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Well, she loved Mad Men and I was working around (not in) NYC at that time. I kept pointing out things which sure were familiar. She could not get over the smoking and liquor in offices at that time - yup, remember that, too, by the men.
Mad Men was really spot on when it came to office behavior. I saw all that where I worked. The only difference was I don't think there was a Peggy Olson at the places where I worked. That's probably because it was mostly insurance companies and they were really strict about women's roles from dress codes to what jobs they could have.
I guess if young people today feel they have to blame the previous generation for whatever ills they imagine have been wrought, they need to narrow it down to putting the blame on those who were in charge, i.e. a specific class of white males who called the shots, rather than the age of an entire group of people who were born during that time.
Men who applied to teach at the elementary school level were often looked as potential predators and would NOT be hired by most principals.
Male nurses were also in many cases shunned. The women students at many nursing schools were provided first class residences. Male students received the tiny apartment over the purchasing department of the hospital.
In some of these situations, the man is still at a disadvantage.
I would not want to be a male teacher. One accusation, real or not, can sink a career. It would feel like swallowing a knife each day IMO.
Mad Men was really spot on when it came to office behavior. I saw all that where I worked. The only difference was I don't think there was a Peggy Olson at the places where I worked. That's probably because it was mostly insurance companies and they were really strict about women's roles from dress codes to what jobs they could have.
I guess if young people today feel they have to blame the previous generation for whatever ills they imagine have been wrought, they need to narrow it down to putting the blame on those who were in charge, i.e. a specific class of white males who called the shots, rather than the age of an entire group of people who were born during that time.
I don't think anyone should be blamed. Decisions were made based on the beliefs of the time. Context is important. It's like trying to blame a doctor from the 1950s for not saving a life by performing a heart transplant. People have to evolve just like technology. It's all a process. I think you really have to walk the walk to truly understand what it was like to have lived in a time. That's what made shows like 1912 House so fascinating. It's hard for anyone to translate what they have read about to how it affects real people on a daily basis. I'm sure most millenials are aware of the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, etc. but as you can see, watching a show like Mad Men made it seem more authentic and by having an emotional connection with a character, even a younger audience can feel the reactions of the secretaries when they were ill-treated.
But when young people make blanket statements about how much better it was for a previous generation, they should be given a history lesson. This is relatively new. Most new generations, up until now, were well-aware of the ills faced by their parents or grandparents. The sufferings of the Depression were grilled into your head, not to mention how children in China were starving.
I understand that it is still not equitable. Judges are supposed to take into account the earning potentials of each spouse. No one gets real alimony any more. It's called maintenance and it's different. But your friend's wife had the opportunity to become an engineer. How many women were engineers in 1965? What happens to the women who get married at age 18-22 and never worked a job in their entire life? Then, in 1982, they get divorced, initiated by either the husband or wife and she needs to find a way to generate an income. Made a lot of material for movies in the 1980s.
I don't think anyone should be blamed. Decisions were made based on the beliefs of the time. Context is important. It's like trying to blame a doctor from the 1950s for not saving a life by performing a heart transplant. People have to evolve just like technology. It's all a process. I think you really have to walk the walk to truly understand what it was like to have lived in a time. That's what made shows like 1912 House so fascinating. It's hard for anyone to translate what they have read about to how it affects real people on a daily basis. I'm sure most millenials are aware of the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, etc. but as you can see, watching a show like Mad Men made it seem more authentic and by having an emotional connection with a character, even a younger audience can feel the reactions of the secretaries when they were ill-treated.
But when young people make blanket statements about how much better it was for a previous generation, they should be given a history lesson. This is relatively new. Most new generations, up until now, were well-aware of the ills faced by their parents or grandparents. The sufferings of the Depression were grilled into your head, not to mention how children in China were starving.
You are absolutely correct. I neglected to put the word "blame" in quotes and I should have. There is no "blame." People respond, react and behave according to the times in which they are living. The "Millennials" will be doing that too.
Mad Men was really spot on when it came to office behavior. I saw all that where I worked. The only difference was I don't think there was a Peggy Olson at the places where I worked. That's probably because it was mostly insurance companies and they were really strict about women's roles from dress codes to what jobs they could have.
I guess if young people today feel they have to blame the previous generation for whatever ills they imagine have been wrought, they need to narrow it down to putting the blame on those who were in charge, i.e. a specific class of white males who called the shots, rather than the age of an entire group of people who were born during that time.
The late-Boomers escaped almost all of that. I entered the workforce in 1981. Title VII and the EEOC had been around for 15 years by then and corporate America was quite tuned into gender discrimination suits. There was not much "Mad Men" going on because that would result in a discrimination suit with a giant settlement. It doesn't mean that discrimination didn't happen. What it did do is open up career paths for women in an awful lot of high paying fields. I've always worked with lots of female engineers. Female physicians, dentists, and attorneys are pretty normal.
There is still a pretty major glass ceiling in corporate America. Executive row is still mostly male.
The late-Boomers escaped almost all of that. I entered the workforce in 1981. Title VII and the EEOC had been around for 15 years by then and corporate America was quite tuned into gender discrimination suits. There was not much "Mad Men" going on because that would result in a discrimination suit with a giant settlement. It doesn't mean that discrimination didn't happen. What it did do is open up career paths for women in an awful lot of high paying fields. I've always worked with lots of female engineers. Female physicians, dentists, and attorneys are pretty normal.
There is still a pretty major glass ceiling in corporate America. Executive row is still mostly male.
I gather you are not female?
During the "transition" time, it certainly wasn't as bad, but it was bad. The old-timers in the office complained. Both young and old male workers who had some power made sexist, snide, sarcastic remarks, e.g. as directed to the secretary, "maybe I should get YOU a cup of coffee. There was a lot of male resentment. As you said, while there were laws on the books, it took a long time for behaviors to change and to become standard, expected behavior in the office.
Remember the big fuss about the airline commercials, "I'm Cheryl, Fly Me." Speaking of, that's another occupation that was traditionally for women only. You had to be thin, tall, beautiful. Then with the new anti-discrimination laws, the stewardess became a flight attendant and could be old, ugly, short, married, and even male.
If you watch some of the old sitcoms from the early 80s or stand-up routines, there are many jokes about the role changes of women during that time. The technique was for a male character to be surprised to find out that his new boss was a woman and that always got a laugh. And Phil Donahue, the champion of women during the early-mid 80s got his high ratings based on endless shows about women in society. And as I mentioned previously, for late boomers, the expectations shifted while you were growing up and many were unprepared. When you were little, girls anticipated "traditional roles during adulthood." By the time you got out of college, you were expected to "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never ever ever let you forget you're a man." So you ended up being a live caller on The Phil Donahue Show. Other women looked down on the women who did not have a "meaningful" career, who became a secretary, who stayed home with their kids, who did not go to professional school to take advantage of the new opportunities. Ewww, you went to beauty school.
Today, I have see young fathers helping their daughters get ready for school by braiding their hair, making ponytails, reading Pinkalicious at bedtime, picking out those pink and purple dresses that 4 year old girls insist on wearing. How many 52 year old men helped braid their daughter's hair when they were little? Younger boomers may have helped with diapers, car seats, etc., which older boomer dads did not do, but there were still areas that made them uncomfortable and were still mommy only jobs.
This is because there were two babyboomer generations in reality.
The first half of the baby boomer generation, those who were let's say 10 in 1957 had a different childhood and coming of age experience than those who were 10 in 1967. Yes, there was duck and cover and the Cuban missile crisis that laid a shadow, but for the most part, that was a grown-up problem and there really wasn't much a kid could do about it. Suburban kids could ride their bikes around unsupervised, doors remained unlocked. Urban kids could hang out at the candy store, trade baseball cards, and play street games like stickball. Apartment doors were unlocked. If both of your parents worked, there were neighbors who watched out for you, told your parents when you were up to no-good. You went home for lunch from school and either you went home to a parent with a prepared sandwich or your mother arranged for you to go home to a neighbor's house or maybe you went home to an empty house, but that was still pretty safe because there were still people you could go to if there was an emergency. Unless your parents were dysfunctional (which was kept a big secret), rich or poor, a kid was pretty safe. Of course, there was still always some crime and kids stole hubcaps and stole cars too back then.
By the mid-60s, in the cities, you couldn't keep your door unlocked. The streets weren't safe after dark. By the time I got into junior high school, white or black, rich or poor, kids were coming into school stoned out of their mind. They brought guns and knife with them, which came out and were used on the stairwells between classes and after school during a "rumble." You couldn't ride the subway safely at night any more. I watched my mother twice, get held up on the subway in broad daylight and it traumatized me. And if you were male and a teen or almost a teen, you had to worry about the draft because that war seemed to have no end in sight.
All TV shows were "family-friendly," but TV shows geared for the babyboomer tweens and teens did show a suburban white upbringing. Father Knows Best, Bachelor Father, Gidget, The Donna Reed Show, etc. Even the Patty Duke Show, which took place in Brooklyn Heights started out showing Patty living near the Brooklyn Promenade in an apartment building. Somehow, her apartment, turned into this big house with a lawn and she went to the fictional Brooklyn Heights High School. If anyone is familiar with Brooklyn Heights, while always an affluent community, there were/are no large homes with huge backyards and front lawns and street parking was always a nightmare so many people did not even have cars, as was depicted in the show. These were the shows for "children" to watch. Other shows, while children still watched them, with a lot of grown up humor that flew over the heads of the kids, some did show a grittier lifestyle such as The Honeymooners or even the urban Car 54 Where are you. With that token Black kid in the class, I always wondered what planet these kids were living on, with all of these white kids, no Asians or Hispanic kids or Asian kids, with these big backyards for playing ball and the kids piling into a family car. That was not my childhood.
By the time the late baby boomers were ready to enter the workforce, it was pretty much the same as it is today. There was a recession during the late 70s, early 80s, with large layoffs. Detroit and manufacturing were going bye-bye. Pensions were going bye-bye. Unions were being broken. The airline industry, the telephone company were being broken up. Free tuition for the public colleges in California and New York was already in the past. We were already discussing whether SS would be there when we retired. And that's why the new 401K plans were being heralded, as a way to save for the future. Little did we know back then, that they were going to replace pensions for good. Buying a home for us was just as elusive as it is now. The mortgage interest rates were 11 percent. Rentals were already in short supply and the high rents of my area made it very difficult to save for the down payment. The home prices in my area (not nationally) were very much disproportionately higher than salaries, plus already the high property taxes that still plague my community. With those high interest rates, we couldn't afford to buy a house any more than my parents could. By then, this part of the baby boomer generation, there were many fewer opportunities for non-college graduates and degree inflation, just as now, was already in place. But the draft was over.
Strauss and Howe subdivided Boomers into 1st and 2nd wave (some refer to these respectively as Aquarian and Disco Boomers). Also, Strauss and Howe start Boom in 1942 and end it in 1960. This is because 1964 began the Second Turning of the current Saeculum. The 1964 turning was incited by the assassination of JFK, the turn toward radicalization in domestic politics, the increasing crisis in Vietnam, and, the mass adoption of birth control pills. Anyone born after 1960 has no reliable memory of JFK, and their entire reliably remembered existence began during the 1960s - 70s Social Revolution or after. Anyone born after 1960 had little to rebel against (or at least, not the same things as Boomers).
Men who applied to teach at the elementary school level were often looked as potential predators and would NOT be hired by most principals.
Male nurses were also in many cases shunned. The women students at many nursing schools were provided first class residences. Male students received the tiny apartment over the purchasing department of the hospital.
It did and does somewhat today... but I suspect those male nurses are specialized and paid more based on what I've seen.
Male teachers in the upper grades were fairly common. But I had a fifth grade male teacher back in the 1950s who loved to have the little girls sit on his lap.
[quote=SunGrins;44804749]It did and does somewhat today... but I suspect those male nurses are specialized and paid more based on what I've seen.
Male teachers in the upper grades were fairly common. But I had a fifth grade male teacher back in the 1950s who loved to have the little girls sit on his lap.[/quote]
Today that behavior would raise immediate reg flags and he would be told in no uncertain terms to cease and desist.
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