Racial segregation

That explains one of the reasons why Trump's cultists have a hard on for that decade.

I'm surprised Beau didn't mention that one.

And don't forget that old standard: homophobia.

Good times.

The good old days weren't.

DD

You mean when I had polio? Yeah, good times.

Dads drank, Moms took first Miltown and then Valium. As soon as we got away from them, we got into the whole candy store. Most of us lived through it, some didn't, and too many of us went to prison for it.

What blew the lid off for a lot of people wasn't Holden Caulfield's alienation from "phony" adults or the sexual violence under the serene surface respectability in "Peyton Place," it was also a little novel called "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," which struck such a chord that it was made into a movie the following year, covering the malaise of men who had changed their military uniforms for civilian ones and it didn't matter how much money they were making or how many mod cons the house had, they were regimented and felt unfree and empty, especially the ones who were completely disconnected from wives and children by commutes that had them going home to a supper kept warm in the oven and everybody asleep.

That regimentation and denial that anything is ever wrong or that people are in pain are all things the far right wants back and they think it all went away because of integration and Betty Friedan stirring up the wimmenfolk, otherwise women would be doing the vacuuming in full makeup, pearls, and high heels while a black woman off camera did all the cooking and laundry for less than the minimum wage.

I wonder how much of that was fallout from WW2. PTSD wasn't even a "thing" and nobody talked about it.
Of course it came out in the drinking, beatings, etc. And then there's just the lack of purpose and meaning after having "saved the world" from Nazi's ec.

And how much of a disconnect growing up in those "golden ages" as a young person - while the adults had grown up with the depression, ww2, etc.

Music changed radically when the "boys" came home, from swing with drum solos to the mellow muted horns and vocal harmony stuff that makes me cringe when I hear it now. There was a very strong philosophy, especially with kids, of "don't talk about it and it will go away," which is the opposite of what should have been done. People tried to focus on the "you never had it so good" consumerism with the house stuffed with appliances, the new car every 4 years, and the well scrubbed kiddies.

It took my own father until the 70s before he'd talk about anything that happened during the war and he'd been way behind the lines working on navigation systems for the RAF and then the USAF after he got his draft notice in Italy. There were bombing raids but no combat and he still bore the scars.

The disconnect was extreme, our parents seemed utterly clueless to us since they'd grown up in survival mode and seemingly had no clue about anything but amassing tangible goods. "The Generation Gap" stories abounded and sold magazines and newspapers and universally missed the point. We'd grown up with a curious sort of psychological neglect and some were doubly scarred by the physical abuse that was an everyday part of being a child in the 50s.

Anybody who wants to go back to that is just plain nuts.

my dad just scraped by - was 16 when the war ended. I could have easily been born in the 50's but he waited till the (at the time) old age of 36 to get married and settle down.

Still - he went thru seeing brothers etc die, and also lived thru the depression as a kid.

Not the "good old time" most people think of.

when all the kids in the neighborhood called me the "n" word all the time. Fun times.

A single salary could buy a house, two cars, and let people live comfortably. As opposed to what we have today.

Something conservatives pining for that time forget.

"The Way We Never Were," by Stephanie Coontz. She discussed many of the topics mentioned here by Beau. Highly recommended.

Reveals a lot of myths about our nostalgic past.