# What were the 1950's like? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 6, 2013, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475 "2013-08-06T06:02:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/141 "2013-08-11T20:10:46Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > If you don’t mind, I would like a link to the text of the AR law in question. I’ve heard this so many times that I believe it is simply an urban legend. As far as I know, no jurisdiction in the U.S. ever allowed physical violence against a spouse. But back in the day, society just never enforced those laws absent severe aggravating circumstances. A friend of mine who was an attorney told me that it was a law left over from some point in antiquity, like it being illegal to spit on the sidewalk. He returned to Florida many years ago, but I’ll ask some legal folks when I get the chance. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/142 "2013-08-11T20:16:53Z")
Here is [Cecil’s take on it.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2550/does-rule-of-thumb-refer-to-an-old-law-permitting-wife-beating) ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/143 "2013-08-11T20:19:54Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Now, the average wage of a high school graduate was relatively higher, I’ll grant you that. But a lot of the things that we take for granted today were simply not available. Yeah, medical bills are higher, but we’ve got more treatments available. I really don’t think that most people would trade our current standard of living now for what we had back then…because it’s possible to get along with one car, a blue collar job, etc. even today. Most people don’t want to give up what we’ve got now, though. This is something that I’ve thought about quite a bit. We could instantly reduce the per-capita spending on healthcare by a significant amount– **IF** we were willing to give up MRI’s, organ transplants, joint replacements, etc. As for life and living standards in general, there’s microwaves, cars with AC, and a whole host of computer-related things that we could choose to do without if we so desired. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/144 "2013-08-11T20:45:40Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > The racial situation was terrible. I agree. But that could have changed without blowing up the middle class lifestyle. What do you think blew up the middle class lifestyle? Because it seems to me that you’re implying that addressing social inequalities harmed the middle class lifestyle somehow. I don’t see the connection. From where I look at it, if the pampered lifestyle of some was predicated on the oppression (or war-torn defeat) of others, there’s no sense in pretending that standard is ideal. I don’t think social changes we’ve seen over the past 50 years explain the current economic structure anyway. It’s the other way around. And there are a ton of people who would like to do the “stay-at-home” parenting thing that their grandmothers did (like mine did). But that’s pretty hard to do when your spouse’s paycheck doesn’t come with health benefits, you’re expected to help your kids go to college, and there is no such thing as job security. Also, there may have been a time when a family churning out a bazillion kids and living in a two-bedroom bungalow was “cute”. But not anymore. Nowadays people really like using their birth control. So if you have one or two children, does it really make sense to forgo a career your entire life so the men can have all the work? No, it doesn’t make sense. That middle-class ideal of the 1950s? It was an artifact. We could return to it, but it would require a whole lot of government involvement in our economy to make it sustainable. Something even more severe than Obamacare. You in favor of that? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/145 "2013-08-11T21:11:26Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > What do you think blew up the middle class lifestyle? > > Because it seems to me that you’re implying that addressing social inequalities harmed the middle class lifestyle somehow. I don’t see the connection. Not at all. What I am saying is that even though I didn’t live through it, my two grandfathers could support a family with a high school education and no debt. The response was that it wasn’t all Christmas cake and gravy because blacks and Jews were discriminated against. I replied that the second had nothing to do with the first. And you are correct that a lot of that had to do with the fact that we were the only country left post-WWII that wasn’t war torn. I don’t disagree. I didn’t say that we needed to bring back the 50s or that we should try. My only point is that being able to raise a family of four, with a blue collar job and high school education, with no debt, owning a house and car, with a decent vacation each year is something that many people would trade for in a heartbeat. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/146 "2013-08-11T22:04:19Z")
jtgain writes: \> Neither of my grandmothers ever had a desire to work. They were content with \> raising a family. Before she died, my grandmother said that she never \> understood how modern women could juggle a career and a family. She said \> that one or both would have to suffer, and I agree. Just because your grandmothers said that doesn’t make it true. Up to (approximately) the 1950’s, it was almost necessary to have someone who spent all their time at home, since most of the appliances, etc. that we have now didn’t exist. It was necessary to spend a lot of time in cooking, cleaning, and such that are now possible to do in a shorter amount of time. This broke society up into rich people, who could hire people to do the housework; middle-class people, who had to have one or another of the married couple at home; and working-class people, who generally had both of them working and couldn’t afford to keep up anything approximating a middle-class lifestyle, so their house was more unkempt and their children did more taking care of themselves than we think acceptable these days. What did you expect your grandmothers to say? If one of them had expressed the desire to work outside the house, they would have been told, “Sure, but you’ve got to realize that you also have to do all the housework. Of course, no man would ever do that.” People do what they have to do. Your grandmothers weren’t given much choice about their lifestyles. To claim that obviously women back then really just wanted to stay home and not work is pretty dubious. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/147 "2013-08-11T22:30:38Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Mom did do lay-away for Christmas, and of course we collected Green Stamps, pasted them into books, got crap stuff in exchange. Which was another thing that would have made for a long wait in a line. 🙂 I loved [S&H green stamps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26H_Green_Stamps)!!! It was great, Mom would let my brother and I keep them, and once a year before Christmas we would get the catalog and see what was available - we could pick anything we wanted for ourselves. I can remember actually going in to Rochester NY to the physical store they had at Southtown Plaza and actually looking at the items instead of a catalog, must have been in 1973 or 4. Holy shit, they still exist, though now they are called [green points](http://www.greenpoints.com/account/act_default.asp). ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/148 "2013-08-11T23:58:24Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > jtgain writes: > > \> Neither of my grandmothers ever had a desire to work. They were content with > \> raising a family. Before she died, my grandmother said that she never > \> understood how modern women could juggle a career and a family. She said > \> that one or both would have to suffer, and I agree. > > Just because your grandmothers said that doesn’t make it true. Up to (approximately) the 1950’s, it was almost necessary to have someone who spent all their time at home, since most of the appliances, etc. that we have now didn’t exist. It was necessary to spend a lot of time in cooking, cleaning, and such that are now possible to do in a shorter amount of time. This broke society up into rich people, who could hire people to do the housework; middle-class people, who had to have one or another of the married couple at home; and working-class people, who generally had both of them working and couldn’t afford to keep up anything approximating a middle-class lifestyle, so their house was more unkempt and their children did more taking care of themselves than we think acceptable these days. We’re talking about the 1950s here, not 1900, right? What exactly took longer then than today? We had vacuum cleaners, we had ovens, we had toaster ovens. No one had to spin and weave either. No microwave, true, but I learned to cook pre-microwave and unless you use total instant foods, you cooked your vegetables in parallel with the meat. My father never went to college, but he was able to get a good middle class job with the UN, and my mother, who used to work, stayed home until I was in fourth grade or so. Sure money was a bit tight, but we lived in an excellent neighborhood with good schools and almost no crime. We went on vacation we had a TV, and I never felt in the slightest underprivileged. So I totally buy what **jtgain** said. And we were Jewish too. (Of course this was in NY, where we were the majority.) ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/149 "2013-08-12T00:46:37Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > We’re talking about the 1950s here, not 1900, right? What exactly took longer then than today? We had vacuum cleaners, we had ovens, we had toaster ovens. No one had to spin and weave either. No microwave, true, but I learned to cook pre-microwave and unless you use total instant foods, you cooked your vegetables in parallel with the meat. Spinning and weaving, maybe not in the 1950’s (except as a hobby). But my mom made all her own clothes into the 70’s. One of her proudest possessions was a Singer “Featherweight” 221 sewing machine (it weighed about 20 pounds), and she spent most of the summer making blouses and skirts from raw fabric with patterns. It supposedly was a cost-cutting measure more than a hobby. When she died in the 1980’s, I was left with more than 3 trunks of fine fabric, future projects that she never quite got to in her lifetime. I gave them away to a quiltmaker. We didn’t have a dishwasher, disposal, clothes dryer, or air conditioning in the 1950’s. The clothes washer was a ringer-style one until about 1954, which was an improvement over the tub & washboard from the 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/150 "2013-08-12T01:31:28Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > What did you expect your grandmothers to say? If one of them had expressed the desire to work outside the house, they would have been told, “Sure, but you’ve got to realize that you also have to do all the housework. Of course, no man would ever do that.” People do what they have to do. Your grandmothers weren’t given much choice about their lifestyles. To claim that obviously women back then really just wanted to stay home and not work is pretty dubious. If **jtgain** ’s grandmothers said they were happy, why dispute it? Maybe they made the best of it, seething underneath at the lack of opportunity, but it’s just as likely that staying home and raising a family was what they wanted and that they were fulfilled by it. Maybe they were homemakers because they had no other choice, but it doesn’t automatically follow that they were miserable, especially when what they were doing was the norm. They didn’t look at their husbands going off to the field or the mill or the office and think, “Damn, I wish I could do that.” Now, if their female friends and relatives had jobs and their own money, and no kids to take care of or husbands to answer to, the stay-at-home might be discontented. But that wasn’t happening, not then. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/151 "2013-08-12T01:53:47Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I wasn’t alive in the 50s, but from hearing stories from my grandparents, those charge accounts were very common. But there were several differences. First, all of the stores were neighborhood stores that personally knew you. They didn’t let you go crazy and run up massive debt. Usually they wanted the balance paid at the end of the month. Second, they were for convenience more than anything. A lot of families didn’t allow Mom access to the checkbook… Even if Mom had access to the checkbook there was no way she could get credit of any kind on her own. Even single women with good jobs had to jump through hoops to get anything without their father or brother co-signing. My great aunt sure did in the '60s; the loan officer absolutely insisted she get her little brother to co-sign. She went all the way up the chain to the bank president, had _all_ of her accounts reviewed and then threatened to close them,. > [@PastTense](#): > > Lynn, didn’t someone explain to you back then that if a woman was admitted to medical school she would probably get married and have kids shortly after she graduated–and so would naturally stay home to raise them–so all this medical training would be wasted? (I am sure I read that this was the view of medical school faculty at the time.) It was, most medical schools (if they allowed woman at all) limited female enrolment to a few token woman so they couldn’t be accused of being anti-woman (Women’s Medical College of PA being an obvious exception). Said women had to be way more qualified than male applicants, and often needed family connections. My great aunt (sister of the above mentioned one) being one of those women (she went in the '30s, not the '50s though). It was taken for granted that woman physicians were embracing a life of spinsterhood. IIRC even nursing students had to sign contracts promising not to marry for X number of years after finishing their training. As late as the 1950s there were still school districts that refused to employ married women and college that expelled girls for marrying. [QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Just because your grandmothers said that doesn’t make it true. Up to (approximately) the 1950’s, it was almost necessary to have someone who spent all their time at home, since most of the appliances, etc. that we have now didn’t exist. It was necessary to spend a lot of time in cooking, cleaning, and such that are now possible to do in a shorter amount of time. This broke society up into rich people, who could hire people to do the housework [/QUOTE] Don’t forget about most shopping hours neatly coinciding with most people’s working hours, and schoolchildren coming before either ended (& often for lunch too). The above mentioned great aunt did marry later in life (too a widower, she never had kids of her own); lucky for them their combined salaries were enough to afford things like a live-in cook-housekeeper and stuff like summer camp and boarding schools. They were a freakish exception for the time. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/152 "2013-08-12T02:00:26Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > This would have been a high standard of living by English standards at the time. We’ve been watching _Call The Midwife_, and I was sure it was set in about 1946 to 1949 or so. I was really surprised to learn it was the mid-fifties. I always pictured the fifties, even in post-war Europe, as being full of shiny-and-new, relentlessly “modernising”. If the series is accurate, it really wasn’t so for many people. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/153 "2013-08-12T03:14:42Z")
I truly think I was born 20 years too late (1960). I would have loved the 1950’s. However, my $30K wheelchair and modern medical care changed my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/154 "2013-08-12T05:19:52Z")
> [@BMalion](#): > > I truly think I was born 20 years too late (1960). I would have loved the 1950’s. > > However, my $30K wheelchair and modern medical care changed my mind. Not to mention no ramps back then. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/155 "2013-08-12T06:39:32Z")
> [@Savannah](#): > > We’ve been watching _Call The Midwife_, and I was sure it was set in about 1946 to 1949 or so. I was really surprised to learn it was the mid-fifties. I always pictured the fifties, even in post-war Europe, as being full of shiny-and-new, relentlessly “modernising”. If the series is accurate, it really wasn’t so for many people. WWII very nearly bankrupted the UK. It took them **years** to get out of that financial hole. > [@](#): > > Fourteen years of food rationing in Britain ended at midnight when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted. > **[BBC ON THIS DAY | 4 | 1954: Housewives celebrate end of rationing](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm)** > > Fourteen years of food rationing in Britain is over as restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat, and bacon in particular, are lifted. > **[History.UK.com – Largest Independent UK History Archive](https://www.history.uk.com)** ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/156 "2013-08-12T07:29:07Z")
My grandmother was told that going to med school was indeed a waste of time and resources, and she went to nursing school after her kids were old enough to go to school. Of course she cooked and cleaned and sewed and did all the other housekeeping duties, PLUS attending classes, and later working full time as a nurse. When her grandkids were kids, she told us all how she was happy to be in this life. When I was older, though, and on the verge of adulthood myself, she told me to grab all the education I could, and not be dependent on a man for my needs. She also urged me to establish my own credit, now that women could do such things. Grandpa had really bad credit, and during almost all of her life, Grandma could not establish credit of her own, because she was a married woman. She had a steady job with a steady paycheck, but because she was married to him, she couldn’t get credit in her own name. That was one of the reasons why she hadn’t packed her bags and divorced him long ago. This was my maternal grandparents, by the way. My father was routinely turned down for office jobs, because of his appearance and especially because of his last name. One company was desperate to hire someone, anyone, as an office gopher, I believe, and he managed to work his way up the company, but he had to work twice as hard as anyone. I know that during the 60s my parents were not invited to certain groups and clubs because Daddy was an EYE-talian. My mother’s father told her, when she announced that she was going to marry Daddy, that WHITE girls didn’t marry Eyetalians. My sibs and I got some mild harassment because of our name, but not that bad, really. We didn’t get harassed as much as the Mexicans or Jews did. I don’t think that the company that hired Daddy would have hired and promoted a Mexican or a black man for that office gopher job. Nor would they have hired a woman. Daddy just barely made it, but he was going to a Protestant church at the time (despite being raised as Catholic) and he made every effort to fit into WASP culture. The point is, in the 1950s, male WASPs had privileges and opportunities that anyone who wasn’t a male WASP didn’t have. While a male WASP might have been able to raise a family on a blue collar salary, a black or other person of color would not have been able to get the better paying blue collar jobs, only the very lowest paying jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/157 "2013-08-12T08:43:36Z")
Actually, cars didn’t change every year through the '50s, more like every two or three years, and most weren’t big changes. The Big Three’s '52s looked like their '49s, and the '54 Fords and '54 GM models hardly changed from their '53s. The '56 and '57 cars were almost identical to the '55s but for Chrysler’s over-achieving tail-fin grafts. Bigger changes happened in '58 and '59 at GM and Ford, but Chrysler mostly sat it out from '57 to '61. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/158 "2013-08-12T18:47:37Z")
Lynn’s comments are spot on what I recall as well. My dad told me his family was scandalized because his brother once dated a woman who \*looked \* Italian. My mom was very intelligent and would have loved to go to college, but was actually prohibited from doing so by her father. She also advised us to be sure to have a means of making a living independently if necessary. Dad was nearly killed in an auto accident when I was a preschooler and I’m sure the idea of possibly having to raise two children alone was a nightmare. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/159 "2013-08-12T22:08:16Z")
Mom was a teacher in Tennessee. Some time when I was in grade school (b. 1956) she took more courses to be certified in Arkansas and went back to work. I believe that was the beginning of both parents working. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475/160 "2013-08-12T22:57:32Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > I loved [S&H green stamps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26H_Green_Stamps)!!! It was great, Mom would let my brother and I keep them, and once a year before Christmas we would get the catalog and see what was available - we could pick anything we wanted for ourselves. A noted 1960’s-era commentator had [this to say](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmNkoRXFvGI) about Green Stamps. (Parody song by Allan Sherman.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-1950s-like/665475.md?page=9)