1950's Nostalgia

When I read “What We Really Miss About the 1950’s”, Stephanie Coontz provides many data and reports to support the positive side and negative sides of the 1950’s. On my first impression, the 1950’s sounded a pretty good era. People just get through the World War II. Many young men came back home or just build their new home.After so many years, American people can do everything at once again. However,every coin has two sides.Some heavy things such as racism, woman’s rights,and McCarthyism. I have to ask myself a question “ Do we really miss those old days?”. Or more specific, “why some time we said those old days are good?”. I do want to argue which era is the best. I just want to focus on why sometime people said old days are better and we

Over the course of the last sixty years, family values have consistently continued to change. With a heavier influx of women entering the work force and the social emphasis of individualism, the traditional family image has changed, and with

Coontz analyses both the weakness and strengths of the period and takes a ‘sarcastic’ approach. She is able to indicate the ideal time for the Americans pointing positive outlooks such as education, birthrate, economic expansion, jobs, family oriented culture and social environment. Her weakness about the myth of the 1950s includes teen pregnancies, poverty, marital problems, discrimination, racial and gender inequalities. She attacks the political system who continues states the goods of the 1950s but the politicians have not created and advanced the ideals and optimism of the 1950s. She categorically attacks the perceptions of people saying the 1950s was good even though when compared to the freedoms and engagements of these days, the 1950s’ thinkers are misplaced. The following quote summarizes her perspective, “This confidence that almost everyone could look forward to a better future stands in sharp contrast to how most contemporary Americans feel, and it explains why a period which many people were much worse off than today sometimes still looks like a better period for families than our own” (p. 40). Based on the historical and available information, Coontz argument may suffice because currently, nobody thinks about the future since the economic and social challenges are immense. The optimism is absent while challenges of discrimination, prejudice are fading. Hence, the article cleverly covers the

According to the textbook, Cherlin refers to the 1950s as the “breadwinner-homemaker family” (Cherlin, 76) time period. Marriage occurred at younger ages and the birthrate increased. During the 1950s, men could support their families on a single wage referred to as the “family wage” (Cherlin, 67). With the family wage women and kids did not have to enter the labor force. It also created a separation of spheres between men and women. Women stayed at home to raise their children and had limited domestic roles, while men were out in the world working. Today, people are marrying at later ages and the birthrate is not as high as it used to be in the 1950s. The idea of the family wage faded away during the time of the post-nuclear family. Today it is more acceptable for women to have jobs as well as their partner to help support their family. Today many families have variations of how they support their family and who the caretaker is. Women are no longer designated to the domestic sphere nor are men the only ones in the labor force.

The 1950s is considered to be the model decade of America. Families were close, children respected their elders, workers worked hard to provide for their families who grew up in nice neighborhoods, and the economy was booming. The forced conformity, neglect of the poor, and segregation are often overlooked when talking about the decade as they were during the time period. The 1950s were a prodigious time period for family life but not for the individual or societal ethics.

There’s an old saying that goes, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present”, by Alice Morse Earle. The world has become a place taken for granted. Humans are beginning to wish they could live in the past, while others just want to skip over to the future but what ever happened to living right now? Or living in the moment? In the story, “The American Family”, by Stephanie Coontz, she discusses why so many individuals believe American families are facing worse issues now than in the past. She discusses how in the previous years, it was far worse and explains why those people are wrong to assume they are facing worse problems now. In addition, Robert Kuttner and his text, “The politics of family”, supports Coontz’ argument about the dilemmas facing the turn-of-the-century American families and gives the resolutions to those problems; such as talking out problems, women having the right to walk out of unsatisfactory marriages, and lastly, the emancipation for women.

While the 1950’s had been very conservative, the stay-at-home housewives, the perfect families and home lives, children of the baby boom soon alternated this into a very different kind of

In her book Marriage a History Stephanie Coontz explains the male breadwinner family model and its dominance in family life during the 40’s, 50’s, and early 60’s. An illustration of the male breadwinner model is composed of a father, mother, and two children; typically a boy and girl close in age. Funded by their father’s well paying middle class salary, the wife and children live a comfortable life in suburbia and participate regularly in consumer trends. Perceived as the head of the household, the father was the sole financial provider. On the other hand the mother was the head of domestic life and was responsible for the children. The popular 1950’s TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet exemplified this family model. With regard to the male breadwinner family model, imagine having eight other brothers and sisters. Imagine growing up without a mother, and with a father who worked constantly. Then consider living this life alongside your peers who come from the “normal” male breadwinner families Coontz describes… How would your family differ from your peers? What would be your thoughts and feelings towards family life? More importantly, how would these unique circumstances change your perception of the nuclear family?

Families needed a role model and family sitcoms portrayed that myth so well that they gave families “little reassurance that they were headed in the right direction (38). This myth promoted values that every family should have and people strive to achieve those values, to transform their “abnormal” families into a harmonious one. When Americans would watch these shows, they would follow these traits and try to implement them into their own families. By living in this myth of the American family, creating a more secure home, and preparing for the future, the government rewarded people (42). The government also promoted the family values and secured the family union. Families were closer together and the goal of creating a perfect family was what created a bond between them. The myth of the perfect family formed other families and taught them the fundamentals of a family’s

The roles and expectations for women in the 1950s differed in many ways from today’s society. “Society placed high importance and many expectations on behavior at home as well as in public” (Colorado.edu). In the 1950s women were considered “housewives”. Women’s sole purpose was to maintain the home, take care of the children, provide meals, and be obedient wives. “Good wives” listened to their

     Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound weaves two traditional narratives of the fifties -- suburban domesticity and rampant anticommunism -- into one compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May discovers that cold war ideology and the domestic revival [were] two sides of the same coin: postwar Americans' intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was an outgrowth of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war -- Within the home, potentially dangerous social forces of

An award-winning writer and internationally recognized expert on the family, Stephanie Coontz, in her article, “What We Really Miss About The 1950’s,” states that “In a poll by the Knight-Ridder News Agency, more Americans chose the 1950’s than any single decade as the best time for children to grow up.” However, Coontz has her own view of the 1950s, and she illustrates her own opinions about this decade using strong and logical facts. While the nostalgia of the 1950s is vastly strong in some people, some fail to notice the negativity and the reality of it.

Times have changed; the nuclear family is no longer the American ideal because family needs have changed since the 1950's. This American convention of a mother and father and their two children, were a template of films and early television as a depiction of the American family life. Now seen as archaic and cliché by today’s standards, but the idea is common throughout many of the first world nations in the world. This ideal was a vast departure from the past agrarian and pre industrial families, and was modeled and structured as the ‘American dream’ father working, mother maintaining the household and children molded to be simulacra of the parents. This portrayal was not the standard; many communities throughout America had a different

The 1950’s were cookie cutter; there was usually a working father, a homemaker mother, and a couple of kids. Although women were working and had jobs in the 1950’s, after WWII many women still stayed home being a house wife if the husband’s income could afford it. If women had jobs, and the job was unnecessary they were considered selfish. Having a husband at this time was more important than having a job or a degree. Marriage in the 1950’s was highly based around religion. Pre-marital sex was considered unacceptable, and women were married at ages as low as nineteen (People & Events, 1).

The 1950’s were considered to be a time where life was full of bliss, who wouldn’t want to be untroubled? Life in the 1950’s was simple and structured, and now it seems as though the “Happy days” have disappeared. The 1950’s are considered “The Happy Days” because life was so well put together back then and now, it seems, it has all fallen apart. The 1950 TV shows, like Leave it to Beaver, has the American society believing that life was “perfect”. Seeing the shows makes one imagine that the family life was splendid, the style was flawless and modest, everyone got along, neighbors were friendly, and that the changes happening were for the best. In a way that was very true. People in the society knew their place; In a typical 1950’s family, the father and mother had specific roles they had to fulfill, and even the children had certain responsibilities. The men were the head of the household and usually worked to provide for the family. The women of the 1950’s society were stay at home moms, occasionally working a job as teachers or nurses. Men and women of that time were well mannered, clean, and classy. When the man and woman walked down the street, the man would walk on the outside or the road side to protect the woman from traffic. Men would also tip there hats as a kind gesture when they walked past a woman. Life just seemed to be in place in the 1950’s, yes, it wasn’t perfect, but it seemed much more put together than what society is like now.