# The 1950's weren't great **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479 "2018-05-02T22:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/21 "2018-05-03T11:26:51Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But that wasn’t unique to the 50’s, was it? True. They are usually left out of the nostalgia-mongering of any era. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/22 "2018-05-03T11:29:49Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > It’s all a matter of the questions you ask. > > 1. How many incomes does it take to support a family? In the 1950s the answer was one. Nowadays it is two. > > 2. Is it safe for children to play outside unsupervised? In the 1950s very definitely. Nowadays no; the world is filled with perverts who abuse children–thus we need helicopter parenting. Dead wrong about #2. Unless you are being ironic. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/23 "2018-05-03T13:28:02Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But that wasn’t unique to the 50’s, was it? Except that in the preceding decade, because of the war effort, both women and minorities were allowed substantial increases in social, economic, and educational mobility. Women and blacks were recruited into both the workforce and the military in droves, and although segregration remained until well after the end of the war, black officers could hold command positions within segregated units, a rarity prior to the war, as well as serve in the Army Air Service (again, in segregated units). After the war, the expanded rights and positions for women and minorities were widely revoked as soldiers returned from the war and reentered the workforce. This taste of expanded rights, as well as the establishment and expansion of ‘black’ colleges, often staffed with faculity including educated Jewish refugees from Europe would could not find jobs in American academic because of ‘Jew quotas’, directly led to the Civil Rights movement in the later ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties. So far from being ‘magical’, the ‘Fifties were a time of backsliding of rights that resulted in the later civil unrest. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/24 "2018-05-03T13:43:57Z")
The '50’s were great for White males. In fact, it was their last full decade of complete social dominance. Civil Rights and Women’s Lib changed all that forever in the sixties and beyond. “Make America Great Again” is just a code name for going back to the '50’s. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/25 "2018-05-03T14:13:45Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > The '50’s were great for White males. In fact, it was their last full decade of complete social dominance. Civil Rights and Women’s Lib changed all that forever in the sixties and beyond. “Make America Great Again” is just a code name for going back to the '50’s. This. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/26 "2018-05-03T14:27:32Z")
What made the 50s special was not really the economics, though that was a part of it but the culture was what was special. Crime was low and going down. From 1950-1957 the murder rate fell by 13%. It then went up 20% in one year and stayed like that for eight years. It then went up every year from 1965 to 1975 going up 90% in that time. People went from feeling safe in their homes and neighborhoods to feeling under seige. This traumatized people in a way that is hard to appreciate if you did not live through it. People were afraid to go out and afraid for their kids. The inner city riots of the late 60s and such high profile cases as the Manson murders made people feel that the social order was breaking down. Supreme Court decisions expanding the rights of the accused at the exact same time crime was exploding gave people the feeling that the government was on the side of the criminals. In the 1930s and 1940s America had been through the traumas of the Great Depression and WW2. That kind of shared trauma, especially in WW2, brought a feeling of togetherness and purpose to the whole country. Immigration was very low in the 1930s and 1940s which contributed to the feeling of a shared culture. Television allowed there to be a much greater sense of a shared culture. Thus the culture of the 1950s was a safe place where everyone was on the same team and there was a much greater sense of community. That was ripped apart in the 1960s and 1970s by the huge crime wave and cultural changes. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/27 "2018-05-03T15:24:15Z")
As a poor kid who lived in a ghetto most of the 1950s, after my father was out of work for a year with a bad back and wound up losing our tiny house, my personal memories of the 50s aren’t of a good and magical time. I had a cousin who lived in what we would now call a starter house in the suburbs. Six rooms and an addition! Think of that! All I ever wanted to be was middle class. I do a lot of newspaper research and when I look at the 50s I see absolutely constant fear and paranoia and doomsaying, and not just about the Cold War. You know those wonderful schools people now want to go back to? _[Why Johnny can’t read, and what you can do about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Flesch)_ came out in 1955. Crime was a gigantic concern, no matter what the statistics said. White people fled the cities because of perceived crime and then worried about juvenile delinquency nonstop. The decade was just as filled with people shouting about how horrible things were as every other decade. Was it objectively better than the Depression? Sure, for the vast majority. Was it objectively better than the 60s and 70s? Not for the vast majority. By the time the boomers’ parents could afford to send their kids to college they and the country were far better off. But who wants to remember how good their kids’ college years were? The parents hated everything about that culture. They were turning far right and supporting Nixon and Reagan, who preached about the awfulness of modern times (and kids). All that can properly be said about the 50s is that they were a weird decade. Not the norm, not the standard by which we should measure things. The 50s were a weird outlier decade that should never be repeated. And “Great” should never be applied. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/28 "2018-05-03T15:37:10Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > It’s all a matter of the questions you ask. > > 1. How many incomes does it take to support a family? In the 1950s the answer was one. Nowadays it is two. > > 2. Is it safe for children to play outside unsupervised? In the 1950s very definitely. Nowadays no; the world is filled with perverts who abuse children–thus we need helicopter parenting. It’s already been pointed out that #2 is dead wrong, but #1 isn’t much better. About 60% of households today are two-income. [In 1960, that number was 25%](http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-2012-2/). It has increased, but it’s wrong to state categorically that a single income was enough in the 1950s and that it’s not enough today. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/29 "2018-05-03T15:51:04Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > It’s already been pointed out that #2 is dead wrong, but #1 isn’t much better. About 60% of households today are two-income. [In 1960, that number was 25%](http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-2012-2/). It has increased, but it’s wrong to state categorically that a single income was enough in the 1950s and that it’s not enough today. I wonder how many families who “need” two incomes could get by on one if they just lived a 1950’s lifestyle (one car, one TV, no post-1959 technology, most meals eaten at home, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/30 "2018-05-03T16:05:14Z")
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the glorious institution of McCarthyism. Nothing brings out the sense of community like neighbors turning in neighbors for “unAmerican” activities. I also think that one of the main reasons that the 50’s are looked on as so wholesome is that Motion Picture Production code. For those people who didn’t live through that decade, they probably get most of their information about what is was like through movies and TV made at the time. In which case, they would see no profanity, no sex outside of marriage, no police brutality or misuse of authority, very little use of drugs, and black people happy in their positions as porters, doormen, chauffeurs, cooks and nannies. If you aren’t allowed to show any of the ills of society, society looks pretty darn good. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/31 "2018-05-03T16:57:24Z")
The 50s was like any other time in history: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, depending on where & who you were. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/32 "2018-05-03T17:11:05Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the glorious institution of McCarthyism. Nothing brings out the sense of community like neighbors turning in neighbors for “unAmerican” activities. I know this is meant to be sarcastic, but banding together to fight an out-group is a wonderful way to foster in-group cohesion. > [@](#): > > I also think that one of the main reasons that the 50’s are looked on as so wholesome is that Motion Picture Production code. For those people who didn’t live through that decade, they probably get most of their information about what is was like through movies and TV made at the time. In which case, they would see no profanity, no sex outside of marriage, no police brutality or misuse of authority, very little use of drugs, and black people happy in their positions as porters, doormen, chauffeurs, cooks and nannies. If you aren’t allowed to show any of the ills of society, society looks pretty darn good. And yet the Code was waning by the 1950s: The _Miracle_ Decision of 1952 stated unambiguously that films were protected by the First Amendment, so a film couldn’t be censored for being sacrilegious. The fall of the studio system created more independent theaters, allowing more foreign and independent films to be screened outside of the art-house circuit, leading directly to Cassavetes being able to show _Shadows_ in 1959, a film about Blacks on the edges of society. All these were just seeds, and wouldn’t fully come into their own until the 1960s. That’s true. However, the 1950s were more progressive than the Standard Right-Wing Mythology would hold, they lead to the 1960s instead of being violently replaced by it, and, perhaps worst of all, the decade contained plenty of people who were young in the 1930s and 1920s, and who therefore held views rather more in line with Steinbeck than McCarthy. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/33 "2018-05-03T17:12:58Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I wonder how many families who “need” two incomes could get by on one if they just lived a 1950’s lifestyle (one car, one TV, no post-1959 technology, most meals eaten at home, etc.). Why would anyone want to? I’d never go back to that life. It was lousy, and the canned vegetables were worse. Besides, today’s world is designed around all adults owning cars, everything from can’t walk anywhere suburbs to both parents working. You might as well ask why people don’t just take streetcars everywhere. Or buggies. That world has disappeared as a whole for the 330 million Americans, even though it may exist in a few pockets. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/34 "2018-05-03T17:18:26Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Why would anyone want to? Oh, I agree. I just think that people who say “In the Fifties, you could raise a family on one income, but nowadays it takes two” aren’t making a fair comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/35 "2018-05-03T17:39:06Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > 1. Is it safe for children to play outside unsupervised? In the 1950s very definitely. Nowadays no; the world is filled with perverts who abuse children–thus we need helicopter parenting. Others have disputed this; I assume they take issue with the latter part. But, have you considered that in 1956, [Peter Weinberger](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/weinberger-kidnapping) (a baby) was kidnapped from his home in Long Island? It set off a national panic and led Ike to sign a law reducing the time necessary for the FBI to search for kidnapping victims from 7 days to just 1. Is a mom sitting in her room reading the paper in 1956 glowing about living in an era when a person could leave their kids outside unsupervised, or was she gnashing her teeth and lamenting the “world these days”? I’m not disputing that crime rates were low; what I am disputing is that it was a time lacking in worry. > [@XT](#): > > …the whole Civil Rights thing that had been brewing in the US for so long but came right after this supposed golden age… Mythology. Emmett Till had an open casket funeral, at his mother’s request, to show the world his brutal murder at the hands of racists in 1955 - it became a nationwide story. The Birmingham Bus Boycott was the same year. Brown v. Board of Education was finally decided in 1954, after years of working its way through the courts. Eisenhower sent National Guard troops to integrate a school in Arkansas, over the Governor’s objections, in 1957. A civil rights act is passed that same year. > [@nearlwildhaven](#): > > I’ve heard the same thing from millennials about the 1980s. Having been their age during that decade, I tell them to be EXTREMELY grateful they missed it - AIDS, Reagan, Chernobyl, etc. I was a child of the 1980’s. I could tell you that it was a carefree time when a kid could ride his bike down the street to his friend’s neighborhood without ever worrying about his safety. Hey, it was my truth. But the 1980’s were the era of Adam Walsh, and it would be absurd to argue that parents during that decade could leave their kids alone without having to worry for their safety. > [@Expano Mpacase](#): > > I do a lot of newspaper research and when I look at the 50s I see absolutely constant fear and paranoia and doomsaying, and not just about the Cold War. You know those wonderful schools people now want to go back to? Why Johnny can’t read, and what you can do about it came out in 1955. Crime was a gigantic concern, no matter what the statistics said. White people fled the cities because of perceived crime and then worried about juvenile delinquency nonstop. The decade was just as filled with people shouting about how horrible things were as every other decade. Precisely. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/36 "2018-05-03T17:50:36Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > It’s all a matter of the questions you ask. > > 1. Is it safe for children to play outside unsupervised? In the 1950s very definitely. Nowadays no; the world is filled with perverts who abuse children–thus we need helicopter parenting. Children were facing the same number of perverts back then too. We’re just more paranoid about it now. Google Peterson-Schuessler murders from 1955 for an example. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/37 "2018-05-03T17:59:29Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > …Thus the culture of the 1950s was a safe place where everyone was on the same team and there was a much greater sense of community… Again, this is mythology. How do you reconcile this time when “everyone” was on the same team with the Kohler Strike of 1954, described thusly: > [@](#): > > a strike began on April 5, 1954. Some 2,800 of the Company’s 3,300 employees joined the picket lines. The plant essentially ceased operations for two months. Herbert then resumed production with non-union labor. Six years of sporadic violence ensued between strikers and strike breakers. In time, the company would charge opponents with more than a thousand acts of vandalism. At one point, more than 300 people were arrested. Calls for a national boycott of Kohler products were vociferous and sometimes effective, and UAW provided $12 million to strikes over the years. Herbert resisted all efforts to compromise, even sharply rejecting a public appeal from his nephew, Governor Walter J. Kohler, Jr. (My emphasis) How do you reconcile this time when “everyone” was on the same team with the existence of [Beatniks](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beatnik), a countercultural movement of the time? Or the [House Un-American Activities Committee](https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm), which was in its prime? Sure, we (generally) look back on it as a shameful abuse of power; but at the time, it was viewed as a necessary buffer against the attacks on society from nefarious elements existing within. People under attack from within aren’t all blissfully on the same team, are they? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/38 "2018-05-03T18:02:04Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Mythology. Emmett Till had an open casket funeral, at his mother’s request, to show the world his brutal murder at the hands of racists in 1955 - it became a nationwide story. The Birmingham Bus Boycott was the same year. Brown v. Board of Education was finally decided in 1954, after years of working its way through the courts. Eisenhower sent National Guard troops to integrate a school in Arkansas, over the Governor’s objections, in 1957. A civil rights act is passed that same year. Which part is ‘mythology’? What I wrote, or that the civil rights movement hadn’t been brewing for a lot time before the 50’s and in fact really accelerated in the late 50’s, contrary to the current 50’s golden age narrative? ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/39 "2018-05-03T18:38:49Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Which part is ‘mythology’? What I wrote, or that the civil rights movement hadn’t been brewing for a lot time before the 50’s and in fact really accelerated in the late 50’s, contrary to the current 50’s golden age narrative? The part where you said that the “whole Civil Rights thing” came “right after” this supposed golden age. The 50’s were a time when the whole civil rights things was ongoing. If you agree with me, there (which it now sounds like you do), then I’ve got no issue with your stance. But I am aware of those who populate these boards who will tell us that - while the 1950’s weren’t perfect - they were not a time when people were agitating to upend the social order. Everyone “knew their place” and it “worked” to maintain harmony. The story goes that this applecart was upended in the 1960’s, and we’ve become a fractured nation - full of vice, filth, and an “anything goes” mentality - that ruined the equilibrium the 50’s represented. THAT, in my estimation, is the myth. Civil rights was very much on the minds of the people of the 1950’s, and a lot of civil rights activity took place during that time. It may be overshadowed by the next decades, but it shouldn’t be dismissed; the whole civil rights thing didn’t just come later. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479/40 "2018-05-03T18:56:03Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > The part where you said that the “whole Civil Rights thing” came “right after” this supposed golden age. The 50’s were a time when the whole civil rights things was ongoing. If you agree with me, there (which it now sounds like you do), then I’ve got no issue with your stance. Well, what I MEANT it to say was that this is the perception. Rereading it I guess that didn’t come across clearly. My whole post, in fact the theme of my posts in this thread is about how it’s the perception that makes it a golden age for some people looking back and viewed through their own rose colored glasses and in the context of the time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-1950s-werent-great/813479.md?page=3)