In the aftermath of WW II, there was a general shift in attitudes toward marriage and childbearing, a shift that caused many young adults to start their families at an early age. Nearly all published accounts about the Fifties stress the importance attached to home, family, and children. Many commentators ascribed this shift to a great national exhaustion: Emotionally drained from their battle against a monstrous enemy, Americans shunned the great issues of the day and retreated into their personal lives. In addition, the young adults of the Fifties carried the lasting effects of growing up during the Great Depression. As children, many had seen their fathers lose their jobs and their families struggle to make ends meet. Some children of the Depression came to view strong families as especially desirable because hard times had weakened so many families. Then came the war, which again disrupted families. Finally, the postwar economic boom brought a change in luck. It provided the prosperity that allowed people to satisfy their desire for stability at work and at home. (NY Times, The Fifties Family and Todays, Andrew J. Sherling, 11/18/81, Section A, p.31)
The perfect place for large numbers of newly married couples to have these families and enjoy these possessions was, as stated previously, in the suburbs. Many critics of the time noted the conformity of the suburbs: the houses looked much the same, everyone watched the same shows on TV, and because of TV advertising, everyone pretty much used the same appliances and wore the same clothes. Life (especially for women) was centered around their children, as there were endless rounds of PTA meetings, Little League practices, and Boy Scout meetings to get to. Social historians state that young people were using the comfort of the family and home as a buttress against any return to the disruptions they had felt earlier in their lives.
As masses of Southern blacks migrated northward to the big cities during and after the War, more rich and middle-class families left to live in the suburbs to escape the crime, redlining, and blockbusting of the cities. This mass migration became known as the “white flight.” The white families that moved into the suburbs were the perfect picture of conformity—living in row upon row of identical “Levittown” houses, with little individuality or distinction. Furthermore, American families of the time mostly took the form of the “nuclear family” with two parents, two children, and often a pet like a dog or cat. This new “middle class” earned between $3,000 and $10,000 a year and included 60 percent of the American people by the mid-1950s. Fortune magazine described Americans as “a great mass…buy[ing] the same things—the same staples, the same appliances, the same cars, the same furniture, and much the same recreation.” Between 1947 and 1953 alone, the suburban population increased by 43 percent, in contrast to a general population increase of only 11 percent. (Cohen) The stereotypical Fifties family lived in single family homes with a small plot of land – front, side and back. Monday through Friday father dressed in a suit, went to the train station to ride the train into city. Mother stayed home and took care of the kids and the house. But, the stay-at-home Fifties’ Mom had a lot of opportunity to form bonds with her neighbors. In fact, the neighborhood was the scene of a large part of the family social life. Neighborhood social activism included cocktail parties (the production of gin and vodka more than tripled during the decade (TFC at 171)), backyard barbeques, coffee klatches, PTA, demonstration parties (i.e. Tupperware, etc.)
At the end of the day, father would come home to be greeted by his family and participate in a ritual cocktail hour, while mother fixed dinner. Dinner was a family affair. Families sat down at the dinner table at 6:00pm to eat together. Mom cooked because that was her job. In 1950, there were 40,174,705 employed males and 15,559,454 employed females. Employed being the key word as Mom worked very hard in the home for which she wasn’t materially compensated. After dinner, the family would watch TV if they had one, which by the end of the decade was likely. The whole family probably watched the same show because there was only one TV in the whole house. The kids could not run to their bedrooms (they were lucky to have a bedroom of their own) and talk on the phone all night. Why? Because there was probably only one phone in the whole house, and it had a party line that was shared with other households. Private phone lines for each household were a luxury in the Fifties. The call was probably placed by a live operator; rotary dial and touch tone phones that by-passed the operator came later.
The “helicopter parent” phenomenon of the turn of the twenty-first century was a foreign concept in the suburbs of the Fifties. 1950’s parents did not indulge their kids’ whims or inundate them with things. Likewise, they didn’t plan their activities to any great extent. Kids played outside and were told to “get home before the street lights come on.” The kids would walk to the community pool in the morning, swim all morning, come back for lunch, go back and swim all afternoon, and be home for dinner. They rode bicycles, made mud pies, and generally had free reign of the neighborhood. Although there were structured activities for children, such as Little League, Scouts, 4-H etc., parents did not jam kid’s schedules with formal, organized activities.
Fifties parents told their offspring “children are to be seen and not heard” – meaning that children stayed passively in the background. They did not talk back to parents and did not interrupt adult conversations. Children had rules, duties, chores and church attendance – all for the purpose of teaching values, responsibility, and developing morals. Children were taught etiquette towards parents and elders. Children were taught morals – the fairy tales (ex. Aseops fairy tales), which were read at bedtime and would end with a moral. Children believed in things – they believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the authority of teachers, policemen, firemen and grownups. There was a lot more conformance to mores and to the expectation of society.
Fifties youth read comic books, magazines and books. A basic comic book was $.10 and a fancier one was $.25. Comic books were viewed with suspicion in the 1950s. Some critics claimed they led to “juvenile delinquency,” but these criticisms only fueled interest as an estimated 90 percent of children read comic books during this period. Paperback books were rarely more than $.50 or $1.00. The bookmobile at school was a big deal. During the 1950s, board games, such as Monopoly and Careers, checkers, marbles and chess, as well as card games, such as go fish or old maid, kept children amused. Scrabble was a new game that had just been introduced in the late 1940s, and by 1952, its makers were selling 400 sets a day.
“Mad,” an anti-establishment magazine, was a huge hit among youth and even young adults. It started in 1952 as a comic book. It became a magazine later. It was a publication that specialized in thumbing its nose at authority. It was a unique mix of adolescent silliness and political humor, primarily launching sarcastic bombs against the mores and leaders of the times. It had a circulation in the millions. Its mascot was the character Alfred E. Newman, a boy with misaligned eyes, a gap-toothed smile, and the motto “What, me worry?”, who lampooned everything from presidents to sports figures. Mad engaged in nonpartisan satire; it targeted Democrats and Republicans equally. Until the 1990s, Mad had no outside advertising, so it did not have to worry about offending advertisers. Mad was so popular it gave birth to all kinds of spin-off products: Alfred E. Newman dolls, Mad board game, Mad playing cards, Mad coffee cups and the like.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times‘ Robert Boyd wrote, “All I really need to know I learned from Mad magazine. … The magazine instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print, deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double standards, half-truths, subliminal pitches and product placements; it warned me that I was often merely the target of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy construction of movies and TV shows; and it got me to think critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my care ever bothered to.” In this sense, Mad could be said to have been Holden Caulfield.
“Mad” was subjected to scathing criticism by elements of the establishment, e.g. religious authorities, that objected to its irreverent treatment of all things holy. It was alleged to have corrupted the minds of children, and was responsible for destroying the respect for authority. The magazine was even investigated by the FBI for its supposedly subversive content. (Jake Rossen, When the FBI Went After Mad Magazine, Mental Floss, April 29) A retired general in Oklahoma accused Mad of being “the most insidious form of communist propaganda he’d ever read.”
“The Great Suburban Showdown,” Billy Joel (1974) (Looking back from adulthood, Billy Joel describes what it was like to grow up in a stereotypical suburban American family of the Fifties.) https://youtu.be/lIavfZz58fM
Flyin’ east on a plane
Drinkin’ all that free champagne
I guess I saw this comin’ down the line
And I know it should be fun
But I think I should’ve packed my gun
Got that old suburban showdown in my mindSit around with the folks
Tell the same old tired jokes
Bored to death on Sunday afternoon
Mom and Dad, me and you
And the outdoor barbecue
Think I’m gonna hide out in my roomI’ve been gone for a while
Made some changes in my style
And they say you can’t go home anymore
Well the streets all look the same
And I’ll have to play the game
We’ll all sit around in the kitchen chairs
With the TV on and the neighbors thereOut in the yard
Where my Daddy worked so hard
He never lets the crab grass grow too high
Oh, the place hasn’t changed
And that’s why I’m gonna feel so strange
But I’ll have to face the music bye and byeI’ve been gone for a while
Made some changes in my style
And they say you can’t go home anymore
Well the streets all look the same
And I’ll have to play the game
We’ll all sit around in the kitchen chairs
With the TV on and the neighbors thereDrive into town
When this big bird touches down
I’m only comin’ home to say goodbye
Then I’m gone with the wind
And I won’t be seen again
Till that great suburban showdown in the sky
Till that great suburban showdown in the sky
“In My Room,” The Beach Boys, (1963) (Here, The Beach Boys describe suburbia as less a place than a state of mind – a state of mind that is stultifying, characterless, complacent. A place that produces teenage angst. The Fifties teenager, who, surprisingly, has his own room to retreat to, must be living in a house in suburbia.) (https://youtu.be/WJ12fKVuHsM )
There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my roomDo my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterdayNow it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room