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There's a lot of nostalgia for the '50s – especially amongst conservatives. But do you ever wonder what life was actually like back then? Recently, people on Reddit opened up about their experiences living through the decade, and it's a wild ride...
1."As a kid in the '50s, I thought it was pretty great, but really different from life now. Everything was smaller – houses were smaller, expenses were smaller, most families then were one-income families. There just wasn't as much stuff... not as much consumerism. We had small closets, not that many clothes/shoes. We had one TV (black and white), four TV stations. We played outside most of our spare time. Or read books since we didn't have kids TV programming other than on Saturday mornings. It was just different."
2."Kids wore hand-me-downs, and you wore clothes out – they were patched until they did, and even socks were mended. There was no buying of extra snacks or fast food, bread and most meals were made from scratch with seasonal veggies and fruits we grew ourselves."
3."Mostly mushy canned veggies in our household, many TV dinners too. Housewives loved the convenience. I had no idea how appetizing fresh vegetables, properly cooked, were until decades later."
4."As a child, my father came home one day and said I'm going to make us something interesting, and he made a pizza crust and cooked a pizza – it was the first time I had ever even heard that word, and I must have been seven or eight."
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5."There were no automatic teller machines, you had to carefully budget your cash to make sure you had enough to cover expenses. Not much in the way of fast food – just a drugstore counter for a quick meal. Three television channels, no cell phones, but pay phones were plentiful. Telegrams were sent for vital information."
6."My husband was born in 1953 and used an outhouse for part of his childhood."
7."My mom was really good at math and science in high school in the '50s, but was consistently told she couldn’t have a career in that. It did a number on her. She got funneled into a teaching career, which she wasn’t suited to and hated. My sister and I experienced the consequences of that, and it took us years to understand Mom didn’t hate us, she was just very envious of what we could have that she didn’t."
8."Our mother taught my sister and me how to sweet talk and cajole Daddy to get what we wanted. He had a terrible temper and was a narcissist, developmentally stuck at about age five. She knew what we all needed to do to keep him on his breadwinner treadmill. When I was in high school and he was really flipping out, I told her to leave. She looked at me like a deer caught in headlights and said, 'But where would I go and what would I do?'"
9."Moms sewed clothing instead of buying it, very often. You shopped for clothes and shoes once per year. Dads built furniture. People knew how to make things and they did make them and took pride in them. The big problem was in human rights."
"If your family was nice and normal and kind, and you were white, it was a good life. But if you were a woman and your husband was abusive, there was no protection. You couldn't get your own bank account or credit card. You were barred from Ivy League schools and from the sciences, mostly. If you weren't white, you were under constant threat and had no rights. It was a living hell and oppression. Lynchings were a form of after-church entertainment, and they were unbelievably horrible and savage. That's the part no one mentions. The absolute savagery. Victims of ****** assault were blamed and ostracized, and children born out of wedlock were called a ******* by their pastor and the entire community, even if they were adopted. People were casually cruel underneath a veneer of bland niceness."
10."I was born in '53. My dad's father’s family disowned him because he married a divorced woman with a daughter. Then my father was born. My grandfather’s family lived just a mile from us, but I never knew them or any of those people because they abandoned my grandfather. There are things like this all over the place – people really closed the door on you."
11."I was born in 1950. As a kid I remember, before vaccines for polio, many of my classmates had braces. Big heavy metal things. One died. Another died of tuberculosis... rigid gender roles were awful. I wanted a chemistry set like my brother’s. I was a girl, so I didn’t get one."
"Are there things I miss about the '50s? Yes. But we also thought we were going to all die in a nuclear holocaust. We had duck and cover drills in school. I miss penny candy, paper dolls to cut out, the big Hershey bar for five cents, Sugar Daddy caramel bars that would last a week. I miss toy irons that plugged in and heated to warm, so I could iron doll dresses made of rayon. I miss playing outside until it got dark. I miss every kid knowing every edible plant. I don’t miss diseases which killed kids then, and are preventable now. I don’t miss thinking the world was going to end in atomic bomb attack. I don’t miss segregation or the casual use of the 'N' word."
12."In the early 1950s, they were phasing out the tuberculosis hospitals and turning them over to real estate developers. Polio was still a thing, it would get kids in the summertime; you would see empty desks at the start of school in the Fall."
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13."Half the men that returned from war had PTSD. Women had little rights."
14."I grew up in the 1950s in a coastal Oregon town where timber was king and jobs were plenty. There were no ethnicities in my schools except caucasian. Girls weren’t allowed to play inter-school sports in high school. My family never ate in a restaurant. It was too expensive for a mill worker father and stay-at-home mother. We had one black-and-white console TV and three channels. Businessmen on the main street controlled politics and didn’t welcome new businesses. Yeah, it was a lot different."
15."My parents would go to the ice cream shop and share a cone because they only wanted to spend 10 cents instead of 20 cents. They never ate out. For fun they'd go to a matinee because it was cheaper than an evening movie. My mom sewed a lot of her own clothes."
16."No birth control to speak of, so families were bigger. Couples married at a younger age. Sunday church was a big activity. We walked to kindergarten by ourselves. There were very few, if any, sports in school for girls. You had one, maybe two, telephones in your house. Some families had party lines. Very few appliances in the kitchen. We got one of the first dishwashers on the block. Girls and women very rarely wore pants. Lining up at school with your family to get the first polio vaccines was a big deal. The family doctor came to the house if we were pretty sick. The '50s were nice in some ways, but there were many challenges too."
17."I was born in 1951. I actually remember quite a bit of the 1950s. Everything was ridiculously cheap. I remember my mom sending me to the corner store to buy 50 cents worth of hamburger. Dad once showed me the monthly rent on our house: $35. Gas was cheap, about 20 cents a gallon. Our local gas station had a grand opening. If you bought $5 of gas they were giving away a case of Coke. The Coke of course was in glass returnable bottles. No one – and I do mean no one – had A/C. Including restaurants. Movie theaters did have A/C."
18."I was born in 1950. My dad went to work and my mom stayed home. We all walked to school. There were a lot of kids on the block, and we were free range. After breakfast, we left the house and didn't go back home until lunchtime. After dinner we had to check in when the street lights came on. Candy bars were a nickle and sodas were a dime. We never ate out except for a special occasion. We had chores. My parents never saw me play baseball, basketball or run cross country. We had whole evenings when everyone in the family sat around reading. We got our first TV when I was eight. My childhood was terrific."
19."I was born in 1948 in a suburb of NYC. For me, as a kid, life was pretty good... even school was sometimes fun. But no A/C, it was hot as hell... But looking at my parents – I remember my father busting his hump to paint the inside of the house, and take down storm windows and put up screens, and clean those screens. Plus work full-time. My mother cleaning the house and clothes, the four kids, and cooking meals everyday."
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20."If you weren’t Black or a woman it was great. Some restaurants would not serve Black people at all, and women had to be accompanied to be seated in a good restaurant. A woman dining alone was looking for trouble. Cars were much less reliable. Appliances were much more reliable. The other thing I remember with disgust was that everyone smoked. All the time. In the house, in the car, even in the doctor’s office."
21."I was a young child in the 50s. My mom stayed home to raise kids. My father was a blue collar guy. They did not have much money, but there was always food on the table. Things like an orange at Christmas was a real treat. I think there was a better sense of community then. Our family had lived in the same town for generations. So if help was needed, someone always stepped up."
"The elementary school had some really good programs. There was a bank that sponsored a savings program. We had passbooks and saved a dime a week. Once a week, we received a newspaper called The Weekly Reader. It had stories about current events. There were also programs that talked about littering. You did not want to be a Litterbug. During the Cold War, there were duck and cover drills. One of the biggest differences between then and now is trust and optimism. I think most people trusted what the government said. I also think people had more optimism about their future and opportunities. Society in the '50s was more structured."
22."Life was good compared to the recent decades which people remembered – WWI, the Depression, WWII. Incomes were growing. People had cars, washing machines, refrigerators, etc. The USA was top dog in the world, and much better off than Europe, Asia, and Africa. But there were lots of problems too. Nuclear war seemed imminent, racial segregation was rampant, there were wars in Asia. It wasn't paradise, but people felt they were moving ahead and kids would do better than their parents. Optimism reigned and progress was expected."
23."The furniture and the music were great. If you were the right color and gender and had a job in one of the many occupations that benefited from the enormous amount of government spending on infrastructure and defense, you were fairly well off. For everybody else, things pretty much sucked the way they do now, except that there were fewer ways for people to talk to each other about it."
24."I was a little kid in the 1950s. The main things I remember about it are the summer of 1953, which my mom spent in the hospital with polio. How grateful I was to get the polio vaccination in the mid-1950s. The birth of my little sister in 1955. All the rest is a blur of hot summer days spent rollerskating, riding bikes, and laying on the back lawn with my best friend."
25."Did kids have more fun and have grand adventures? Yes. For adults, other than the joy of being out of the Depression and the war being over, I don’t think it was much better than today. My parents were always worried about attacks. We’d practice looking for enemy planes and what to do by flattening ourselves in a ditch. My dad would always drill us on what to do if we ever got separated in a military conflict. All of us kids were more than aware of the destructive power of a nuclear bomb and Russia’s threats. Did they have advantages and opportunities because of the GI Bill? Yes. Did they have more access to food and clothing? Yes. But everyday life struggles are there no matter the decade."
26."It was an era of forced conformity. Moreover, many of the factors that contributed to rising prosperity are things that the conservatives who tout that era now actually reject. Because the top marginal tax rate was 70 per cent, the government had money to subsidize education, veteran's housing, new infrastructure, and new social safety net programs. At the same time, these benefits were not available to Black Americans. Women were excluded from most careers. Gay people would be fired if their orientation was made public. Housing discrimination was legal."
27."Unskilled workers could still have a good job with a future. That is probably the best thing."
28."Born in '49, I remember a lot of anxiety about nuclear war with the Soviets, fear of polio, corporal punishment for children, and parents having too many cocktails after work."
29."I was a child. I thought everything in my family was normal. I played with a little girl on my block and (gasp) her mother was divorced. She earned a living typing envelopes on her kitchen table all day. My mother stayed at home, with the exception of substitute teaching on a few days. We were raised in a Catholic school, so the public school kids weren’t going to heaven."
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30."It was a miserable decade of corruption, censorship, ****** repression, Black suppression, closet alcoholism and drug abuse, and constant nuclear threat. I'm 82 and grew up in the '50s – it was so terrible, that the '60s erupted as a cultural rebellion. The '50s was the "Dark Ages," complete with witch hunts (The McCarthy Hearings). The '60s were the "Renaissance," complete with civil rights and women's rights marches, peace demonstrations, and a movement in the arts that was unprecedented. We need another cultural revolution – desperately!"
31."I don’t care about all that 'we played in the creeks and climbed trees' stuff. I was bored out of my skull growing up. As soon as I was able, I took the long walk to the library to find books to read and information to access. I wish there had been the internet back then. School was difficult too, in that rigid conformity was expected. I remember being told to draw pictures of our parents and when I drew my mom wearing her new Bermuda shorts, the teacher corrected me, saying 'women don’t wear shorts.' She proceeded to sketch a skirt over my picture. I’m still mad at you about that, Mrs. Alexander."
32."I was born in the '50s, but in Amarillo, which was about two decades behind much of the US. I remember segregated water fountains and bathrooms and schools. The shopping mall wasn't legally segregated, but I never saw Black people there."
"Almost all jobs paid minimum wage of $1.80 or so. And, no, $1.80 wasn't enough to buy a house or raise a family on. It was also difficult for women to get a job, and a husband whose wife worked might be looked down upon. Gay people – of course they called us by a different name – were not well thought of. In seventh grade, before I even realized that I was gay, my classmates beat me up and tried to set fire to me at the bus stop. The principal told my Mom that I would need to learn how to fight. In ninth grade, my geography teacher told my class that I should be killed. Everything was more difficult – but it was far easier than for many people in previous generations. My grandparents' grandparents had seen most of their relatives starved to death in a genocide to make way for the landowners to raise sheep. My grandmother went from riding in a donkey cart to flying in a plane, and watching Star Trek on TV. My mom was the first generation to have indoor plumbing or electricity (in her 20s). And indoor plumbing and electricity make everything easier."
33."Crime was worse then – more murders as well as thefts. Many people just left the car door unlocked, because if they broke the window before stealing your radio it could be miserable until you got the money to fix the window."
34."Corporations paid their fair share in taxes and CEO salaries weren’t 3000 times the lowest paid employee."
35."Everything was closed on Sundays."
36."In the 1950s we didn't have plumbing, heated the one heated room with wood, and slept in freezing bedrooms. No TV. Maybe it was great because the war was over and we never went hungry."
37.And finally, "Anything that seemed easy or better in the 1950s was because women were quietly working themselves to death trying to make it look that way."
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Did you grow up in the '50s? Share your memories of the time in the comments or the anonymous form below!
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