obviously, not talking about your local GP.)

For-profit healthcare existed prior to the Nixon administration.

For the vast majority of Americans it was a wonderful time.

Of course, just like today it had its negative aspects. I could also create a massive list about how awful the 2000s have been.

But the most telling thing about the 1950s and much of the 60s was the belief in the future. The general optimism about things.

That's all gone.

R38 No. Never heard of Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, or LA but I bet they are doing just as shitty as NY shitty.

[quote] the most telling thing about the 1950s and much of the 60s was the belief in the future. The general optimism about things.

But it seems to have been a forced optimism R87 based on trying to desperately forget the awfulness of the recent past-- the Great Depression and World War 2.

This is not uncommon behavior from survivors of any type of trauma.

"because until Nixion"

Oh, dear!

Manchelle wants you to know you too can be a 1950s homemaker, you just have to want it!

R89 You were not around then.

Forced optimism? The country was making great progress compared to the depression and WWII.

Was it wrong or "forced" to be optimistic about progress in education, medicine, buying power, luxuries that were suddenly available to most people, new modern housing, the highway system, jet travel...so many great developments.

Only a generation earlier, life was vastly poorer.

r82 he's probably worth more than you.

[quote]But the most telling thing about the 1950s and much of the 60s was the belief in the future. The general optimism about things.

Because back then the US was something like 85% white, no huge influxes of non-whites and all their problems.

White people never have problems!

R92, those Jim Crow laws and anti-gay laws were so optimistic, huh?

R79's mom represents ALL women in the 50s.

R96 What don't you understand about "For the vast majority"?

[quote]but in general, the people living in the ghettos aren't any better off than they were in 1950.

In many ways it's much worse today.

The murder rates alone...

Born in 1944 in New England. At 6 (1950) went to a brand new elementary school. New stores being built in the neighborhood. In 1957, the folks sold the house, bought a brand new DeSoto, and we drove to California where they bought a nicer house in Los Angeles. My dad was making double what he did back east. My sister and I were the first in the family to go to college to become what we wanted to become. The Fifties were a great place to be that gave us a good start in life.

R99, murder rates are higher than in the 50s but lower than they were in the 70s and 80s

R100's well-off white family represents everyone!

It was a wonderful time growing up, people were different, murderers were promptly dispatched to the electric chair, not like today with the endless appeals and so many bleeding hearts. There was shame in people's actions, rarely heard curse words, just a different environment. Today the entire world is in chaos due to the actions of it's inhabitants.

I have a better idea: read a book called The Women's Room. You'll learn a lot.

Datalounge Republicans in Nazi Germany:

The vast majority of people are Christian, so it's cool to discriminate against Jews! Yes, gays are being put in the camps, too, but, hey, those Nazis have snappy uniforms

R104 About the book: "Its instant popularity brought criticism from some well-known feminists that it was too pessimistic about women's lives and anti-men"

R103, how many innocent people were "promptly dispatched" to the electric chair before DNA? Maybe ask yourself why the countries that execute the most people are places like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. But you don't sound like the kind of person who seeks out knowledge, so...

R105 You are quite the idiot. No one negates the fact that there has been social progress in some areas since then.

But for the vast majority, it was a wonderful time.

Do you know what the rest of the world was going through?

I can't get over freepers who denounce "cancel culture" but approve of this:

R108, you are quite the idiot. First of all, you're the one projecting. "The 50s were great for me, so therefore it was great for the vast majority of people!"

You're the one who thinks persecuting minorities is cool if the majority is happy. Weird point of view to see on a gay board.

The world is a mess due to extreme overpopulation. All scientists are saying that we will have a total civilization collapse within the next 3 decades. I think a lot of people are feeling this at least subconsciously. People are having to run faster and faster just to stay in place.

And yet the birth rate is going down, r111

R109 and yet why do so many gays and blacks the minute they make some money become Republicans?

It’s funny how once people can buy their way into a lovely life all of those other things become far less important to them.

R110 Please post where I ever said: "I think persecuting minorities is cool".

Let me repeat however: for the vast majority of people it was a wonderful time.

R114, you show that you don't care about persecuting minorities when you go on and on about how things were perfect for the "majority"

You also don't have any proof that things were awesome for the "vast majority" - you are giving an opinion based on your own life

Women didn’t want to be with men who wouldn’t work and didn’t want to take care of their children. A man was expected to have a job and to support his kids - it was a given. It didn’t have to be glamourous job. Why that mindset went out the window, I don’t know.

R113, the vast majority of black people aren't Republicans, even the rich ones. Same with gays.

[quote]"The 50s were great for me, so therefore it was great for the vast majority of people!"

Yes it was indeed great for the vast majority of people.

Do you know anything about the Depression? Or WWII?

The 1950s: a booming economy, low crime, the ability to own a brand new modern home for couples in their 20s, the ability to maintain a family on just one paycheck, new found leisure time, higher education evermore accessible etc and etc.

Were there negative things? Where certain groups left out? Sure. Even as we see today. But for most, it was a great decade.

And it seems once black people move away from the ghetto they basically walk away from the people there. It is like the white people claiming those people in flyover trump country are low class. The black people who have made it Think the same thing about the people in the ghetto. It is a class issue not so much a race issue. White people in the upper middle classes don't really care about color as long as they are in the same class. We are a class-obsessed society even if we don't want to admit it.

They were so smart in '50s.

I’ll just leave this here (since it doesn’t seem to be sinking in for many): how much good does it do to live in a more “progressive” society, if you can’t pay the bills and have little to no hope of ever breaking that cycle? All the things we’re lauding as progress may look great on paper but little to none of it matters in practical terms.

R118, do you know anything about history? You seem to confuse actual history with anecdotes from your life. You cite access to higher education....a lot more people go to college now than they did in the 50s.

R119, and yet there are wealthy black politicians who are focused on helping the poor. Imagine that.

R23, except grammar.

the 50s were not a better time than now--not if you were part of the 25% who were below the poverty line, gay, female or a minority. Which would be a huge chunk of the population. Were they better than the 40s and 30s? Sure, in many ways, but that's not what the OP's post is about. The OP's post is about how this was an idylilc time to be alive, aside from the *small* issues of racism and homophobia. That's like saying "60s were a great time for cities minus that whole urban renewal and white flight thing".

Indeed r119. Why does no one (our corporate sponsored media specifically) ever admit to this. Hmmm I wonder...

R112 Birth rates are going down?

[quote]do you know anything about history? You seem to confuse actual history with anecdotes from your life. You cite access to higher education....a lot more people go to college now than they did in the 50s.

Yes. With tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Why won't r119 admit that class and race aren't separate?

My SO grew up in a tropical country that was practically paradise in the '50s--low population, an educated elite, solid middle class, yes, a lot of poor people but some hope they could rise. Then the population boom caused the country to go from about 11 million to 100 million. And a dictator killed off the ethical elites and took all the money for himself. With the help of the U.S. So, yeah, my SO had servants, an upper class education, and a great life, but he left before it all went to hell. I don't know what the lesson of that is. Maybe don't be a Catholic country that the U.S. wants to exploit.

Two more films I'd suggest as a corrective to the idea that the 50s were untroubled bliss for the majority - "Last Year at Marienbad" and Hitchcock's "The Birds". Both came out in the 1960s, but their targets are the previous decade and its sense of mass amnesia, social ennui, selfishness and alienation.

Nice to see push-back on all the racist trolling on this thread--love to see it on all the threads.

[quote]the 50s were not a better time than now--not if you were part of the 25% who were below the poverty line...

Oh yes those tent cities of the 1950s! The thousands shot in a year! Tell us about it.

R128 the future “upper class” will be the most intelligent. It’s already happening. Race/ethnicity/gender/sexual persuasion - none of that matters; it’s all about your brainpower. The smartest people will be intermarrying and congregating in certain areas the way the “old money upper class” do now.

R130 "mass amnesia, social ennui, selfishness and alienation." wait a minute...are you talking about 2021?

R133, based on what - your beliefs? For one, there's no evidence that anything you posted is true. Race doesn't matter? Then why aren't interracial marriages super common in the upper classes? Intelligence isn't everything when it comes to succeeding. There are plenty of underemployed slackers with high IQs and dim people who get far on looks, charm, and connections.

I'm not saying that there is no racism but there is a lot of classism too. Poor whites are more likely to be racist than their richer counterparts. Like LBJ said they need someone to look down on.

R132, you think there weren't homeless people in the 50s?!

R135 Obviously, it’s brains and swim motivation. If you aren’t motivated to work, that’s different. But yes, the future currency is intelligence. Race/gender, etc will be irrelevant.

Some not swim lol

Civil rights are better now than they were in the 1950s.

Average home (US) sizes.

1950s: 983 square feet.

2010s: 2,392 square feet.

According to this article, linked.

R138, you think race and gender are irrelevant? LOL. That must be why 80% of members of congress are men and why like 5% of CEOs are minorities

FF for r80.

I was born in the 50's, my parents only made it to 7th grade. My mom worked in an electronics factory and my dad was a laborer. Because of unions my parents made decent wages without an education. When they retired (1970's) they had saved almost $500,000 - how they did that - the unions invested money they put aside for their pensions and it grew. The unions went on strike and thir strike funds keep us going. My dad was very devoted to the Teamsters.

R135, you are clueless. Rural poverty was FAR worse than it is today. My post didn't make any reference to homicides or crime rates.

The Milo clones here remind me of Trent Lott

Maybe people are fantasizing about the 1950s, but imagining a pastiche of different things - many of which did not exist in the '50s.

[quote] "Last Year at Marienbad"

I had no idea Last Year at Marienbad was about the 50s. I would never have guessed that in a million years.

[quote] The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.

Billy Joel

Can’t we have one thread where we aren’t hounded by the woke scolds? Why can’t we reminisce in peace? For regular Americans, the ‘50s were wonderful. I was alive then and it was a lovely childhood. We didn’t have any crime. My father earned a good salary and yes, my mother was a housewife.

But the woke crowd has to come in and remind us about the blacks. Lord knows we can’t forget about them for five minutes, even though they were just 10% of the population in the 1950s.

R150, go fuck yourself. This isn't about being woke at all. It's about the fact that OP's post is delusional and ignores at least 40% of America at the time. And serously, "the blacks"? Go back to your Trump den.

I’m sorry, what’s the new term for them now? They change it every five minutes.

And if we want to ignore blacks and hillbillies drinking corn liquor and fucking their sisters, then we have every right. No one I knew spent time thinking about such things back then. I’m sure they got along all right.

[quote] We didn’t have any crime.

We don't have any crime where I live in 2021.

There was a young couple who lived on Revolutionary Road in the 1950s and they were very unhappy. It didn't end well for them...

Regarding gay men and women in the '50s, I'm assuming that many same-sex attracted individuals, especially those who were able to "pass," married people of the opposite sex and had nice safe marriages and lived the straight suburban lifestyle. I have to wonder if they were tormented by their "shameful" feelings or just sucked it up, so to speak, since it was an era before everything in society was hyper-sexualized. I guess I'm just wondering if it was easier to hide in the closet back and then and not act on those types of feelings because the culture was pretty puritanical, with all matters of sex and sexuality being pretty taboo.

(R107) Sounds like a bleeding liberal that thinks the death penalty is cruel and unusual. People like you need to be put in an electric chair..I would gladly be at the switch.

R141 Those homes were affordable.

People did not need to go into debt to live nicely:

"According to a rough calculation using federal data, the average teacher’s salary in 1959 in the Pacific region was more than $5,200 annually (just shy of the national average of $5,306). At that time, the average home in California cost $12,788. At the then-standard 5.7 percent interest rate, the mortgage would cost $59 a month, with a $2,557 down payment. If your monthly pay was $433 before taxes, $59 a month wasn’t just doable, it was also within the widely accepted definition of sustainable, defined as paying a third of your monthly income for housing. Adjusted for today’s dollars, that’s a $109,419 home paid for with a salary of $44,493."

And that’s on just a single salary.

Do all of you white Republicans really want to go back to a time when everyone got their news from Uncle Walter, and the outfits you call the “lamestream media” had a complete monopoly on information?

Nobody here is saying racism and homophobia were awesome and we should have kept them. Just why did the whole way of life had to get thrown away? Couldn’t we have kept the good things and included everyone?

I think people felt more connected back then too. There were, what, four networks back then (CBS, NBC, ABC, Dumont), so everyone watched the same news and entertainment programs, and in a way felt like they part of a community, part of something bigger than themselves. I think today, ironically, people feel increasingly less connected to each other and to something bigger, despite the existence of social media.

R29, Um, they had those things back then as well, except for AIDS and rampant school shootings. Gay men and lesbians couldn't even exist openly, if they were exposed they'd be faced with persecution, imprisonment or death. And as for "cancel culture", you conveniently left out that snowflake republicans spent most of their time trying to cancel rock n roll singers like Elvis, black entertainers, youth culture, and anyone they deemed a Commie, which included gays, liberals, free thinkers and basically everyone that weren't like them. But don't let that fact get in the way of your selective "bliss".

Agree r160. It’s amazing how people twist things to start we’re racist (well, except for the dude who said “THE blacks”).

This kind of remark that R55, expressed always cracks me up. Without modern technology you wouldn't even be able to say such things that you so freely advertise for everyone else to see. Coincidentally, these are the exact sort of comments you'll find littering up every one of those 'nostalgia' videos of the 1950s, bemoaning the evils of modern technology, how everything was better back then, and they are sure to add in a nice bit of homophobia and anti-feminism just so you know what the "good ol' days" is really about for them.

For me, computers and cell phones are necessary evils in this day and age. We thrived quite nicely without them for millions of years.

That's swell, stop using it then.

wwii pushed funding to african american colleges, training and employment.. just as it did for women, the disabled and the elderly, basically anyone that could work or contribute to the effort was pushed into it with pride. so, when it ended, it's largely what helped fuel the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.

but the main issue remains the same for all backgrounds - moving the sun belt to the third world and the influx of migrants... later additionally complicated by welfare programs that created dependency on the state and promoted getting more benefits for single mothers. . . sick is looking at the differences between hbcu in the 40s vs the downward trajectory onward. . . but same issues across the board, people placed more emphasis on their kids going to college while blue collar trade schools and associated jobs were pushed as the last resort. just as now there's a desperate plea to get kids into stem but most go for abstract general majors that have low prospects in the job market while whining about student loans because they didn't want to head to a community college and wanted a uni with all the perks except guaranteed internships. and let's not even get into why johnny can't read but can be recruited to play on unpaid college league until he busts a knee.

[bold] I'm thinking this thread is just a giant troll. [/bold]

Many posters expressing ideas we don't normally hear on DL outside of Dee Facto and they all seem to be writing in a very similar style and expressing the exact same ideas.

Could just be one troll with multiple accounts testing out the reaction to an idea they are planning to promulgate on Reddit, Facebook and other more widely read sites.

You too can be a fabulous 1950s homemaker like Manchelle!

We are overpopulated now and housing prices are insane and jobs are getting scarcer. Are we really better off as society?

Housing prices are not going up due to "overpopulation".

"Can’t we have one thread where we aren’t hounded by the woke scolds? Why can’t we reminisce in peace? For regular Americans, the ‘50s were wonderful. I was alive then and it was a lovely childhood. We didn’t have any crime."

Congratulations on having a wonderful childhood, parents who lived within their means and treated you well, and who sheltered you from all the ugliness in the world! If you want to reminisce about that go ahead on some other thread dedicated to reminiscence rather than a general discussion of the era like this one. Because as someone said a happy childhood goes with parents who keep all the ugliness in the world away from their children, and people who grow up like that can easily conflate their own sheltered existence with a "golden age". And well, that's exactly what you're doing.

If the 1950s were a golden age it was purely in economic terms, but that was due to macroeconomic issues that will never be repeated - WWII affecting the economies of all the other developed nations far more, labor unions driving wages high, little international trade to undercut goods made by union members with goods made by 10 year old girls, that won't happen again. Nations don't live in economic isolation any more, there may not be a one-world government but there's sure as hell a one-world economy, that isn't going to change in our lifetimes.

[quote] If you want to reminisce about that go ahead on some other thread

No, I’ll do it on this thread, you little shit.

You’re the one who needs to go to another thread and talk about how awful it was for the poor blacks and whoever else when things were just fine for regular Americans. The Midwest was respected back then and our industrial cities boomed. But then your precious blacks demanded the keys and look what they are today! Yes, the poor oppressed blacks. They destroy everything their greasy hands touch. The biggest mistake this country ever made was not sending them all back after the Civil War.

I don’t want to hear anymore about how awful it was for the blacks or the hippies or the poor white trash who lived in cabins in the hills, or whatever other stupid oppressed groups. I don’t give a fuck about anything else you have to say, you stupid pinko! Give me back my world!

[quote] On the surface, it looked like a wonderful time for these people, but who knows what was lurking beneath the surface.

A lot of money was spent on what was essentially peacetime propaganda, all those short films you see on MST3K, shown in classrooms and theaters. Schools were more about teaching kids to behave and conform than about imparting knowledge, and news and entertainment programs were geared toward creating a homogenous society. The economic boom that some demographics enjoyed was predicated entirely on an unspoken agreement to not make waves.

There were signs that it was all going to go awry, probably starting with the teenybopper craze and the fainting at Frank Sinatra concerts, moving on to the homonally-charged Elvis panic, then finally blowing completely apart when the Beatles arrived.

In 50 years, people will look back and consider these the good old days.

R175 God, I fucking hope not.

Oh, heaven forbid we teach kids to behave! It’s so much better when they’re allowed to run wild, screaming in stores, sassing adults, stealing, assaulting old people, etc. And yes, the degeneracy started with Elvis. He started out copying dirty blues music and shaking his hips and it slowly devolved from there until today with that obese negress singing about her “WAP.” But by all means, let’s demonize the ‘50s because we didn’t permit girls to act like sluts.

Children of all demographics growing up with their two parents. On balance, a much more preferable world.

R173, the dry cleaner called. Your pointy head is ready.

pointy *hood*, dammit!

Seriously though - you are KKKlearly not someone who belongs on this forum. Or this country. Or this planet. Sick Nazi racist filth.

[quote]But by all means, let’s demonize the ‘50s because we didn’t permit girls to act like sluts.

R177, girls acting like sluts and people decrying it has been around throughout recorded history, and that's not even close to the reasons people object to the 1950s.

My ancestors came here on the Mayflower. I’m not the one who doesn’t belong here. We tried to get along with the blacks, but they let it be known that they will settle for nothing less than the total domination of this country.

And R181 just wants to give little girls tampons and let them turn into whores who sleep with as many Mexicans and buck you-know-whats as they can and have mixed babies and go on welfare after the “baby daddies” take off or go to prison.

And you wonder why so many people voted for Trump. You just want to take everything away from regular Americans and give it to people who don’t belong here and want to see us all dead. And then you want to turn around and call us nasty names and say we’re Nazi and racist. And now you won’t even allow us to talk about the happy times when we didn’t have to worry about all this black this and black that. Well, fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Yes, we all know all you care about is the blacks and the illegal Mexicans and the Mooslems and the tranny prostitutes. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you want them all to take over and for us regular folks to be murdered in our sleep. We got the message loud and clear.

It wasn't so great if you got polio or had any one of hundreds of other illnesses and diseases that were fatal then but quickly treated and frequently cured now.

Are Stormfront and VDare down today?

I didn't bother to read all the comments but let's not forget:

Child abuse was common and acceptable punishment. Spousal abuse was also an 'internal' affair and NOT A CRIME. Women had no control over reproduction. Sexual abuse was swept under the rug. People of color had limited job prospects and had to bow and scrape to white people. Gay people were put into jail and fired routinely - and could also be stuck into mental institutions and given lobotomies and shock treatment to treat their gay tendencies. And let's not forget the red scare and Jim Crow. Discrimination was legal and spared no one except white Christian males.

The economic miracle wasn't a miracle - the US came out of the war unscathed domestically and exported their products globally until other countries caught up again. Plus there was a baby bust in the 30's and early 40's - and VERY low immigration due to the 1920's racist immigration bill. Employers HAD to pay higher wages and benefits because there just weren't a ton of workers competing for jobs.

The 50's were a time of optimism after 15 years of hell with the Depression and WW2, so people were glad to have jobs and food to eat. But there was a very dark underbelly that no one talked about.

It would be nice to get back to a time of more economic equality - but that's about all. The rest of it was rubbish.

No, r182, fuck YOU. If you want to live in a totally pure white ethno-state, move to Iceland.

You do not belong in the US, which has been multi-ethnic from its very beginning. Oh wait, let me guess: you want to deport all Native Americans too, right? What about the Italians and the Irish and the Poles and the Jews? Your “Mayflower” ancestors (as if) hated them just as much as you hate Black and Latinx people.

I think a few positive things about the 50s are worth discussing past economics. There was a sense that we could design for a new world that would prevent the worst of the old from repeating itself. That came through in architecture, but also in new approaches to hygiene, home labor, general safety issues and child development. We seem to have lost a great deal of this in terms of it being considered as an a unified approach to design and life/work habits.

There was also an acceptance that social mobility was a good thing, but that it didn't have to come overnight or be based on some concurrent form of celebrity.

And there seemed to be less overt anti-intellectualism. Going to college was a good thing too, and increasingly so for young women. If a doctor or a lawyer had a professional opinion, it was respected (not always a good thing, to be sure). But there wasn't the sneering hatred of "experts" we see today.

And let's face it. Well-dressed people really WERE well-dressed.

That said, if any decade was ever seen through rose-tinted glasses, the '50s were it.

[quote] But there was a very dark underbelly that no one talked about.

No, people just didn’t air their dirty laundry in the streets and go blabbing to psychiatrists and the media about everything. It was handled within families.

R182 sounds like DeFacto from some of his other posts.

If you were a middle class, heterosexual male, it was a great time.

If you were "other" than that, were shit out of luck.

R186, the blacks and the MEXICANS are the ones causing trouble. All those other ethnic groups keep quiet and mind their own business. I don’t see any Orientals running around rioting and making demands.

Oh lord, someone started calling us "pinkos."

Half of the people on this thread are cosplay fascists, swear to god.

You're welcome, you flaming queens. For all of it.

Ike would have been considered a “SJW” today.

Not only did Eisenhower send the National Guard to Little Rock to protect the lives of Black students at Central High School, but he also vigorously (and successfully!) fought fascism during World War II.

Or, as the GQP would out it today: he was BLM and Antifa!!!

Good thing the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Facebook weren’t around then, otherwise he never would have won the Republican nomination.

[quote] Why did we have to just do away with all of it?

Ask Christine Jorgensen.

Wow, there really ARE Klan Grannies on the Datalounge!

And one of them had a snootfull last night!

I grew up in the 50's in the first suburb in the country. Most people were doing fairly well economically. We weren't. It wasn't fun watching everyone else have but we didn't. Then in the early 60's my father left. More poverty. The town was so big there were 5 public high Schools. When my mother sold her house in the 80's it was only 1 of 3 in the entire town that hadn't been remodeled.

I had a friend that was 14 and was continuously being raped by her uncle who started when she was 11. I had other friends who had only mothers and I think some of them were prostitutes so they could support their kids. In those days when a man left he didn't look back and didn't pay any child support. Fortunately my mother had a sales job and when my father left, he left her some money to take care of us.

The 50's were not all peaches and cream for everyone.

"No, people just didn’t air their dirty laundry in the streets and go blabbing to psychiatrists and the media about everything. It was handled within families."

And how'd that work out? A few years after the 1950s ended, the children all turned into hippies or ran away and took drugs, and the wives turned into feminists.

No, handling stuff in families doesn't actually work.

[quote] Schools were more about teaching kids to behave and conform than about imparting knowledge

No shit, Sherlock. Why do you think they made it a law that kids had to stay in school until at least age 16? Because gangs of adolescents & young teens were terrorizing cities. Their parents were working in factories & foundries and weren’t at home, so kids just cut school & gathered on street corners, causing trouble. The original Bowery Boys weren’t a joke. They were a reflection of the type of tough street kids one found on the streets of cities in the US. Once they made it a law that kids had to be in school, it meant they could enforce the law with a new class of rule enforcer called the truant officer. The truant officer went through neighborhoods checking up on errant students in order to keep them from committing crimes & going to jail. Common sense abounded - hey, it costs more money to imprison people than it does to educate them & to force them to behave when they’re younger. If they get used to going to school every day, they’ll get used to going to a job every day when they’re 16 years old.

What R188 means, R199, is the Daddy beat Mommy or whoever it was who had the problem and Mommy, etc., agreed to smile and lumber through life like a frozen waxwork and never say anything was wrong, as God and Nature clearly intended.

[QUOTE]The 50's were not all peaches and cream for everyone.

No one here said it was was.

But it was a wonderful time for many of us.

Would I want to go back to the 50s? No. But there are many aspects about it, I wish were still around.

^^Please excuse the typos.

You can find a gated, perfectly manicured, subdivision, with tough as nails HOA, and families wealthy enough to have at least a quarter of the mothers at home. That is about as close as you can get to the 1950’s lifestyle today. Ladies can lunch, shop, and leave the children with a nanny. Yes, society has changed, but if you have enough money, you can still live in these 1950s style bubbles. I see them all the time in the truly affluent north Chicago picture perfect lakeshore suburbs.

Most people can’t afford it, and others somewhat reject that lifestyle (see their children). But there are still people that do the damndest to recreate the magic.

I was up in Lake Forest, a wealthy Republican little village on the lake during a forth of July. All I saw was a sea of families in their gorgeous homes, having fancier than normal BBQ’s, dressed like they are at a county club. I’ve seen middle class Fourth of July celebrations but this was an upper middle class to legit wealthy neighborhoods. Everything was just so perfect, so proudly American, so tasteful excessive, that it made me feel like these folks are really living in a gilded bubble. Oh, and their sons and son’s college friends were fine as fuck, if you like them tan and preppy. I left feeling inadequate and rather poor.

Felt like I was in “The Stepford Wives” movies. The grand lifestyle of the ‘50s still exist, but you have to pay for the privilege of enjoying the ease and comfort.

My late FIL would tell stories about his childhood in Brooklyn. His parents owned a shop and they worked all day from 4 am til 6pm. He and his friends used to cut school in the early 1930s and he used to box when he was 10 years old. It was a 1930s thing. They used a boxing ring as an alternative to being out on the street causing trouble. There were boxing rings in every neighborhood, just like gyms now. Older men would tech younger ones to box and they would have boxing contests. People would bet on the fights and the top fighters went pro. In the 1950s, boxing was on tv every Saturday night. You’ll hear Ralph Kramden on the Honeymooners talk about “watching the fights” on tv. Those 1930s kids who boxed as kids grew up to either be fighters or to watch fighting on tv. It was an acceptable cultural diversion. It was believed boys had a lot of natural aggression, so teaching them to box was a good alternative to gang fights. Boxing lost its weekly popularity in the 60s when those hippie kids said “I don’t want to watch guys break each other’s jaws & blacken their eyes.” Boxing became a tele-event broadcast a few times a year instead of a Saturday night staple. Plus, black guys started winning the championships & white men didn’t like that.

It was a great time..Blacks knew "their place" there was no vulgarity on tv, celebrities were shamed for their behavior, not like today where they get their own tv show . People dressed properly, look at today...blacks wearing jeans belted at their knees, I see your underwear...loud booming car radios with that rap they love calling them the n-word which they love,love ,love. Give me the 50's anytime. All this talk of racism..they bring it on themselves with their actions.

[quote] And how'd that work out?

It worked out just fine. The kids had been radicalized by forces beyond their families’ control.

R162 "snowflake republicans spent most of their time trying to cancel rock n roll singers like Elvis..." Really!!! Where do you get your disinformation? Your equivocations are absurd and grossly inaccurate. And obviously those "snowflake republicans" were wasting their time as Little Richard, James Brown, The Stones, Elvis, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix. . .were not cancelled. Did you ever hear of due process? It actually existed back in the good old days. Ever hear of Al franken or Sharon Osbourne? You conveniently sidestepped facts and common sense which is what the over reactive, under educated snow flakes do!

I think what OP is referring is the civic-mindedness which existed then.

This Op-Ed covers this. Some people found the authors’ ideas offensive and one of them, a law professor, was stripped of her 1L classes.

I think it’s an interesting take and worthy of discussion.

[quote] lack of gay and women’s rights

Sounds like paradise to me.

R189 nope, not me. I never complain about “the blacks” as r182 so artfully did. I complain, constantly, about immigration. The descendants of slaves are not immigrants and are some of the people most hurt by immigration.

I wish people would actually bother to engage with my arguments instead of just assuming any person they dislike is me.

"It worked out just fine. The kids had been radicalized by forces beyond their families’ control."

"It" being "handling problems within the family, usually by pretending they didn't exist, and living lives of stifling conformity and emotional distance.

Well you're wrong, part of the radicalization of the 1960s was political, but part was indeed interpersonal. The young people of that era had been raised to conform, never to express their feelings, to dutifully do what their families and employers expected, to go to war kill you you were told to kill and wear the gray flannel suit when you got home and be grateful the war was over and nobody was talking about your glaring PTSD symptoms... and the young people rejected every bit of that. The Hippies talked endlessly about love, feelings, doing your own thing, sex, noncomformity, etc. All of that was a deliberate and conscious rejection of the values they'd grown up with during the 1950s.

R212 one of the things I do struggle with is how did the silent generation, who seem to be such lovely people, fail so horrifically as parents so as to create the boomers?

In the 50's most or people believed in and supported military service. Military men were honored. The public only saw war through movies and TV, which glorified it. Guys who got wounded or killed were heroes. During the Vietnam war the TV news started broadcasting the blood and gore, people were burned up in napalm. You got to see American boys, white and black massacred - dying right before your eyes. They did night death numbers and printed the names and photos o those who died. Overnight - having seen this on CBS, NBC and CBS - people turned against the war. It was TV that lost the Vietnam war for the USA ended the 50's worship of the serving in the military.

WW2 was an exception, in that it was one of the few wars in human history that might be called "just". The people who fought the Nazis and prevented them from taking over the world were justifiably proud, and they had every right to be, but they did go on to make the mistake of assuming most American wars were also right and good.

Most wars aren't right or just, and neither are most actions taken within any war, and the kids who objected to fighting to fighting in Vietnam thought they were the first in history to figure that out.

For us Original Boomers, the 50s were a great time to be a child. We walked to school often alone; rode bikes and rolled-skated without helmets; learned musical instruments or took dance lessons; were pretty much left unbothered by our parents; and were catered to by Mass Media with TV shows and Popular Music. "M-I-C....K-E-Y...."

And we were kept innocent, knowing nothing of the Korean Conflict or, if we were White and Northern, of racial hatred and crimes.

Or maybe I'm extrapolating far too much from my own little town.

[quote] All of that was a deliberate and conscious rejection of the values they'd grown up with during the 1950s.

Radicalized starting in the ‘50s by race music perpetrated by sexually libertine whites like Elvis and then by communist agitators and racially divisive troublemakers like Martin Luther King (who were backed by communists).

[quote] The Midwest was respected back then and our industrial cities boomed. But then your precious blacks demanded the keys and look what they are today!

Stormfront posts on DL never ceases to amaze me.

Well, it’s true. They couldn’t have destroyed our big industrial cities any more thoroughly if they’d taken torches to them.

And you want to keep defending these beasts after what those two little she-apes did to that Chinaman? On camera, no less.

[quote]The Hippies talked endlessly about love, feelings, doing your own thing, sex, noncomformity, etc. All of that was a deliberate and conscious rejection of the values they'd grown up with during the 1950s.

I'm just wondering: how old were you in 1968?

I was very young and remember only 2 things from the 1950s:

1. My dad insisted we continue on in our RV to vacation in Yellowstone after the massive 1959 7.3 earthquake. It was horrifying, he was completely nuts.

2. Little Richard!

The advent of fast food and prepared dinners warmed up in microwaves, was perhaps the bane of our civilization. When I was a kid back in the 50s, you rarely saw a fat person. Today, you rarely see a thin person.

I'm always amazed when I see crowd shots of the general public from decades previous to the 1990s how thin most of the populace was. Even in the 1980s you didn't see many people who were grossly overweight.

Fascinating thread, with some interesting and insightful perspectives (although, disturbingly, at least one commenter seems nostalgic for the KKK days).

I have a friend who wishes we still wore those hats - I think they’re called fedoras?

r216, trust me black boomers during that time also lived a more carefree childhood but they never forgot their skin color, your parents or their friends wouldn't let them forget. Must have been nice to be a part of the Founding Father's chosen people.

Nostalgia is the drug of choice for old people.

"Except for that incident in our box, I really LOVED the play."

I bet a lot of you nostalgic bitches who lived in Florida were members of the infamous Mortimer Club in Miami Beach.

It was the good old days of wholesome family entertainment like [italic]Amos ‘n’ Andy, Beulah, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, The Mickey Mouse Club,[/italic] and [italic]Leave it to Beaver[/italic].

And it was the last decade before LBJ started paying Black men to abandon their families.

LOL @r231. Your ultra-con white nationalist forebears in the 1950s were OUTRAGED by “I Love Lucy” and tried repeatedly to get it CANCELED.

Fortunately, Lucy prevailed, and went on to fund the production of “Star Trek” - which epitomized the liberal values of inclusiveness and diversity that you people despise so much.

Sorry, Nazi - Lucy’s not one of yours, she’s one of ours.

[quote]Your ultra-con white nationalist forebears in the 1950s were OUTRAGED by “I Love Lucy” and tried repeatedly to get it CANCELED.

In its very first year, I Love Lucy went to number #1 in the ratings.

[quote]t was the good old days of wholesome family entertainment like Amos ‘n’ Andy, Beulah, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, The Mickey Mouse Club, and Leave it to Beaver.

You can keep all that shit. So glad we don't have to watch schlock like most of that.

The 1950s is when the USA really stepped up its plan to eradicate smegma build up on the penises of every American male.

[quote]It would be nice to get back to a time of more economic equality - but that's about all. The rest of it was rubbish.

You know little about the era.

Yes, r233, because Lucille Ball prevailed upon network censors who were afraid that her “mixed” marriage to Desi might alienate Birchers.

In fact, Lucy was such a SJW that she wouldn’t permit anyone except herself to make fun of Desi’s accent.

[quote]Yes, [R233], because Lucille Ball prevailed upon network censors who were afraid that her “mixed” marriage to Desi might alienate Birchers.

The casting was unorthodox having one of the leads with a thick foreign accent. TV was still in in infancy. It is entirely understandable that the network was cautious.

But if they did not believe in the show, they would not have produced it. Lucille Ball had NO clout at the time. She was NOT a big star in 1951.

However, the show was immediately successful with the American public. It was the country's most watched show at the time.

r224 like r223 said processed foods started to proliferate around the 60s & 70s followed by the green revolution. That led to our current "abundance" of food and the consequences of it.

Lucille Ball was a 40 year-old B movie actress who never had great success in Hollywood and her career was winding down due to her age. She scored paydirt with I Love Lucy. It was really her last chance.

Far from Heaven encapsulated the times pretty well.

[quote]The Hippies talked endlessly about love, feelings, doing your own thing, sex, noncomformity, etc. All of that was a deliberate and conscious rejection of the values they'd grown up with during the 1950s.

Every decade had its rebels.

The 1950s had Rock&Roll, the Beats, Beatniks, Abstract Expressionism etc.

... and the 1950s also had the House Un-American Affairs Committee, which investigated Lucille Ball for being a Commie.

R240 Exactly. R232 thinks washed-up Lucille Ball was bossing around CBS.

In the 1950s US society was light years ahead of the rest of the world.

That's because most of the rest of the world was recovering from being bombed to bits.

The 1950s was similar to the Victorian Era: booming industry, expanding economy, sexual repression, and moral hypocrisy. Glossy, wholesome surfaces hiding the rot underneath.

Women, who enjoyed the feeling of independence and being employed in the 1940s, were expected to quit their jobs and be dependent housewives and baby factories when the men returned from WWII. Racism was overt and few protested. The sexual revolution was years away. The communist witch hunts ruined many careers. Homosexuality was labeled as a mental illness. Child abuse and domestic violence were swept under the rug, never to be discussed, much less prosecuted.

It's a common human weakness to romanticize the past by only remembering the good stuff.

[quote] nota republic

Oh dearie dear, R23!

[quote] You can keep all that shit. So glad we don't have to watch schlock like most of that.

Yeah, because it's SO much better to be stuck with the likes of stupid and retrograde sitcoms such as [italic]Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Full House, Saved by the Bell, Friends[/italic], shitty, exploitative, and deceptively edited "reality" TV shows, routine and authoritarian cop dramas, pretentiously self-important tributes to the medical-industrial-complex, and brain-rotting kiddie shows that exist only to sell toys built in sweatshops and carbohydrates grown in deplorable conditions by migrant workers for less than the minimum wage.

r246 actually, most of the world was actually untouched but people want to act like Europe, parts of north Africa and Japan are the world.

Mussolini tried to invade Ethiopia.

R247 No one with half a brain can ignore the negative. Just as we can't ignore the long list of negatives about today.

But none of that negates the wonderful aspects about the era.

[quote]actually, most of the world was actually untouched but people want to act like Europe, parts of north Africa and Japan are the world.

And gee, I wonder what human rights for minorities, women and homosexuals were like in those countries.

US society was light years ahead of the rest of the world in the 1950s.

(ofhand BTW, I have live almost half of my life outside of the US)

R247 I’ve come to believe this commonly cited trope to be a myth.

I believe most women probably quite liked being housewives, and a couple ugly feminists who couldn’t get husbands have spread this myth to ruin it for everyone else.

Forgot to sign.

[quote]The 1950s was similar to the Victorian Era: booming industry, expanding economy, sexual repression, and moral hypocrisy. Glossy, wholesome surfaces hiding the rot underneath. Women, who enjoyed the feeling of independence and being employed in the 1940s, were expected to quit their jobs and be dependent housewives and baby factories when the men returned from WWII.

What bullshit.

The FACTS are: "In 1950 about one in three women participated in the labor force." "Among women age 16 and over, the labor force participation rate was 33.9 percent in 1950"

That is from the US Bureau of labour statistics.

R252 I think there are women who honestly want to work and DON’T want to be married. And now, they don’t have to get married, they can support themselves nicely.

Not everyone wants to be married.

R255 as a bottom, everything I do is to please a top. It’s what makes me most happy and fulfilled. Women are the same way.

[quote]The 1950s was similar to the Victorian Era: booming industry, expanding economy, sexual repression,

Sexual repression? People fucked like rabbits.

R247 And one other thing about women in the workforce:

If you could ask women today if they would rather work or live comfortably with only their partner's paycheck... how many do you think would gladly opt out of HAVING to work?

My mother was in HS n the 50's, got married in 62 or 63 and has a story of being a young newlywed. They were living in their first apartment and a **gasp** divorcee lived down the hall. Such scandal!! My mother laughs now but she was super curious and titillated because the woman had Frederick's of Hollywood catalogs delivered and a man would show up on weekends and not leave until Sunday evening.

That's how different it was back then. Divorce was still a big taboo.

R258 I’m sure many would like to be supported but there are also women who like to be in control of their own paychecks and who actually enjoy their jobs. My mom was one - she loved being a nurse and continuesd to work and take courses in her field even though she didn’t need to.

What a fun thread. Racism, white supremacy and misogyny disguised as nostalgia for a "happier" time.

One thing about those days that were better were the Hollywood stars. So much more glamor.

R261 I think people are reminiscing about the good things about the 50s, not the negative ones you mention.

[quote]That's how different it was back then. Divorce was still a big taboo.

As was unmarried couples living together. That was hugely scandalous. So many miserable and rotten marriages resulted because of that stupid taboo.

I do agree with OP about the way people dressed better. Not saying hats and gloves but people have no pride anymore. They schlep to the store in slippers and pj's now like they literally rolled out of bed.

[quote}That's how different it was back then. Divorce was still a big taboo.

And just think: in the 1950s, the US was light years ahead of much of the word as far as divorce laws go.

The UK in 1969 "allowing couples to divorce after they had been separated for two years (or five years if only one of them wanted a divorce). A marriage could be ended if it had irretrievably broken down, and neither partner no longer had to prove "fault"."

Spain in 1981!

[quote]That's how different it was back then. Divorce was still a big taboo.

And just think: in the 1950s, the US was light years ahead of much of the word as far as divorce laws go.

The UK in 1969 "allowing couples to divorce after they had been separated for two years (or five years if only one of them wanted a divorce). A marriage could be ended if it had irretrievably broken down, and neither partner no longer had to prove "fault"."

Spain in 1981!

Guess what, OP? They're back. What does this remind you of?

[quote]Racism, white supremacy and misogyny

Sounds almost like 2021!

R251: There must be many with less than half a brain, since the past is often looked at with nostalgia goggles. R52 pointed it out when he mentioned: "My mother just shook her head and said it wasn't as rosy as it was made out to be on stage and screen." Those wonderful aspects you mentioned were enjoyed by a select group: upper class and middle class white people.

R252/253: Oh of course, Defuckto, you know more than the sociologists who were part of that time and who reported on it as it was happening. You know more than those PBS documentaries that critically examined that time period. You are a bottom who claims to know the minds of women. Are you transitioning yet?

R257: Fucking like rabbits was approved by 1950s society as long as you were married and monogamous. Divorce was taboo (as R259 wrote). So were extramarital sex and general promiscuity. Illegitimate children were symbols of shame. Society shunned these sexual "offenders". There was no strong counterculture to fight against all this until the 1960s. The '60s was a direct backlash against the moral hypocrisy of the '50s.

R262: Yes, those stars were glamorous, but the powerful studios groomed them and protected them (from press intrusion). Their dirt was covered up so it was easier for them to maintain a sense of mystery compared to today. Those old school stars were also coached extensively, given makeovers, vocal training, and etiquette lessons to be more polished.

Oh I know know R270 but we don't have stars like that now. Now we see them slobbing their way out of Starbuck's and dick and pussy shots. No mystery there anymore.

[quote]Fucking like rabbits was approved by 1950s society as long as you were married and monogamous. Divorce was taboo (as [R259] wrote). So were extramarital sex and general promiscuity.

As a kid in the late 50s and 60s I have knowledge about the era that you don't. No matter what the so-called official stance was, I guarantee you that the average young person back then had more sex than than today.

^Were they fucking like rabbits and also bragging about it to anyone who would listen? NO. I never said people in the 1950s were celibate. I said they were sexually repressed. They certainly weren't open about it (like people in the late 60s). They kept their habits hidden because they knew they could be ostracized or shamed if they were openly promiscuous. Many young people had to present a facade of purity if they wanted acceptance in society, no matter what they were doing behind closed doors.

[quote]There was no strong counterculture to fight against all this until the 1960s. The '60s was a direct backlash against the moral hypocrisy of the '50s.

There was a strong counterculture movement in the 50s. The sex of Rock and Roll, the Beatniks. the lurid film noir, the big tit bombshells from Dagmar to Jane Mansfield and all they represented. It was a very sexually charged time. The invention of "the pill" in the 1960s gave it momentum.

The hippies of the 1960s were just kids in the 1950s. They are able to be rebellious because of the affluent society the 1950s gave them.

[quote]They certainly weren't open about it (like people in the late 60s).

LOL. Men bragging about sexual conquests in the 1950s were probably MORE prevalent back then than the prudish times we live in today..

Once people no longer believed in the American Dream they gave up to better themselves. The irony is that they rejected one fake idea and philosophy and fell for various other fake ideas and philosophies. For example, we are still obsessed with celebrity culture and what they wear on the red carpet.

R254: How convenient of you to cherry-pick to suit your narrative. The US Bureau of Labour Statistics data you mentioned concerns the number of women in the workforce from 1950 onward (which did steadily increase in the ensuing decades). It doesn't include data during WWII and the years immediately after, which has everything to do with my point. Society needed women to do the jobs vacated by the men who enlisted and then expected these women to return home after wartime and start families, hence the baby boom/boomer generation.

[italic]From The Rise and Fall of Female Labor Force Participation During World War II in the United States by Evan K. Rose:[/italic]

"WWII prompted one of the largest shifts in female labor supply in U.S. history. Roughly 6.7 million additional women went to work during the war, increasing the female labor force by almost 50 percent in a few short years.1 A large share of these new entrants worked in previously male-dominated jobs constructing aircraft, assembling munitions, and staffing a burgeoning federal service. Manufacturing alone accounted for more than three million more female workers between 1940 and March 1944, rising from 21 to 34 percent of total female employment. The arrival of peace, however, ended the wartime boom in female employment almost as abruptly as it began. Female employment declined precipitously in the fall of 1945 and spring of 1946, returning aggregate female labor force participation (FLFP) almost to pre-war levels, as shown in Figure 1."

[italic]Also:[/italic]

"In Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Mid-Century (NBER Working Paper No. 9013), authors Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and David Lyle study the effect of women's work on wages, looking at the period before and after WWII. The authors focus on the growth of female employment from 1940 to shortly after the war, in 1950. In 1940, only 28 percent of women were working; by 1945, this figure exceeded 34 percent. [bold]In fact, the 1940s saw the largest proportional rise in female labor during the entire twentieth century. Although more than half of the women drawn into the workforce by the war left at the end of the decade[bold], a significant number remained."

[quote] Fucking like rabbits was approved by 1950s society as long as you were married and monogamous.

So not everyone was a huge fucking slut and there was actually romance, mystery, attraction, and emotion attached to sex?

Wow. How awful that must have been.

R277 OF COURSE women were obligated to work during WWII in the war effort. It was a WAR.

But the myth that women were not part of the workforce in the 1950s is just that: a myth.

Maybe the most significant change is that community based values have given way to the cult of narcissism.

R277 And once again let me ask: how many people today do you think would gladly stop working if they could just depend on their partner.

People today are riddled with debt, just to get by. Just imagine: there was a time when people could live with out credit cards. They could attend college without starting life after having accumulated 10s of thousands in debt.

r280, the difference is that we are more aware of it thanks to world entertainment and social media.

[quote]how many people today do you think would gladly stop working if they could just depend on their partner.

I could do that right now but I don't want to. Being financially dependent on another person is a very risky situation to put yourself in.

[quote]WWII prompted one of the largest shifts in female labor supply in U.S. history.

Duh.

R281 Ask yourself, do you want your survival to depend upon the whims of another person when that person could decide at any time to stop supporting you? I sure wouldn’t. I don’t know women who live off men sleep at night. They are one younger secretary away from losing their lifestyle.

[quote]Ask yourself, do you want your survival to depend upon the whims of another person when that person could decide at any time to stop supporting you?

Personally I would not want to depend on anyone.

But that's me.

My question however was the following: "how many people today do you think would gladly stop working if they could just depend on their partner."

My guess is that plenty would.

Especially considering how shitty most work experiences are today as well as the huge financial pressures many are under.

R277: Are you deliberately obtuse? No one said women weren't in workforce in the '50s. The number of women working during the '50s never surpassed the number during the war, of course. What was said and what is supported by studies, is that WWII saw the largest increase of working women in the 20th century. Then, more than half of these women left their jobs after the war. Many of them returned to domestic duties (because that's what society expected of them) and became dependents again. Two steps forward, 1 step back. The gradual increase of working women took decades.

Movies reflect society's attitudes. The trend of "mouthy" independent female characters played by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the '40s was replaced in the next decade with more passive, more traditionally feminine characters: Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, etc.

R284: Do you have a point? If not, shut your suckhole.

R278: That's your takeaway? LOL, as if you were ever a romantic, Defuckto/right-wing apologist.

Should be addressed to R279, not myself (R277)

[quote]is that WWII saw the largest increase of working women in the 20th century.

OF COURSE.

Men were at war. They were away. Women were FORCED to work. They were obligated to work. And many of those jobs were in government subsidized manufacturing for the war: airplanes, motors etc. After the war those contracts ended.

And when men returned, guess what? They returned to their jobs.

Yet despite all of this,, in the 1950s over one third of the workforce was women.

And yes, just like everywhere else in the world young couples wanted to have children. And fortunately the US was wealthy enough with a booming economy that people in their 20s could afford a home and a family.

There’s some fucked up shit in this here thread...

[quote] Ask yourself, do you want your survival to depend upon the whims of another person when that person could decide at any time to stop supporting you? I sure wouldn’t.

Love is not a whim. Only when you truly love somebody do you allow yourself to be made helpless before them — and that level of trust is the most beautiful and sacred thing.

[quote]The trend of "mouthy" independent female characters played by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the '40s was replaced in the next decade with more passive, more traditionally feminine characters: Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, etc.

The biggest female star of the 1940s was Betty Grable.

The careers of Bette Davis and Crawford continued in the 1950s.

Joined by bad girls like Gloria Grahame, Lizabeth Scott, Susan Hayward etc.....

The 1950s was when the CIA gave housewives LSD just to see what it would do.

:No matter what the so-called official stance was, I guarantee you that the average young person back then had more sex than than today.:"

I don't think that's true, and I don't think you get what was meant by all the "repression" that people keep talking about.

Gays lived in constant fear of arrest and being fired or ostracised if they were found out, and straights had no birth control available except condoms and diaphragms, and in many regions it was illegal to perscribe diaphragms to unmarried women, or just not done. So teenagers and college students at their hormonal peak had to content themselves with "heavy petting" (hand jobs) or deal with an unwanted pregnancy. The fear of pregnancy was so strong in those days that even the straight boys felt it, if he knocked up his high school girlfriend he'd be pressured to marry her and get a job and live a life of quiet desperation, and and give up his dreams of college or going to New York or whatever he dreamed about. Of course sometimes the desire to get laid by any means necessary was so strong that sometimes kids did marry straight out of high school and get jobs, or she got a job and paid his way through college, or they went ahead and became parents at 18 and were old before their time at 25.

Modern people really do have trouble realizing just how fraught having any sort of sex was, before the legalization of homosexuality, and before reliable birth control became available to all straights. Having sex before marriage was both heavily disapproved of and seriously risky for straights, particularly for girls.

Big Band era, going to dances, it was a safer time. Look at today, guns everywhere, no place is really safe from gun violence, not even a church. Food was not full of chemicals, and only one or two varieties of cereals. Look at the shelves..10 different Cheerios. Yes, the sale of condoms was sky high..but not the baby assembly line we see today.

"Being financially dependent on another person is a very risky situation to put yourself in."

It was less risky in the 1950s, when divorce was not considered socially acceptable, even for men, and courts would usually give the mother primary custody of children, and child support money and alimony until they married again. Women were afraid of losing their meal ticket, men were afraid of losing their children, both were afraid of being shunned, so being dependent on a spouse was a more reliable means of support than it is today.

And nobody talked about deadbeat dads that didn't pay the court-ordered child support and alimony and left their ex-wives and kids up shit creek, like all other personal issues it was swept under the rug.

[quote]R232 thinks washed-up Lucille Ball was bossing around CBS.

And R244 thinks that 'Star Trek' was a CBS property.

[QUOTE] teenagers and college students at their hormonal peak had to content themselves with "heavy petting" (hand jobs) or deal with an unwanted pregnancy.

You don't know what you are talking about.

When I was a kid there was a "Lovers Lane" near our house. A narrow unpaved road lined with trees.

During the day we'd go there with long sticks and pick up used condoms and dump them in a pile. I'm not making this up.

Mind you, this was the early 1960s. But it was still very much the 50s.

People used condoms. And overall, they had MORE sex than people do today. Surveys show that.

See the 2nd and 3rd graphs.

R291 Sacred my ass. No thanks. Man up and contribute.

People looked very clean and well-groomed, unlike the trashbag sleaze parade that Americans are today.

50s gay dudes...

Cute couple.

R227, I wouldn't know about those "Founding Fathers"; my great-grandparents came over from Sicily and County Donegal to work the Pennsylvania anthracite mines, when neither ethnicity "need apply" elsewhere (I'm from Molly Maguires country).

I thought I sufficiently acknowledged the social realities outside my enclave. And somehow, sheltered as I was, I grew up to be a flaming liberal.

R252 there are many manyyy women out there who want to be able to work (if they find a career they absolutely love) but don’t want to “have to” work. That’s why you see so many women today kill time at whatever job they’re at until they can get a rich man to marry her and quit. (Just look at the NYT section every week: “until a month ago, so and so was working at...”

Having the freedom to pursue your own interests is very different from having the pressure/expectation to help support the family, and I honestly think most women if they’re honest with themselves don’t want that.

R228 Older people having actually lived during several eras have first hand knowledge and do not rely on the same, stereotypical, limited purview repeatedly presented in movies and TV. I don't remember people who lived through the Depression being nostalgic about it.

I don’t want to depend on anyone. I guess I’m the outlier here.

I'm the guy who talked about his mother as a young newlywed and I can say she was a "good girl" before marriage. She said the most HS kids would do is neck and the heavy petting. They were terrified of getting pregnant and "those" girls who did were ostracized and generally dated the "hoods". Girls who dated flyboys from the AF base were also social pariahs. Watch Peyton Place and A Summer Place for a good look at the social mores of those times. Those were considered quite scandalous in their day.

Young people are having less sex today than they did in in the 1950s..

And it's not because of anxiety over getting pregnant.

"More than ever Americans aren't having sex"

The two biggest problems schools had in the 1950s were chewing gum and running in the halls. We were also taught to respect others, especially elders.

"Having the freedom to pursue your own interests is very different from having the pressure/expectation to help support the family, and I honestly think most women if they’re honest with themselves don’t want that."

Everyone wants the freedom to pursue their own interests, and in this day and age that requires having a hell of a lot more money than the average person. It's human nature to look for an easy way out of difficult situations (like low wages and a dreadful job market), which is why half the population of the world is looking for a rich spouse or wasting real-life opportunities because they expect to become a social media "influencer".

In the 1950s, working people did seem to have more time to pursue their own interests than today, as wages were high, the cost of living was low, and people could get by on 40 hours work a week. But even though people had more time than we do, I get the impression there wasn't a lot of "pursuing your own interests" going on, what with the social conformity and limited entertainment options. 3 TV channels (radio was the primary in-home entertainment), travel was expensive and people were parochial, too much interest in the arts or books would make people think you were a fag or a commie, etc. It sure looks boring from here...

[quote]I get the impression there wasn't a lot of "pursuing your own interests" going on, what with the social conformity and limited entertainment options. 3 TV channels (radio was the primary in-home entertainment), travel was expensive and people were parochial, too much interest in the arts or books would make people think you were a fag or a commie, etc. It sure looks boring from here...

Funny how people today can't even imagine the beauty of simple pleasures and the rich urban environment the US once had.

First of all: every town had a movie theatre. Maybe two. People went to the movies once a week. Movie houses showed cartoons during the day. I still remember that.

TV was new and yes there were only 3 channels but the whole country watched together. It was still a novelty for many.

Towns still had main streets with shops. Those streets were bustling. There was no on-line shopping. Clothing stores, shoe stores, appliance stores, newsstands, grocery stores, butcher shops, jewelry stores, record shops, hardware stores....

If your town was big enough, you had a department store too.

You dressed up to go "in town".

You had lunch counters, luncheonettes, soda fountains, small restaurants diners. You met up with people. you hung out.

Towns had parades, events, carnivals, festivals, high school dances, bingo night, dining and dancing, and people attended.

Things like public libraries, public parks, movie houses, and public pools were pleasant. In fact in all public spaces decorum was expected.

In the 50s there was a boom for outdoor activities: the National Parks. Historic sites. Families were buying station wagons...you had tail gate picnics with other families.

Look, I could go on and on but there was much more to do in the 1950s.

Today our public spaces outside of wealthy areas are depressing.

[quote]too much interest in the arts or books would make people think you were a fag or a commie, etc. It sure looks boring from here...

What??

In the 1950s people read more. Theatre was booming. Authors were household names. Things like book clubs were the rage. The art scene was flourishing. Even TV was showing live plays, classical concerts, dance.

I would never want to wear a shirt and tie and dress pants with wingtips every day, but I appreciate that people back then took care of their appearance in public. They dressed as well as they could and were well-groomed. That's one thing I wish would come back. So many people today look so ghetto and trashy with sweatpants, pajama pants, sportswear, idiotic hairstyles etc. in public.

The difference in substantive content between, say, a TIME magazine from 1957 to one now is very, very depressing.

I used to think of "The 50s!" as though it were about 50 years long.

It was only like, from 2010 to 2020. Just not a long time. Not a long time at all. You had your dames of the 40s. The gangsters. Then suddenly the housewife and poodle skirt was in. Then the hippies of the 60s. It was a trend.

It was just a trend. The TV show Friends was 25 years ago. The 50s were only 10 years. They were short and fleeting. A decade isn't long.

That polite demeanor of household perfection was a facade largely imagined in television commercials to sell household appliances. People were more prosperous after the war but some still lived like the Honeymooners.

It was never the 50s! It was all fake because before the Hayes Codes everyone was a lot more real.

You can have it. I'll wait a few decades.

R317, "They listen to the radio"?! Hardly! TV was THE thing!

I was born in 1949. By the time I was four, my family and every other one around had the one B&W television in the living room (aka "parlor"). I never heard any radio broadcast of substance or anything at all, really, until stations began playing Pop music.

(134) As a retiree, I have a closet loaded with suits, shirts, ties, dresser drawer holding cuff-links (you know what those are), several watches, tie bars/pins.. high school/university graduation rings..Those were the days when one looked successful.

Very true R315, news articles today and from the 2010s might as well be no better than tabloids compared to news articles from the 1950s and 1960s in Time, Life magazine, etc.

R312 that's how my grandmother, aunt, and mother describe life in the 1950s in a small town near Pittsburgh where they all lived.

They also had only one car that my grandfather and grandmother drove, my grandfather worked, and my grandmother also worked both during the second world war, and in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Your first sentence tempers everything else you post afterwards, OP

THREAD CANCELED.

The 50s

I guess "chubby" was a size category for girls. For boys back then, clothes came in slim, regular and "husky." With guaranteed no-rip seams!

People didn't get as fat then as they do now.

Look at old photos, the number of fat people is pretty rare. And even then, "fat" was like 20 pounds overweight, not the land whales you see everywhere today.

The "husky" kid in r324's link would be considered a normal size today.

R324 That reminds me of my dad telling me how he didn't want to wear the husky size, so he ran a bunch of laps. Something about it being embarrassing.

People had shame back then about looking slovenly and gross. It was a sign of poor character.

[quote]It was a sign of poor character.

Now it's something we're supposed to "own" and celebrate!

People were embarrassed to be overweight back then, it was shameful.

(R315) But one must remember, the current population is a "dumb down" population compared to the 50's.

I was born at the start of the next decade but even as a child the Fifties didn't look like some halcyon age but rather a time that put enormous stock in outward appearances and conformity, at a sacrifice to individuality and personal happiness.

The era of school pep rallys; doing what the church says, what the company boss says; keeping up appearances; measuring your success by an extra bedroom, how often you traded cars, whether you belonged to the Kiwanis Club or a country club; by class stratified haircuts... It doesn't seem such a great time to me (and that's putting aside as OP did the blatant racism, the dim expectations for women, the absence of anyplace far outside the closet for gays and lesbians.)

All those billions of Boomer children running around everywhere? No thanks.

Men wore hats. When I was a kid I automatically looked at hat wearing men as conservative assholes who were most likely police informants. JFK killed the hat for a good 20 or 30 years.

Now men wear hats again & I hate it. I will only ever wear a hat when it’s fucking freezing outside. That includes baseball hats.