Is Today’s Family in Crisis?

Many may argue that today’s typical families are better off now than they were in the 1950’s. Influences such as completely different musical preferences, parental control, and women gaining more power changed how the normal family in America functioned. Although the 1950’s may not seem too far in the past, a lot has changed in the way people choose to raise a family. These changes include different divorce rates, influence of women working, and teenagers getting more freedom of expression.

During the 1950’s, life was all about keeping up with the Jones’. What this meant is that people put more effort into being like everyone else rather than expressing their own opinions. For example, if one person bought a new TV, everyone would buy them in order to fit the norm. In this time, the role of women in society was to bear children, tend to her husband’s every needs without questioning, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. The husband was usually the only source of income in each household. In 1955, the Housekeeping Monthly magazine issued “The good wife’s guide”. Most of the guides encouraged women to stay with their husband no matter what and make sure he is happy as possible. One of the guides said that it is the wife’s duty to clean her children so her husband will have nice clean kids to look at and a woman should know her place.

While the 1950’s seemed like a time of healthy families and success, a lot of couples weren’t too happy with their spouse. Since divorce was frowned upon by society in the 1950’s, people rarely divorced in fear of becoming an outcast. The 50’s family was pretty balanced which is why many people didn’t get divorced. Divorce meant that women would possibly have to find a job and the men would take on extra expenses and possibly have to clean up after himself. In the 1950’s, as many as 93% of all married couples stayed together. Other than the fear of being neglected by society, many people did not divorce because it was believed that divorce would have a negative effect on adolescent behavior.

Although many may argue that the 50’s family was better off, they should take in the fact that a large portion of married couples didn’t want to be together. Another factor that might have made the 50’s family appear better is that people actually waited longer to get to know each other and underage relationships, sexual or not, didn’t take place as much. The seductive moves of Rock n’ Roll music and the upcoming of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine played a major role in influencing variety in household relationships.