First of all, that’s irrelevant. Abortion is available now, and it wasn’t available in the 50’s. Hence, one should not draw hard conclusions about teen sexual activity based solely on the relative birth rates of these eras. The recent decline in the abortion rate is simply irrelevant, for the purposes of this discussion.
I was born in 1940, so I survived the general time frame under discussion. I was 14 in 1954 and that was a great year for me. I got my first car, my first job, my driver’s license and lost my virginity. I had my own room, too, as did most of my friends and all of my girlfriends. However, mothers didn’t work as a rule and were nearly always home, so sex in somebody’s bedroom was most unusual. Thank God for the automobile.
straykat23 did a good job on the music of the day.
Hail Ants, a dance card was as has been described above. The purpose of a dance card was to give a young lady a means of remembering to whom she had promised a particular dance. The assumption was that young gentlemen would not monopolize a young ladies time, giving both an opportunity to converse (and dance) with others. Remember that most dances were at least semi-formal, and most of the music was of the slow-dance variety. Another use of the dance card was this—the young lady could pencil in various names and when asked to dance by someone she preferred to avoid, she could show that person her dance card to explain why she couldn’t dance with him—her dance card was filled up.
Swearing in public was most rare, and almost unheard of if ladies were present. In my day, in Dallas, a girl who presumed to wear jeans, or any other type of pants to school would be sent home to change. If anyone, boy or girl, had worn shorts to school, the scandal would have made headlines.
You yourself said that abortions occured, possibly illegally, prior to Roe v. Wade. I’m sure it was quite possible to get an abortion in the 50s.
Read that cite again. The only thing there that backs up your statement is this:
First, it only applies to Washington state.
Second, even if we only consider Washington state, you can’t draw the conclusion that the abortion rate has only been dropping for the past decade. If it went down every year since 1950 except in 1990, it would still be accurate to say “This decline continues a decade-long trend”.
It is true that the reported number of legal abortions in the U.S. peaked around 1990 and has been declining since then. However, it’s hard to determine the overall trend since the 1950s when the legal changes are taken into account. Planned Parenthood cites sources that estimate between 200,000 and 1.2 million annual illegal abortions during the 50s and 60s. For comparison, ~1.3 million legal abortions were reported in 1980, ~1.4 million in 1990, and ~900,000 in 1999. (Also consider that the U.S. population was around 275 million in 2000, and only 175 million in 1960.)
My dad was a jazz drummer and was way into the be-bop thing. Big bands were cool as well, but his taste had a bit of an edge. My folks worked together. They’d go out on Saturday night to any one of the great jazz clubs in Chicago. Then my dad got drafted. He was released from the service in '51 and they were married in '52.
My folks were born during the depression, so they were less likely than today’s kids to blow their money on fun. And my dad helped support his family until he married my mom.
As long as people are picking nits, I think the dance-card thing was phased out very shortly after WWII. Also, as AuntiePam notes, the fifties saw the rise of the “sock hop”. You danced in your socks, obviously (I guess so you wouldn’t mess up the hardwood gymnasium* floor), and you only needed a record player, not a live band. The whole thing could be organized with only a day or two’s notice, not the time it would take to hire a band and decorate the room. It took a long time, but little by little, bit by bit, formality started ebbing away post-war.
*And it’s also my understanding that abbreviations were much less common in those days. Gymnasium, not gym. Telephone, not phone. Hamburger, not burger. And so on.
Meanwhile, down South, Bill Monroe was inventing a hot new music called bluegrass - jazzed-up, speeded up mountain music. And young kids like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were listening to this music, and at the same time clandestinely listening to R & B (of which white Southern parents did not approve) and were getting some really strange ideas…