what happened to the old fashined 50s way of life?

reply to post by mblahnikluver


as i said in my post i am embittered, but i have forgiven. i am not saying that forgiving makes the problem go away, it is merely a step that should be taken before destroying what could have been a beautiful relationship over a mistake. doesn't work all the time but i have seen it work before. it is like alcoholism... there sre steps.

reply to post by alysha.angel


Times have certainly changed in 50 years. There were some ups. The war had increased the economy, and the standard of living was good. One salary was enough to support a family. Divorce rates were lower. There were also some downs. Divorce rates were lower, because many women were kept in line through physical abuse. A ^rule of thumb^ was created, so that wives could be beaten with nothing bigger then your thumb. Also, values have certainly changed. Respect, honor, discipline were values which many upheld, which kept the family unity together. Our values today have changed, we are far more independent and individualistic as a society today.

Things really changed when the women got the right to vote in the 1920s. The base for which people could be taxed by the government doubled, and the size of the government dramatically increased. As governments increase, standards of living decay and tyranny increases, which we are seeing today.

Women have been supressed for a long time, religion has a big part in that, and those stigmas have remained. It has now gotten so bad, that the consequences of the supression of the female is clearly evident. You have many men now, acting as women, getting sex changes, feminine like homosexuals etc (i dont have a problem with homosexuality, so dont harp on me). Even the female traditional role of creating a home and raising children is looked down upon by many. Increases in government have created instituions for everything, and inflation has made it impossible to survive on one salary. And in many cases women are expected to work and maintain a house, and raise children, which isnt fair, nor easy.

Its not really fair to say that it was better back then, because there are pros and cons. however if you want to justly point some fingers, governments and religions are good places to start.

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
reply to post by space cadet

 

I agree! I was telling my roommate the other day how if this were when I was a kid we would hear kids outside all day til it was night. There is a huge neighborhood with many kids but I never seen them outside. Ever. I don't even hear them and I would hear them, being on the 6th floor the noise travels lol. I see them ride their bikes home or walk from school but they are never outside playing. We were always outside playing kick ball or baseball or something.

i know what you mean hell when i was a kid i was never in the house

i have yelled at my kids so often about going out and playng its not even funny.
now its all about computers and the internet, tv or what not..

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
reply to post by space cadet

 

I agree! I was telling my roommate the other day how if this were when I was a kid we would hear kids outside all day til it was night. There is a huge neighborhood with many kids but I never seen them outside. Ever. I don't even hear them and I would hear them, being on the 6th floor the noise travels lol. I see them ride their bikes home or walk from school but they are never outside playing. We were always outside playing kick ball or baseball or something.

Same where I live in rural Oxfordshire, when I was a kid me and my brother were out all day until it got dark, 20 years on the kids round here arn't allowed to leave the end of the street. Has crime rocketed? No crime has in fact gone down, yet peoples perception is that crime has gone up and there is a peadophile on every corner. I blame the media.

a) Birth Control
b) Consumerism
c) Mass media
d) Mass psychological trauma due to wars, assasination of JFK, fear mongering in general etc.
e) The concept of instant gratification. (Hey it's that easy with...Tech-nol-ogy)
f) Dual income families
g) Children growing up with little to no TRUE parent figure due to points c, e, f.
h) Normalization of the above for future generations.

At point h. symptoms become self replicating and repeating...Not unlike a disease.

I don't know if media is the issue. I was a kid in the early seventies. And I, too, remember the world as being very different. I lived in Nashua, New Hampshire and, at my school, there was only one kid who had divorced parents. Nobody ever got into trouble. We didn't lock our doors, ever. My parents would simply leave their car keys in their cars ignitions when they got home.

In fact the only "crime" that I remember as a child was that one time, the ice cream man was coming, and I left a huge sack, filled with my GI Joes, laying at the edge of my yard as I ran in to get ice cream money. When I came back out, my bag was gone.

In hindsight, I am thinking this was not the work of the mob, but probably one of my dillwad little friends, but as a child I was POSITIVE that Al Capone had done it.

Having said all that, I am left to wonder if the world really was that idyllic or if I just remember it through the eyes of a child? Maybe car theft wasn't an issue simply because my parents probably paid two grand for their brand new car back then, and not the forty grand they'd pay for a similar car now?

My Dad was a drunk and drove drunk all the time. The difference? We didn't have a "war on drugs" and "zero tolerance" policies then. I remember that only one time did a policeman pull my dad over for being drunk. That cop just followed us home to make sure my Dad wasn't a public hazard. No ticket. No jail. Just the assist. This seems like a great thing but, as a kid, I can't tell you how many drunk driving deaths happened in 1971. And I can't source them accurately because the truth is people didn't like to record ugly things back then.

They covered up.

I do know that my paternal grandfather quit drinking and became a minister in the late forties because he'd crashed, while drunk, and that my grandmother died in that accident. So these things did occur.

I think that might be the difference... that we used to be a culture that swept our dirty laundry under the rug, instinctively. These days we flaunt it, on national TV, as often as we can. This, I think, makes it seem like things used to be way better than they used to be...

~Heff

reply to post by woodwardjnr


Agreed!! I have friends who wont let their kids outside because they are afraid they will get kidnapped or assaulted. It's is definitely different.

reply to post by mblahnikluver


you see guys our whole sociaty is different now then it was when we were kids.

and thats half the problem but most think its the solution to yesterdays issues ....

At the end of the day, most problems for humanity end with the concept of OWNERSHIP. From ownership stems greed, money, lust (to an extent), desire (to an extent)... Ideas such as my wife belongs to me, I want to buy that sports car, I have to have the new corporate x product.

See, because of desire to have ownership we created money. So money can't be the root of all evil because in reality we only created it in our minds as another measure/means to facilitate ownership which can considered greed.

Right now what we are looking at is the need to consume and own more gone out of control. People that can't grasp the concept of unsustainable are lost but the addiction to have ownership (possession; which it really is in a sense) will lead us to a point where we will end up going to war...again.

Once people have amassed vast amounts of "things" comes the insecurities and countless forms of mental illness. You can put this on a scale as well, it applies to individuals corporations and gov't alike.

What happened? some of us born in the 50's didn't want to end up like our mothers so we burned our bras in the the 60's. We wanted it all, careers, marriage, motherhood and to be treated as equals. Instead we found ourselves using the same coping mechanisms to deal with the added stress.
From what I can remember the 50's was not an ideal time period. Most women remained in unhappy marriages because they were lacking in marketable job skills and so finacially dependent on their husband that they were afraid to venture out on their own. Also remember--- during that time period--most men could afford a good divorce attorney and most women could not, so many were afraid of losing their children because they could not provide for them.

reply to post by grumpydaysleeper


There is some truth to that for certain. One could also say women of that day placed in that situation would venture out and find a new male to make the switch. Women today in my experience often SHOP for new men before they leave their old ones still.

I would say back then it was more the social pressure of being "That one" you know, the one who got the divorce. That has been pretty much dealt with now and women whom want to seperate, at least where I am, have the upper hand in a divorce...(If you can call money and posession of kids that)

reply to post by TheRemedial


so true. I remember my mother was the first one in her family to get a divorce. My poor grandfather was not only in shock but stigmatized. Come to think of it, she remarried a not too long after LOL!

Originally posted by alysha.angel

where the hell is the MAN who is willing to take responsiblty for his actions take care of the WOMAN who for as long as historys been kept cared for her ,is strong when shes at her weakest . and simply cherished her

I'm just quoting that bit to remind myself what I'm replying to as my first coffee of the day hasn't quite started to work yet

The truth I would think is that the times you are talking about never existed, or if they did they existed for a tiny amount of women from a very small social band of white upper working - upper class women.

Poorer people have nearly always relied on as many people as possible in the household going out and working, my Grandmother married my Granddad in the mid 40's and in the 50's she would go out and clean peoples houses while my mum was in school and my Granddad was working at the docks. She was also expected to have dinner cooked and ready for him when he got home and also do all of the housework. She was not taken care of and was subject to abuse on a number of occasions

Before that time not only the women but also the children of the house of poor families had to go out to work, the womens rights movement in fact was born not out of some "I should have the right to do what a man does" view but to protect women from being treated as second class citizens and slaves
Here is a quote from Emily Pankhurst founder member of the womens suffrage movement

The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors ... bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time ... I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world ... Of course the babies are very badly protected ... These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant

There may well have been a time in the 50's where the US was indeed affluent enough to have had many household where only one parent worked and the woman was "looked after" and cherished, but that isn't the norm of history in the slightest.

Emmeline Pankhurts

Originally posted by alysha.angel
Im sorry if i piss off a lot of feminists and womens liberation people but i gotta speak my mind.

You're very bold, speaking your mind to the mostly conservative and male audience of ATS.

50 or 60 years ago when wives stayed home raised the kids took care of the shopping housework ect things n my opinion were a lot simpler.

Think so? Try staying at home, juggling three kids while shopping and doing the laundry and trying to have dinner on the table by the time your husband gets home from work. Every day. For thirty years. The whole time the culture around you is telling you that if your kid's shirt is a little rumpled, or if the peas are slightly cold, you're not only a failure as a wife, but also as a woman.

I don't imagine this was the least bit "simple." it was portrayed that way on TV - but back in the day, there were no TV producers or writers who had lived on the female side of this "simple life." To a guy, of course it looks easy - he's not the one doing it, after all. If he wanted to, he could throw his relationships and his job to the wind and take off, and be a heroic figure for it - All Marlon Brando or Hemingway. His wife, if she got the same notion, was a "terrible mother" or a "tramp" or, of course, suffering "sapphic hysteria." Her husband could then have her uterus removed without her consent.

when people got married back then they took their weddng vows seriously and they stayed married 9 tmes outta 10 for life. now a days women are expected to go out and work and still raise the family and do everything else as well....

Actually fathers are expected to help raise the family, too. Shocking concept for most Americans, I suppose?

As for wedding vows, well, fact is, people grow and change and meet new and different people. A marriage, at least in our society, is a union of mutual love; if that love goes away, being held to those vows is something like imprisonment, and can breed severe hatred towards the other partner in the relationship, and even towards the children of the union.

the world wide divorce rate is higher then ever . a lot of women and men now fear love and commitment and some avoid the whole issue all together ...

Marriage does not equal love, just as I pointed out. Divorce is actually a healthy response to a failed relationship. When you're dating and it doesn't work out, do you force yourselves to keep dating? If you're engaged, and one of you decides, no, it won't work, does their stance get drowned out and they get forced to marry anyway? Of course not. If you marry and you grow to be unable to stand one another, divorce is really hte only reasonable option.

"But what about the kids, shouldn't they stay together for the children?"
No. Absolutely not. People who despise each other should not be raising children together. Kids see the glares. Kids are told by one parent how awful the other parent is. They see their parents break into screaming matches, or in truly bad scenarios, physical abuse over trivial matters. And the kid knows - knows that hte people who hate each other so much, are subjecting themselves to this psychological torture, for the kid's sake; it becomes internalized in the kid's mind that his parents are miserable because of him. And through it all he's told that this is marriage, this is love.

The stress of separation is bad, yes, but compared to the stress of living in a family that needs separation, it's nothing.

you got more and more cheating spouses , ect.

Hardly a recent phenomena
.

yes ll be the frst one to admit that im extreamly old fashined and outdated for id much prefer to stay home and raise the famiy ect yet. but being a divorced woman with kids in modern times im expected to go out and work or at the very least get an education, now im not complaining about being a student.
what im complaining about are sociates expentations of the modern woman..
its too much....

A divorced woman back then had to do the same thing; except her options were VASTLY more limited. Three kids? Lady, you'd never make it through the door in 1952, unless you could suck chrome off a car fender.

where the hell is the MAN who is willing to take responsiblty for his actions take care of the WOMAN who for as long as historys been kept cared for her ,is strong when shes at her weakest . and simply cherished her .

I'll be honest here. As a man, any woman who sits there and expects me to carry her simply for being a woman, is going to be told to get the hell out of my house. If she sticks her thumb out long enough, she's bound to find someone with a better bank account than mine, since that is obviously the only goal of such a woman. I'm out for a partnership, not a pet.

If course, kids change this equation. Mom is a full-time job. 'Course, so is dad. Either way, someone's gotta keep the litter from licking light sockets while the other parent's at work.

im sure theres bond to bea few of this type left in the world but their used to supressing it. because of the motto
" i dont need a man what ever a man can do women can do better.

We have somewhere to hang the washcloth while we grope around in the shower for the shampoo. Beat that, ladies.

I'd imagine most women are more interested in being their own person, rather than someone's pet / baby oven.

I guess everyone has their own opinion of what a perfect life would be and my wish for them is that they someday find it. I personally would go nuts if I had to stay home all the time.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


thanks to early intervention i never had that chance. child welfare steped in. when i finally got the chance to raise my twins i did yet i did it as a single parent and i hated it being single that is ....

i had a husband who flat out refused to get ANY KIND OF JOB and had to support his lazy SSI ass for 3 years ... so left him , but he must have crused me or something ...
cuz iv been alone ever since and it wasnt for lack of looking ...

you heard the sayng if i cant have her then no one can...

well that is apparently what happened to me .

I don't mean to sound mean here, but I'm just wondering why would someone married to a lazy man who won't work decided to have children with him especially if she wants (apparently) to be a stay-at-home mom?? Again, not trying to be mean but it is a little confusing.

Funny how time makes things seem so much better than the present... I never thought that I would long for the days of Bill Clinton...ah, the good ol' days....LOL.

Anyway, I feel a lot of what you long for can still be found, however, you have to make your own reality. The lifestyle you seek can still be found...heck, I wanted a simpler, Mayberry-esque lifestyle...and I found it. Sounds like you need to find someone that won't hurt you...most of the nostalgic lifestyle you long for is really a desire to find a solid relationship that meets your desires. Trust me, there are men that still want the "traditional" life you seek.

I don't know where you live...but a rural, agricultural area would propbably be a good place to start. I can think of about 6 or 7 couples in my church that have the "50ish" type marriage...husband works or farms- woman stays home. BUT, make no mistake...she works. Usually the wife does the books, writes the checks, runs the errands, etc. Plus, when the chores outnumber the help...guess who is backup...the wife.

In other relationships, mine included...the wife works as well as the man. We approach it as a marriage that is "equally yoked" and help each other...somedays she cuts the grass on the riding mower while I fix supper... or she writes the checks and pays out bills while I clean up breakfast and wash the dishes... other times, I'm bringing in firewood and loading the woodstove and she is popping me some popcorn and fixing us some Cokes for a movie I picked out.

I recently visited with my parents...both lived through the good ol' days of the Depression and WWII, and they both agreed that if they were the "good ol' days"...you can keep them. My gut tells me it is not the 50's marriage/lifestyle you seek as much as someone that meets your needs...provides the lifestyle you want...and LOVES you with no conditions. It took me a third marriage to find it...I hope your search will be more productive.

reply to post by maybee


he was the guy who never took no for an answer.. i felt obigated to marry him after the baby was born the other two were results of borderlne spousal rape

this is the same guy who lied to me , told me he was fixed so he couldnt have kids ... yeah right.
www.abovetopsecret.com...( more of the story here)

hell i could write a whole book about it all but ..

the women were working!! do a search online and find some of the old pictures for your area, I know for the area that I grew up in...there are alot of old groups pics of companies employees.....
many, many women worked!!!
they were more than likely from the poorer classes, but they worked!!
what it amounts to is that the rich folks, ya know the ones that are more in a position to have influence in policy making found the set up nice for themselves, and wanted it to be the norm, thinking that their way was the right way, and have been trying throughout the ages to enforce it on the poor, too dumb to realize that one of the primary roles of a mother is to ensure that her kids are fed!!! and well, if it meant that the kids were gonna be fed, hey, they would work!!! for lower wages, crappier conditions, hey, quite a few died in burning factories because the danged doors would be locked by management.....so they would stay and work, not steal, and on and on.....
sorry to burst your bubble, but women always worked!!!