Stephanie Coontz September 2011 “What We Really Miss About the 1950s”

Analysis Americans continue to appreciate the 1950s Success of the period's economy: real wages increased more each year in the fifties than in the entire decade of the 1980s Predictability of its family life and the moral order of its communities.

Analysis What they are nostalgic for is not primarily the internal structure of the family (gender and age roles), but the "more family-friendly economic and social environment" and the sense of optimism people had about the family's future. After decades of economic insecurity and the crises of Depression and war, a majority of families able to base a comfortable home life on the earnings of a male breadwinner alone Male breadwinner vs. female homemaker

Analysis The 1950s family = short-lived experiment vs. a continuation of a long tradition Reversing earlier trends, young women: Cut short their education Married young Had several children in close succession Devoted themselves for a time exclusively to the home

Analysis Urban families with close ethnic, kinship and neighborhood bonds were replaced by suburban families that put their "emotional and financial eggs in the small basket of the immediate nuclear family." Mothers experienced the double bind of having to establish intense relationships with their sons without impeding their independence and transfer of commitment to their adult families

Analysis TV sitcoms and their commercials gave people formulas for family success which connected material consumption and personal happiness. I Love Lucy – “Comic reminders of how much trouble a woman could get into by wanting a career or hatching some hare- brained scheme behind her husband’s back (39).”

Analysis Many existing social problems could be avoided or ignored Racial conflict was intense in many places, but many suburbs were exclusively white Poverty rate was higher than today, but at least it was falling Teenagers had more babies than they do now, but access to good jobs-even with only a high school education-enabled young men to marry their pregnant girlfriends

Analysis The 1950s were not years of laissez-faire capitalism, but of active government assistance to families Corporations and the wealthy were taxed at high rates to support high levels of spending on veterans benefits and public works Government-backed home mortgages financed many of the new family homes Minimum wage was set high enough to support a family of three above the poverty level Large numbers of workers joined unions = pensions, health benefits matched with relatively short work week Today's politicians are being inconsistent when they advocate a return to the 1950s family while opposing the kinds of social and political supports that helped make it possible

Analysis Family life in the 1950s was hardly ideal Families weren't as well-off economically as they would become by the end of the 1960s African-Americans in particular had higher rates of poverty than they do now Women, minorities, gays and non-conforming groups were discriminated against Victims of family problems got little attention or social assistance

Analysis The decline of the 1950s family grew out of the trends and contradictions of the fifties themselves Young women who had children in close succession were available for employment once the children were older The "self-indulgent" consumerism so criticized in recent years was fostered by the affluent suburban lifestyle and its television counterpart

Analysis The main reason for family change was the breakdown of the "postwar social compact between government, corporations, and workers.” The affluence and optimism that explains the family behavior of the postwar generation of young people was challenged by America's new economic problems, whose impact was felt at the family level in the form of inflation and lower real earnings

Analysis Public policies aggravated these problems by cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy while cutting spending for services, public works, and investments in human capital. While some economists, notably Easterlin, interpret the problems of baby-boomers as a result of the sheer size and competitive pressures of their generation, the smaller generation that followed them fared even worse.

Analysis Berlin and Sum describe the four ways families adjusted: later marriage, two-job marriage, fewer children, and debt. Families had to modify the socially valued form of the family in order to try and protect their socially valued lifestyle: The standard of living to which they had become accustomed Economic pressures turned many changes that could have been positive into more troubling developments; For example, women's employment became more a matter of necessity than of choice

Analysis Berlin and Sum describe the four ways families adjusted: later marriage, two-job marriage, fewer children, and debt. Families had to modify the socially valued form of the family in order to try and protect their socially valued lifestyle: The standard of living to which they had become accustomed Economic pressures turned many changes that could have been positive into more troubling developments; For example, women's employment became more a matter of necessity than of choice