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The 50's were about appearances......however you had to lie, cheat or steal to look good and go along with society.
Many of the problems of today were there then -they were just swept under the rug and hidden.
Back then:
Husband beats you? Take it...he is in charge
Raped? Cannot tell anyone.
Molested? Def don't tell anyone. After all he is a good upstanding member of the community.
Gay? Get married and pretend to love - spend your life acting.
The 50's have been waaaaay to glamorized.
Interesting perspective. I am ten years older than you and think of the 80s as being more like the 50s and the 90s as more like the 60s. The 50s and 80s were both conservative and blissful. The music and fashion had some similarities. The country was in a prosperous, relatively calm time after the wars that ended in the 40s and 70s. The 60s and 90s both saw a fractionalization of society culturally speaking as represented in the music.
I think I actually agree with you here. When I was thinking about the '90s as a bliss time, I was actually thinking more about the first half of the '90s. The late '90s were incredibly tense times, especially for a teenager. I am not sure if the music was a cause or a result, but kids then were violent and out of control, moreso than today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultrarunner
Growing up in the Bay Area I would see news accounts about Jim Crow laws and Segregation from other parts of the country and it would be totally foreign to me...
The 1950's here were seen as a time of economic prosperity... people were anxious to get on with life after having lived through WWII.
One of the most striking differences that I notice is the almost absence of stay at home moms today and the number of single parent homes... While not unheard of in the 50's... it certainly was the rare exception... I had one classmate whose father was killed in Korea and she was the only single parent family I knew... I didn't know any where both parents worked full time... although some had mom's that worked part time at the school or did book keeping work from home and these were the same families that always seemed to be going on great vacations every summer and had the new cars and power lawn mowers
How liberal was the bay area in the '50s?
I do believe the demise of the stay at home mom/two parents households have contributed to the demise of our moral values as a nation. I know thats not a popular thing to say, but children do turn out better when raised by their parents rather than by MTV.
I do believe the demise of the stay at home mom/two parents households have contributed to the demise of our moral values as a nation. I know thats not a popular thing to say, but children do turn out better when raised by their parents rather than by MTV.
I don't think I can really answer except in terms of my limited experiences...
I think the Bay Area is/was different for a number of reasons...
Gateway to the Orient and Eastern thinking...
Many people were drawn here looking for a new start and were willing to leave family and fiends behind to do so...
A very diversified populous with people from every corner of the world... kind of the "We are all immigrants" way of thinking.
I just remember hearing elders speak about how California was different and that people should leave ideas of prejudice and what side of the tracks they were born on back where they came from...
Sometimes, it's really the simple things you remember... like when a neighbors come together when someone in the neighborhood experiences a loss...
I just remember that race was not a controlling factor and that the parents I knew would comment if someone did not keep up their yard or if their children were not polite... and race had nothing to do with it...
The 50's were about appearances......however you had to lie, cheat or steal to look good and go along with society.
Many of the problems of today were there then -they were just swept under the rug and hidden.
Back then:
Husband beats you? Take it...he is in charge
Raped? Cannot tell anyone.
Molested? Def don't tell anyone. After all he is a good upstanding member of the community.
Gay? Get married and pretend to love - spend your life acting.
The 50's have been waaaaay to glamorized.
...Every decade has its good and its dirty little secrets (for lack of a better term). I think there was a sense of personal responsibility in the 50s that is foreign to many now. Or maybe that was part of the idealism we project on the 50s. I'll have to defer to those who remember the 50s for first person insight on that.
I believe that the sense of personal responsibility which you refer to was real and, in a large part, born of the Great Depression. The parents and grandparents of the fifties survived that terrible period, and the children of the forties and fifties could not help but be impressed with the work ethic of their elders.
My parents, aunts, and uncles (all single at the time) were without work during the Depression. One uncle - a college grad - spent the days playing softball in the street until he landed a sales job, which he kept for the rest of his life. My father lied - said that he knew how to drive - and parlayed a one hour job into one that lasted until his death, also. The example they set was the norm for the time.
It was better than now. But there were still struggles such as racial discrimination and migration from the inner city. I remember a lot of moms stayed home and dads worked. But another bad thing was that women couldnt speak their voices and getting divorced was very difficult to do. So women had to be stuck in abusive marriages along with the children. So there are some pros and cons between now and then.
It was better than now. But there were still struggles such as racial discrimination and migration from the inner city. I remember a lot of moms stayed home and dads worked. But another bad thing was that women couldnt speak their voices and getting divorced was very difficult to do. So women had to be stuck in abusive marriages along with the children. So there are some pros and cons between now and then.
Oh, believe me... my mom spoke her voice! And so did her married sisters.
The 50's were about appearances......however you had to lie, cheat or steal to look good and go along with society.
Many of the problems of today were there then -they were just swept under the rug and hidden.
Back then:
Husband beats you? Take it...he is in charge
Raped? Cannot tell anyone.
Molested? Def don't tell anyone. After all he is a good upstanding member of the community.
Gay? Get married and pretend to love - spend your life acting.
The 50's have been waaaaay to glamorized.
Garson, you took the words out of my mouth. I was paging down through the posts until I got to the end so that I could post essentially what you have said. I was a teenager in the fifties and it was a delightful, hopeful time for me. Very little pressure, prosperity and a carefree life for many of us. But below that carefree exterior there was a lot of unhappiness that was not acknowledged. Today when you read the newspaper you see story after story of child abuse, addiction, infidelity, etc. Very often these are articles dealing with someone's recovery from a serious problem. There was none of this in the fifties - I don't mean that there was none of the child abuse, addiction, infidelity, etc -but rather that there was no acknowledgment that it went on; no public admission. I remember one family that was voted the Family of the Year in my suburb: cookie-baking-golf-playing-stay-at-home-mom, hard working company owning father, high achieving kids, church and country club going family, hospital volunteers all. You name it, if it was good, they did it. It was not until years later that I learned that the parents were both alcoholics, the father abusive, the mother unfaithful, and one child gay. These were things that were not talked about as they are today. As Garson says problems were "just swept under the rug and hidden." It was not an honest nor an open time. On the surface it looked like an easy living time - and it was for many - but for some just as it is today, life was difficult: all the more difficult because there was no one to talk to about the difficulties.
The 50's were about appearances......however you had to lie, cheat or steal to look good and go along with society.
Many of the problems of today were there then -they were just swept under the rug and hidden.
Back then:
Husband beats you? Take it...he is in charge
Raped? Cannot tell anyone.
Molested? Def don't tell anyone. After all he is a good upstanding member of the community.
Gay? Get married and pretend to love - spend your life acting.
The 50's have been waaaaay to glamorized.
Yeah, nobody lies anymore. Or do we just lie about different things?
And things are so much better today. Today:
Don't want a husband? No problem. Have kids without one. The goverment and society cheer you on. Let everyone else take care of the kids when they grow up stunted by not having a father's love. The majority do. Congratulations.
Got drunk and went to bed with a dork? Cry rape the next day. He's toast. You're a victim.
Yammer incessantly about molestation. If it didn't happen, make it up. After all, what should our society talk about? Being good? Don't make us laugh...
Gay? Insist that everyone else share the details of how your problems are their business. They'll act like they care.
The Fifties were a time when people loved each other and kept their mouths shut about their problems once in a while. Glamorization and mouthing off is a today thing -- and it's created the social jungle we live in.
According to Yeledaf "The fifties were a great time to be a kid... " I agree with him, but that doesn't mean that they were an honest time. Nor were they a time when people could easily find help for their problems. I think that it was a time when deception and appearances meant more than truth and reality. But it was a great time to be a kid because we didn't really know what was going on. Maybe that was in the end better, but I do have a lot of friends who suffered for what went on in their families but were never able to get help because appearances were so important.
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