Post World War II Culture

The return of all the soldiers from World War II in 1945 was a time of great joy and prosperity for the nation. Families were reunited. Soldiers quickly married and began to have families. Young couples had children, and our nation's economy began to expand.

A culture of conformity developed soon afterward. In the 1950s, it became "cool" to conform. Everybody wanted to be like everyone else. Everybody dressed the same. Everybody had the same style haircut. Every man wanted to get a job with General Motors (making cars) or with IBM (selling typewriters or big computers to other businesses), where the office workers wore a white shirt every single day to work.

You got ahead in life in the 1950s by doing what you were told, and not by making waves (the same is true today in most big companies). Tired of war, people wanted to make some money, have a happy family life, and then retire. People now look back on the 1950s with much nostalgia, as though it were a better time. Television shows like "Leave it to Beaver" depict the culture. The most popular television show in the late 1970s was "Happy Days," which described growing up in the 1950s. An adult named Ron Howard played the happy-go-lucky teenager "Ritchie Cunningham," and his trouble-making friend was known as the "Fonz".

Credit cards became available for the first time. Families that saved during the war began to spend and buy things for themselves. The 1950s was a decade of great prosperity and growth. More and more Americans bought cars. Automobiles were plentiful and reasonably priced, and there were good interstate roads which made their use practical. In 1940, the first multi-lane superhighway had been built in Pennsylvania, known as the "Pennsylvania Turnpike." Many more highways were built in the 1950s during the Cold War Era, because they could facilitate the transport of troops and double as landing strips for airplanes. The federal government helped pay for these roads and they still work well to this day.

Every young family dreamed of owning its own home. Contrary to the Great Depression, when many families did not own their own home, the American Dream in the 1950s was to save up and have your own home. A housing shortage developed, in contrast to the surplus of houses that we see on the market today. Builders could hardly keep up. As houses were built, Americans began to spread out into suburbs, instead of living in cities.

On July 13, 1950, the leading national magazine (called "Time" magazine) put a man named William Levitt on its cover. Using rapid construction techniques that he mastered as a military Seabee^[6] in the Pacific, Levitt built an entire town of thousands of identical houses on Long Island, called "Levittown". It was immediately a huge success. A post war housing crunch and the low prices of the Levittown homes led many young couples to move there. They loved living in houses just like the houses around them. They could work in jobs in New York City or on Long Island. Life seemed very good.

The explosion of new families after the war led to the the "baby boom" (1946 to 1964). Having put off marriage and children due to the Great Depression and World War II, young men and women married, settled down, and began families. The number of baseball Little Leagues nationwide increased from 776 in 1950 to 5,700 by 1960. It was a time of great prosperity. People obtained jobs and earned money. The country grew stronger.

Several modern conveniences were introduced during the post-World War II Era, including refrigerators, televisions, and many other household appliances we still use today. America began to gain its status as the richest nation in the world.

You might ask yourself whether the 1950s was a more conservative time than today. Some, your teacher included, think that the nation is perpetually becoming more conservative as liberal ideas are constantly demonstrated to be failures. Just as a young athlete or musician is constantly improving due to practice and growth, our nation might be constantly becoming more conservative.

But at first glance, television shows from the 1950s suggest it was a more conservative time. Was it really? Consider all the issues, such as the tax rates (they were much higher in the 1950s), restrictions on freedoms (interest rates for savings were fixed by the government rather than by the free market today), the draft (it was required of young men then, while enlistment is voluntary today), and unions (less of a problem today). Other issues include communism (there were far more American communists in the 1950s), the Second Amendment (that right is more secure today in most places), the threat of all-out nuclear war (reduced now), political speech (fewer restrictions today), and -- perhaps most important of all -- homeschooling (legal today, but illegal in the 1950s). Some of the post-World War II legislation, such as the Full Employment Act of 1946, which tried to guarantee employment for every citizen, seems like silly socialism today. (By the way, that law established the Council of Economic Advisers to advise the president about the economy, and it still exists today.)

Debate: Were the 1950s more conservative than today?

By the mid-1950s an undercurrent of rebellion in culture began which is not shown on television shows. One evening in 1955 in a book shop in San Francisco, a man named Allen Ginsberg (who grew up in Newark, NJ) stood up to read a long poem called the "Howl". It was an attack on the conformity, materialism and hypocrisy of the 1950s. This was the beginning of the "Beat Generation," captured best in Jack Kerouac's book "On the Road." The Beat Generation advocated freedom, drugs, and being different simply for the sake of being different. The name comes from "beat-up" lives of its leaders, which were often ugly. Both Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, for example, suffered and died from illnesses associated with alcohol abuse.

By the 1960s the Beat Generation had blossomed into the hippie counterculture. Young people grew their hair long, violated laws, disobeyed their parents, stopped going to church, failed to obtain or remain at good jobs, and basically did whatever they felt like doing. Every form of authority was rejected by the "hippies". Many of the leaders died of drug overdoses or other lifestyle illnesses. Others ended up in jail. They had slogans like "Don't trust anyone over 30" and sold books with titles like "Steal this Book." Rock music started to advocate drug use. Movies changed for the worse. While the 1950s culture was about conforming, the 1960s culture was about rebelling.