Does Modern Society Unfairly Portray the 1950s?

[edwest211]

Oh pleeez. Read some history. There is zero filtering or nostalgia. We, as a nation, were more Christian and more civil. I never said it was perfect but it was waaay better than today.

And today, everybody in every socio-economic class is better off? Look at the poverty statistics in the United States today. How many people are living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of skin color? How many are working 6 and 7 days a week?

 

[snarflemike]

Not if you were a person of color. Or a woman. Or gay. Or non-Christian. Or a Communist.

Long Live the Narrative.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

And that’s a cultural and societal problem.

I agree it is a society problem but it is also a moral problem. It is a lack of seeing the dignity of Christ in the other person. I do not believe feminism is the answer but just more of the problem.

those professing to be Catholic out there who refuse to acknowledge those laws and seem to have no problem administering physical discipline to their wives. There are some very radical Catholic forums who promote this, or at the very least, do nothing to remove threads where it’s questioned.

That is sad. I personally have never met or read anything from a Catholic who saw no problem administering physical discipline to their wives. Never.

That’s one of the reasons Catholic Feminism exists.

I’m not sure if we have had this discussion before. It seems these threads go around this same block when it comes to feminism. I have met women who are Catholic and are feminists, adhering to the school of thought of feminism, but I have never run into any Catholic feminism movement. In all charity, I do not believe that movement exists in Church teaching or theology but only among Catholic women who adhere to feminism and so labeled it.

Women shouldn’t be ridiculed if they want to stay at home with their children. Nor should they be called out if they have chosen to work outside the home

Women have stayed home and women have worked and had jobs long before the feminist movement. I agree they should not be ridiculed. No one should ever be ridiculed.

You will find it very affirming of women’s unique role in the world and celebrating her God-given dignity as a daughter of the King.

In all charity, it is possible for a woman’s unique role in the world and her God given dignity to be celebrated without being a feminist. I have seen it. I have met many Catholic working women who completely reject feminism. Their dignity comes from God, and knowing who they are in Christ, not a worldly movement.

As women we should be imitating the Blessed Mother who St. Louis de Montfort says was an extremely humble young woman.

She never pushed, forced or demanded.

 

[snarflemike]

Old people tend to view their youth with rose-colored glasses, and it’s very possible that you don’t know about the bad stuff simply because they chose not to tell you.

But they chose to tell you?

 

[Pitcairn17]

Pitcairn17:

Of course, today if you’re straight, you’re assumed to be a homophobe; if white, a racist; if Christian, a bigot; and if a male, a misogynistic woman-hating abuser.

Sounds like an alt-right delusional fantasy.

The delusion is to think that what I wrote ISNT true.

 

[PetraG]

Of course, today if you’re straight, you’re assumed to be a homophobe; if white, a racist; if Christian, a bigot; and if a male, a misogynistic woman-hating abuser. I don’t regard this as social progress. And as far as black violence, apparently - see Chicago, see Baltimore - you can still be killed with apparent impunity if the killer is another black. I know which era I’d prefer to live in.

OK, but in the 1950s, homosexuals were sometimes assumed to be Communists. People moved out of their neighborhoods if a black family moved in. Addiction was chalked up to moral failure. It wasn’t exactly a prejudice-free era, lol. Maybe there would have been less prejudice against you, but I have this feeling that a week of experiencing the prejudice generally might be a shock to you. (Oh, my goodness, I can remember the things that came out of my dear grandfather’s mouth in the early 1970s. It would curl your hair. They carried around prejudices about not just whites and blacks but ethnic-group prejudices like you wouldn’t believe.)

As far as I can tell, the overall homicide rate isn’t a lot different right now than it was in the 1950s. The ability of prosecutors to prove rape and murder cases is obviously better, with modern forensic science.

The delusion is to think that what I wrote ISNT true.

Some people will have unfair prejudices against you. It is not everybody. It is not even the majority.
It is a great mistake to think the loud people are saying what everyone is thinking. I think that it is more common that other people are embarrassed for them.

We do our own covering up for the sake of appearances now, particularly when we’re answering polls.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

OK, but in the 1950s, homosexuals were sometimes assumed to be Communists. People moved out of their neighborhoods if a black family moved in. Addiction was chalked up to moral failure. It wasn’t exactly a prejudice-free era, lol. Maybe there would have been less prejudice against you , but I have this feeling that a week of experiencing the prejudice generally might be a shock to you. (Oh, my goodness, I can remember the things that came out of my dear grandfather’s mouth in the early 1970s. It would curl your hair. They carried around prejudices about not just whites and blacks but ethnic-group prejudices like you wouldn’t believe.)

It is sad that these things existed then and still exist to some extent now. They are all sin issues and existed before the 1950’s came along. As someone else said, this era seems to get blamed for these things, as if these sins were around only then and not in other times.

 

[PetraG]

Oh pleeez. Read some history. There is zero filtering or nostalgia. We, as a nation, were more Christian and more civil. I never said it was perfect but it was waaay better than today.

And today, everybody in every socio-economic class is better off? Look at the poverty statistics in the United States today. How many people are living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of skin color? How many are working 6 and 7 days a week?

Painting the 1950s as all-terrible is just as bad as painting them all-wonderful. Very true!

The truth is that living in this vale of tears will always involve trade-offs. There isn’t a way to set up government or secular society to make a utopia. Curing one ill will very often cause a different one to flourish.

You may be doing zero filtering but I guarantee that the press did not report the unsavory underbelly that we know for historical fact was going on. We can’t know what the abortion rate was; abortions were illegal and not reported. We know for a historical fact that they were available.

 

[PetraG]

It is sad that these things existed then and still exist to some extent now. They are all sin issues and existed before the 1950’s came along. As someone else said, this era seems to get blamed for these things, as if these sins were around only then and not in other times.

I think there was an intention to be good. For instance, if a woman got pregnant outside of marriage, she was often branded a “slut” for the rest of her life. Never mind that it takes two to tango and that the poor girl might not even have known how someone got pregnant. That marginalization was meant to scare girls into staying away from sex outside of marriage, and I don’t doubt it worked for some. What it did for others was to ensure they hid their accidental pregnancies and no one in the family ever talked about how they went away to finish their pregnancies in anonymity and sometimes even finish them with an abortion. (They were illegal, but they were available. There are no medical historians who dispute it. Most of the customers were upper class, and many were married.)

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I wasn’t alive during the 50s, but I’ve noticed that modern portrayals either make it an idyllic paradise or a repressive nightmare.

Very little nuance or in-between.

My relatives who were there tell me it was a mixed bag. There are things they miss—they say it was generally a safer time, and you knew your neighbors and had that sense of community.

However, if things were going badly or dysfunctional, there were very few resources and folks felt a great sense of shame for not “measuring up”. Also the pressure to keep up with the Jones’s, having the right car, or the right furniture or the right clothes.

 

[CTBcin]

For many women, it was sheer hell. Wife beating was shockingly common, and the victim could expect no help from no one. The cops didn’t bother with “domestic disputes”.

Child abuse was so “normal” that it didn’t become an issue until Feb. 15, 1968, when the TV show Dragnet devoted an episode to the topic. Until then it was just ignored or hushed up.

And God help you if you were black. In many places, you could still be killed with impunity, or at most a slap on the wrist.

And not to mention the red scare, which ruined many lives, communist or not.

Or the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Of course, today if you’re straight, you’re assumed to be a homophobe; if white, a racist; if Christian, a bigot; and if a male, a misogynistic woman-hating abuser.

Look, I went to a secular liberal college and had to put up with lots of craziness (so I would know), but this view of society is a straight up persecution complex.

 

[CTBcin]

I wasn’t alive during the 50s, but I’ve noticed that modern portrayals either make it an idyllic paradise or a repressive nightmare.

Very little nuance or in-between.

Agreed. I’ve noticed this as well.

 

[twf]

Long Live the Narrative.

Maybe you’ll reply when others haven’t. Why were women given the vote in the early 20th century? If there were zero social issues, blacks and women always had it hunky dory…what was the women franchise movement trying to address? Or maybe you consider it lamentable that women were given the vote…
Catholics were treated pretty horribly for much of American history…that’s why I find these “it was a perfect Christian society pre-1960” sentiments here on CAF so astounding.

 

[sallybutler]

People have this rather strange view that women didn’t work for money until the feminist movement took off. That is a serious misreading of history.

Who were the maids, nannies, chefs, governesses, etc employed by rich and moderately well off households? How did widows support their families? Who picked up the slack when a man suffered an injury or illness that prevented him from working?

Working women were more common then we like to think in our idealized views of history. If you read novels written around the Civil War, you will see many characters were working women. Even Downton Abbey has working women.

What we really did (in my opinion anyway) is change what we look down on. It used to be women who received a salary were snubbed, now we snub women who don’t.

 

[edwest211]

The Narrative is all. You must accept. In the late 1950s, a satire magazine produced within its pages, the fake “Beatnik Magazine” “In this issue: 8 new things to protest!” Protest Culture has moved on to the present.

 

[edwest211]

And today is perfect?

 

[edwest211]

Yeah, if you could afford to fly to Mexico. That was one of things the pro-abortion people were harping on: poor women can’t fly to Mexico so let’s make it legal in the US. Good idea?

 

[MagdalenaRita]

For instance, if a woman got pregnant outside of marriage, she was often branded a “slut” for the rest of her life

I grew up in the 70’s and women who got pregnant outside of marriage were called names also.

I also know several women in my family who got pregnant out of wedlock in the 50’s, were not branded, but instead married and not until death did they part. They did not have abortions. Their families stood by them and still loved them. They were all still welcomed and hugged at the family reunions.
Prior to the legalization of abortion most women adopted their children out instead if they did not get married.

What I am saying is the era of the 1950’s gets labeled as having all these societal sins, except we tend to want to forget that these things happened in other eras also and many still continue today.
There seems to be a need to attack this era and personally I believe it is because it represents the building of family, especially the traditional family.

The 50’s were 10 years in history. That’s all. Surely some of these horrible things that people are saying was wrong with this era happened in other eras also.

I mean in the 50’s people went to church, prayed, slept, ate, married, raised families, went to work day in and day out, …

They did all the same things people did in the past and still do today. They weren’t an era of evil people that came and went, nor was it an era of evil that came and went.
there was good and there was bad. No different than any other era, including today.

 

[Zach]

Black community didn’t have equal rights, people with disabilities were locked up in institutions.

True but lots of people with mental illness are on the street homeless today. And many black communities are worse off in terms of violent crime, gangs, drugs, poverty, out of wedlock births, no fathers around, abortion. Someone brought up lynchings. While there were still a few in the 1950s, compare them to black on black homicide today. In fact there are more blacks killed every year in the US currently than there were by lynching from Reconstruction to the 1950s.

 

[Pattylt]

There were some wonderful things in the 50’s. People seldom moved or changed jobs compared to today so you knew your neighbors and interacted more with them. There was also less privacy because of this. If Mrs. Smiths daughter got pregnant at 16, pretty much everyone knew. There were also things going on behind closed doors that never got reported because first, everyone would then know and second, because there usually wasn’t recourse.

Things were better in some ways and worse in others. One thing about now, is we have more choices and options. There is less sense of being trapped…in marriage, in your job, in where you live. Things tolerated then are not tolerated now and things not tolerated then are tolerated now. We can’t go back…all we can do is try to fix what we can and move forward.