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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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I've heard it said that in America especially the 50s saw a return to Victorian mores and rigid social conservatism...was it an exception to the trend of liberalization during the 20th century? I mean a lot of scientific and technological process was being made, as made as social revolutions...I'm sure social progress was being made, but would you say the desire for a settled sort of utopia was stronger than these changes? You had Beats in North Beach, but it seems the 50s was like the stereotypes: picket fences, stay at home moms, dad the only breadwinner, auto dominated suburbs with big cars...
Would you say things were pretty much the same in the 50s as the 30s and 40s? The early 40s were dominated by the War so things were 'put on hold' but they strike me as very much like the 30s. 1946-1962 is the 'cultural' 60s anyway. Big band/swing/Jazz/crooners, similar fashions (longer hair for women)...the skirts were actually shorter in the 40s than either the 30s and 50s. The late 30s seem like an echo of the Roaring 20s, with Prohibition, Gangsters, the Follies, Flappers...Still, I think this doesn't represent Mr and Mrs Average Joe in the street-car suburbs or the newer, 'country estates' that the interstates spawned - the suburbs.
Despite it's conservatism, for instance, the 50s were at least a time of change. The world was alive with anticipation to the advances of the future and the possibilities technology brought. In the home, around the world, even the cosmos...Civil Rights began in 1954 with Rosa Parks, the first stirrings of Women's Rights...still I hear it was an emotionally repressed time, where conformity ruled...America was free, but individualism was also seen as a 'Communist plot'. Especially when it came to that raucous new genre of Rock'n'Roll. Of course most kids courted, consumated their love on their wedding night (or at least only after they were 'going steady').
Yet, for instance, the 50s don't really seem any more religious than today. Evolution was just as accepted, it seems, and mainstream society seemed sort of secular yet conservative at the same time. Many had a problem with homosexuality more because it was 'not normal' or 'one of those evil Communist schemes to reduce the population' rather than it being a 'sin' although that was a live and well. It was, after all, the era when Billy Graham began his great crusade. Most people were stuck in the old ways, believing in a worldview a hundred years old. Even pretty liberal folk in the North often had 'issues' with people of colour.
Would you say the 50s marked a greater departure from the 30s/40s or did things remain relatively the same or even go back a bit?
I've heard it said that in America especially the 50s saw a return to Victorian mores and rigid social conservatism...was it an exception to the trend of liberalization during the 20th century? I mean a lot of scientific and technological process was being made, as made as social revolutions...I'm sure social progress was being made, but would you say the desire for a settled sort of utopia was stronger than these changes? You had Beats in North Beach, but it seems the 50s was like the stereotypes: picket fences, stay at home moms, dad the only breadwinner, auto dominated suburbs with big cars...
Would you say things were pretty much the same in the 50s as the 30s and 40s? The early 40s were dominated by the War so things were 'put on hold' but they strike me as very much like the 30s. 1946-1962 is the 'cultural' 60s anyway. Big band/swing/Jazz/crooners, similar fashions (longer hair for women)...the skirts were actually shorter in the 40s than either the 30s and 50s. The late 30s seem like an echo of the Roaring 20s, with Prohibition, Gangsters, the Follies, Flappers...Still, I think this doesn't represent Mr and Mrs Average Joe in the street-car suburbs or the newer, 'country estates' that the interstates spawned - the suburbs.
Despite it's conservatism, for instance, the 50s were at least a time of change. The world was alive with anticipation to the advances of the future and the possibilities technology brought. In the home, around the world, even the cosmos...Civil Rights began in 1954 with Rosa Parks, the first stirrings of Women's Rights...still I hear it was an emotionally repressed time, where conformity ruled...America was free, but individualism was also seen as a 'Communist plot'. Especially when it came to that raucous new genre of Rock'n'Roll. Of course most kids courted, consumated their love on their wedding night (or at least only after they were 'going steady').
Yet, for instance, the 50s don't really seem any more religious than today. Evolution was just as accepted, it seems, and mainstream society seemed sort of secular yet conservative at the same time. Many had a problem with homosexuality more because it was 'not normal' or 'one of those evil Communist schemes to reduce the population' rather than it being a 'sin' although that was a live and well. It was, after all, the era when Billy Graham began his great crusade. Most people were stuck in the old ways, believing in a worldview a hundred years old. Even pretty liberal folk in the North often had 'issues' with people of colour.
Would you say the 50s marked a greater departure from the 30s/40s or did things remain relatively the same or even go back a bit?
I agree with all but this statement! Christian faith dominated the US in the 1950's.
I agree with all but this statement! Christian faith dominated the US in the 1950's.
Based on my own hometown in the Fifties, I would have to second that. In a village of 5,000 people we had two R.C. churches, two Baptist churches (one with an all black congregation), a Presbyterian church, a Methodist church and an Episcopal church.
They were all very, very well attended, and the R.C. church has four masses each on Sundays and they were heavily attended.
A neighboring crossroads hamlet to the east had an R.C. church, and to the west a somewhat larger hamlet had two Protestant churches.
The state allowed an hour of "released time" per week for students to attend religious instruction at a local church. Virtually all R.C. students attended, and about thirty to forty percent of the Protestant kids. The lower Protestant attendance may have been because some of their churches had Sunday schools for kids, whereas the R.C.'s did not.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,034,272 times
Reputation: 11862
Okay maybe my statement was incorrect. I mean the 50s were probably truly more religious than today, but I mean the mainstream media treated evolution as fact.etc and things already seem a lot more secular than say 1900.
In the 30's and 40's with depression and war people had far more important things to focus on that silly things like social mores or to listen to those who indulge in thinking they are responsible for promoting a better society.
There IS a role for them in society... but it isn't at the head of the train.
Quote:
Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare
because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level,
has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under control. RP-1991
I think the 1920's and the mid 1960's were pretty much social experiment times and that untimately were generally rejected by society. The Choas they resulted i where more rejected than any ideas accepted.WWII and Vietnam had miore influence than the so called movements of those times.
I think the 50's was an extension of the 30's and 40's socially, but economically was very different. The 50's was a boom era of rapid expansion and prosperity. You had a massive transfer of middle class families moving out of the cities and into the new suburbs where they could now afford a house and a car, and to send their kids to excellent public schools. Men were the breadwinners and women stayed home to cook, clean, and raise the kids. There was also a huge investment by the federal government into education, especially science and engineering, which was necessitated by the Cold War, in order to compete with the Soviets. This suburbia environment created an atmosphere where increased emphasis was put on family values, safety, education, and conservative social values/norms. I call it the Beaver-Cleaver society or the "Gee-Golly" era.
What largely killed the 50's era conservatism was that by the 60's, women began entering the workforce in large numbers and the idea of a woman being a stay-home mother largely became extinct by the 70's. You also had various movements such as the Vietnam War protests, Civil Rights Movement, and other liberal movements that promoted women being treated as equal to men and not stay at home wives. These events are largely responsible for killing the 50's era lifestyle.
Another problem with the 50's is the way Hollywood portrayed the era. While the above scenario was largely true with white middle class America of the 50's, what is largely ignored, is that American cities decayed during the 50's due to the massive white flight. American cities suffered from decreasing funding and increased poverty. The effects of the 1950's on American cities today are still profound, although some cities, such as NYC, have revitalized to a certain degree. You don't hear this part of the tale from watching Hollywood movies. You also don't hear much about the plight of minority families, especially blacks, who were being lynched in the South and other parts of the country. The South remained a largely poor area during the 50's and is still today trying to catch up economically to the rest of the country.
I've always heard the the 1950's were a time of great optimism and great relief, at least for the white majority.
The war was over (although there was the Korean War in the early 1950's). The soldiers had come home and were starting families. Fertility rates increased. Suburban housing development was spreading like wildfire across former farmlands and the first shopping centers were beginning to open. The U.S. still had a large industrial sector. My grandpa (then in his 20's), with his sixth-grade education, was making something like the equivalent of $100,000 a year working in a mine. Of course, he was an exceptional example, and the U.S. is wealthier today than it was then. The important thing to remember, though, is that in comparative terms, the U.S. was both far wealthier than other countries (Western Europe was re-building itself, and Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc. were still largely third-world countries), as well as far wealthier than it had been in the past.
Things we take for granted now were wonders then: television sets, refrigerators, air conditioning, etc. Unlike in past years, though, rather than only being affordable to the rich they were also affordable to the average worker. Remember the feeling when you first accessed the internet or saw HDTV? I imagine those feelings were common in the 1950's, if not more common. Neighbors would go to each others' houses to see their new TVs or kitchen appliances.
The things those who lived in the 1950's enjoyed newly, however, weren't limited to technology. Many lived in their first home with a garden out in the suburbs, away from the noise and pollution of the cities.
There was still the threat of war with the Soviet Union and children often did bomb drills in school.
As for religion, the 1950's was probably the last "good" decade for the Catholic church. Something like 80% of Catholics attended Mass on Sunday, as compared to ~25% today. Confession lines were still long and Catholics at least viewed the moral teachings of the church as binding on their individual consciences. Mainstream Protestant churches too seemed to still be well-attended.
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