Comparison of Social Trends of the 1950’s and 1990’s

Comparison of Social Trends of the 1950’s and 1990’s

We Americans have a fondness of looking back to certain times with bouts of nostalgia, clutching closely the burred images of better off and more secure conditions. We seek revive those past years, hoping to cure all of our current societal ills. Why can’t we bring them back? The economy was good, the family was happy, we say. We see the 1950’s in the United States as the golden era for the American people, and likewise, the 1990’s was considered as a prosperous time. However, the former decade observed the height of the nuclear family and low divorce rates, while the latter recorded higher rates of

marriage dissolution and no marital births, as well as low rates of marriage. What was happening differently in these two decades? In order to rationalize these trends in conditions and inequalities among U.S. household and families, it is necessary to study the development in economy and employment and occupational structure in the United States.

Several trends that have been misguidedly converted into the popularized images we hold of the 1950s. Indeed, argument was then begun; the 1950s was a decade in which greater optimism did exist, even among many individuals and groups who were in terrible circumstances. The postwar economic boom was

finally the opportune moment for individuals to build a stable family that previous decades of depression, war, and domestic conflicts had restricted. We see that this decade began with a considerable drop in divorce rates and rise in marriage rates, which is often assumed as the result of changed attitudes and values.

However, this situation cannot be only just attributed to women’s desire to stay at home as a non-working, devoted housewife and mother. Rather, this trend was a response to external forces, and specifically, a result of societal attitudes and policies. Up through the 1960s an adolescent girl typically had more responsibilities at home than she does today. While such tasks may have prepared girls for adult roles as wives and mothers, they also held girls back from further education or preparation for future work outside the home.Society’s expectations of women outside the realm of domesticity numbered few, and women were constrained within their household duties, a factor to the high numbers of women entering the marriage institution.

In addition, this decade is an example of men and women having dramatically disparate situated social power. Or in other words, unequal social and economic options and unequal bargaining power and social support systems for men and women. This was the situation of having unequal access to economic resources, political power, and social status, and these social differences limit how fair or equal a personal relationship between two individuals from different groups can really be? Thus, for unhappy marriages, divorce was not a practical solution for the woman because of her few options outside marriage. Women could not apply for loans or credits or in the own names, for instance, and therefore prohibiting full financial independence.

Furthermore, in the case of the more successful marriages, women did

not have to work to support the family, due to the decade’s economic expansion and the generous and widespread federal assistance programs. Poverty, though higher than today, was less concentrated in pockets of blight existing side-by-side with extremes of wealth, and unlike today, it was falling rather than rising? Thus, since only one breadwinner was needed, couples did not experience the more recent additional stress of raising children while working fulltime. In effect, the divorce rates fell in the 1950s not because of a turn in the attitudes of the females, but due to the overall setup of a booming economy and the lack of approval and support for women entering the workforce instead of staying home.

Similarly, in the 1990s, the next decade of discussion, the phenomenon

of rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and divorce rates, as well as decreasing rates of marriage, can be partially attributed to shifts in economic and employment trends that began in the 1960s and continued through what was often considered the economic boom of the late 1990s. On the surface, the late 1990s was a period of strong growth for families throughout the income scale. In addition, unemployment fell and productivity increased. It was during this same period, which divorce rates grew. Divorced men and women numbered 140 per 1,000 married people; in 1950, that number was thirty-five individuals per 1,000 married ones. Likewise, the rate of unwed motherhood increased since the end of 1950, while that of married women childbearing