Apparently, you associate different qualities with the 1950's than others. I don't believe anyone here is actually advocating putting a glass ceiling on women or minority employees. I don't think anyone here is actively looking to destroy the environment (I'm not going to bother disputing environmentalism here; but plenty would argue that we weren't, and the environment is fine.).
Except that it wasn't fine. Rivers don't catch on fire when things are "fine."
When someone tells me about the '50s, I don't just think of Elvis and seafoam-green fins on muscle cars. I think of a time when both parents didn't have to work if they didn't want to just to pay a mortgage.
Both parents shouldn't have to work. But it shouldn't always be the mother who stays home. And this paradise that was the 1950's only applied to middle class and upper class white people. There was also a ton of abject poverty in the 1950's that everyone seems to conveniently forget.
[quoteI think of a time when college was affordable (again, I know some institutions barred women and minorities; no one here advocated going back to that.[/quote]
Universities now are underfunded because we'd rather build prisons. No, I know that's not the whole reason, but yes, because we love tax cuts so much, we've forgotten that taxes used to pay for some great things. When my parents went to the University of California, which, at the time, was considered one of the best universities in the country, if not the entire world, they had to pay for housing and books, but enrolling itself was basically free. Not anymore. The difference? Lower property taxes and income taxes on the wealthy now. And more prisons.
I think of a time when it was more important to my grandfather to raise his kids with a work ethic and a desire to improve their lot in life than it was to have "me time" or a bigger TV.
That doesn't exactly compute. The 50's were an era of commercialism, keeping up with the joneses. However, my family still has a 19" TV made in 1982. It's our only TV, and we mainly use it for movies. I mostly played outside as a kid, though I admit that's unfortunately getting rarer now.
I think of a time when more buying was done with money saved up than on credit.
I agree, that was better. Credit has gotten out of control, everyone thinks it's so acceptable to have all this debt, and it makes me nervous. Of course, as a college student, I can hardly avoid it (as a result of college not being affordable).
I think of a time when most men (again, there are always exceptions, but the statistics are there) would think twice before having sex with a girl they weren't married to, because they knew that there would be consequences to their actions, and there were less kids being raised in single-parent homes as a result.
I am not a fan of "saving it for marriage." If one is responsible, there's no reason aside from emotional maturity not to have sex with one's significant other. I am glad for the invention of birth control, and the increased use of condoms. It's no surprise to me that more conservative states that discourage their use have higher rates of teenage pregnancy.
I think of a time when "family guy" was a compliment to a man who look after his family before his own career, and was known to be loyal, rather than a TV show.
I like the TV show, as it lampoons and points out many things wrong with family life in America, in the midst of absurdist comedy. I still think of being a "family guy" IRL as a good thing, as that matters to me more than career. My dad I think of as one, and I feel blessed to have known him.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of people are thinking when they glorify the '50s, rather than tobacco use and oppression.
Perhaps so, but when one says "things were better in the 50's," they ignore the enormous weight of all the things that were not. The 50's were tranquil family life at home, and yet also a time when it was acceptable to hit one's wife. It was a time when homes were bought with a much bigger chunk of the money down and therefore a smaller amount of debt, but also a time when much of America was destitute and kept from opportunities because of their skin, and when half the population had no career prospects if they wanted them because they were female. It was a time when college was affordable, but also a time when industry could do basically whatever it wanted, even if that hurt the environment or even people. College was affordable, but in many cases not open to everyone.
I'm just saying that people grow so nostalgic for this time that they remember as being better than it was. I think if you're going to remember a time, you should remember the bad things, the things that could be improved, too. Some things were better in the 50's, for example I think it's better for one parent to stay home. But some things were worse. In the 50's, the parent that stayed home basically had to be the mother. I don't think that should be the case. I think there should be no difference in the social acceptability of the father staying home and the mother keeping her job. After all, if my ladyfriend and I get married (as seems increasingly likely, we've been together going on five years, after all), and eventually have kids, which may or may not happen, we'll probably have an arrangement opposite to that which was the standard in the 1950's.
So, in short, yeah, there were some cool things about the 50's, but also some terrible things, and I think it's worth remembering that some of those things have improved since then.
