The Fifties/Analysis: Difference between revisions

** If a woman became pregnant out of wedlock and no man in sight, she had only two realistic options: an expensive, often dangerous back-street or overseas abortion, or a discreet disappearance for a few months with a plausible cover story, at the end of which the child would be adopted and none would be the wiser. Often, girls under 18 had to go through the latter option against their wills, so as not to 'ruin their lives'. Girls and women of color had even fewer options; they usually couldn't afford an abortion and charities usually wouldn't help them with adoption -- white babies had the market cornered.

** It was taken as obvious that marriage would last unto death, and most often it did. Divorce rates in the Fifties seem almost phenomenally low compared to more recent years, although whether this was due to people taking their specific relationships more seriously, or whether they were simply more conditioned to marriage as a concept, is still debated. While much easier to obtain than of old, divorce was still socially quite risque, and if children were involved the assumption was that the couple would, and should, make every effort to stay together for them.

** All that said, the [[Seemingly-Wholesome Fifties Girl|common subversion]] isn't really any more accurate, at least not for women (men [[Double Standard|weren't as thoroughly tracked]]). Though of course there were many people in [[Real Life]] who acted like that, they were nowhere near as common as many 1970s+ portrayals of 1950s-era teenage life would have you think. The 1950s era was not, as often portrayed, just [[Eternal Sexual Freedom|modern behavior with more hypocrisy]], there really was significant differences between 1950s sexual behavior (especially for high-school aged people) and today's. Less than [http://dragon.soc.qc.cuny.edu/Staff/turner/TechPDFs/13_SexSurveys.pdf 15% of women] who came of age (18 years old) between 1948-1955 had had premarital sex by the time they were 18, less than 25% for those between 1956-61. The median age for for first premarital sex for men and women turning 15 in 1954-63 [http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-19-premarital-sex_x.htm was 20.4 years old] (it would be a bit older for women alone), by comparison for marriage for the 1950s, the average age [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html was only 20.3]. The Sexual Revolution of the (late) 1960s to 1970s of course changed all of this, with people having more premarital sex and doing so younger.

** Note that while premarital sex may have been less common among teens, teen marriage was also much more common than it is today, with the [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html median age of marriage being 23 for men and 20 for women]. As a result, the 1950s actually had the [http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html highest rates of teen pregnancy on record], but nearly 90% of those were in a marriage.

* One mega-star who's almost completely forgotten today was Arthur Godfrey, who had two prime time shows and a daytime show for most of the decade (having dominated the radio waves long prior to that). Then he abruptly fired a popular singer on-air for daring to develop a solo career -- and ''then'' berated him for 'lacking humility'. Just who really lacked humility quickly became evident as more firings followed. Godfrey's folksy, friendly, gee-shucks demeanor was exposed as a sham, and his viewers deserted him.

* Many TV shows were still performed live, which tended to make things [http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/deadman.asp much more exciting even than intended]. Your average radio/TV drama series -- when not a soap, generally a detective or other 'mystery play' -- would seem crude to the point of absurdity today; most of the ancient cliches were by no means yet into [[Discredited Trope]] territory. More ambitious dramas, often based on high-end novels, were presented on anthology programs: essentially the [[Made for TV Movie]] as a weekly series.

* Remember the CONELRAD alert mentioned above? They were supposed to test it every month or so. The station would put up a card stating "CD TEST" while the station engineer switched the transmitter on and off quickly two or three times. This would often blow a tube somewhere in the transmitter, and the station would be off the air for a few hours until they fixed it. Most stations gave up on the test after the third or fourth time an expensive tube blew, which is why few people remember CONELRAD tests being on TV. The Emergency Broadcast System and its [[Nightmare Fuel|terrifying (for kids) tests]] didn't begin until the mid-1960s.

* [[Radio]]'s influence of course waned rapidly as television's rose, but the two overlapped programming formats for quite some while into the 1960's. Besides Godfrey's, popular radio-only programs included ''Backstage Wife'', ''Ma Perkins'' and ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.'' Later in the decade NBC would introduce ''Monitor'', an eclectic all-weekend mix of news, talk, music and performance (notably short comedy bits) presented by some of the top journalists & celebrities of the day.