gypsygrl
Posts: 1471
Joined: 10/8/2005
From: new york state
Status: offline
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quote:
I find your view to be one more of the late 60’s and after. I perceive the 50’s as an America that was represented by the working dad and stay at home mom without the secular influences. The dad had lots of power and divorce was rare although, I suspect, abuse was prevalent also. Look at the low divorce statistics from the 50’s.
It wasn’t until the late 60’s that feminism became an active movement with equal rights for women and working moms became the standard. Cultural Marxism rightfully gives us the impression that the 50’s era was one of a white male society that influenced movies, literature, psychology and business. That era was something we moved past with the help of an authoritative scientific community that recognized the rights of women, minorities and the poor while reminding us that the earth orbits around the sun, not the other way around.
Right and this is exactly the view that peeves me. :) The 'new' women's history that got off the ground in the 1980's in response to the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's, has, in my mind, dug up enough evidence, to require a revision in this view. Much of one's view of 'large' historical trends depends on what kinds of evidence you're working with. By the 1920's social commentators began to notice an increase in divorce rates, and it was considered to be common in the 1950's. Domestic violence was first 'discovered' (defined as a problem) in the 1870's, and because of the nature of abuse, we don't really know if its been decreasing, increasing or constant over the last 100 years or so. All we know about is 'reported abuse.'
Many of the near professions (nursing, social work, teaching, home economics--classically female occupations) and were well established by the middle of the 20th century giving women opportunities for working outside the home. The majority of married women stayed home when their children were young, but most also worked as soon as their children were old enough. The post-World War II period was characterized by a reversal of these trends (referred to as 'the missing generation' by some historians because of the spooky way women disappeared from public participation) but the revival of the woman's movement in the 1960's and 70's seems to have set history 'back on course.' The 60's and 70's didn't invent feminism, but revived it. The origins of feminism go back to the 1850's.
There's other things that can be looked at in figuring out the historical trend. One thing is the location of childbirth. In 1900 95% of babies were born at home, and, so long as births were done at home, women had a substantial role in deciding how babies would be born. By 1955, only 5% of births were home births, and the vast majority of babies were born in hospitals. Accordingly, it would have been medical professionals who determined birthing practices and they who had the ultimate authority there. The same thing with birth control. When birth control laws began to be liberalized in the 1930's following the supreme court decision that the Comstock laws were unconstitutional, it was also medicalized, that is, birth control came to be seen as something to be regulated by doctors.
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But I don’t get too hung up on any of this. D/s, BDSM, has always flourished even in the most reactionary or radically militant authoritarian societies, in every sexual variety we can imagine, and always will.
I don't know if bd/sm has always flourished but I'm confident that people will always find a way to follow their bliss regardless of what kind of society they live in.
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Do you think fundamentalism has risen in a reactionary response to "Science!" of the fifties? I think women who expressed a submissive response based in religion at that point were probably looked on as "Bible bangers" - a decidedly stigmatized thing.
I think there's a connection particularly given the secularization of mainstream religion and its accomodation of a scientific worldview.
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“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.” ~Walter Benjamin
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RE: 50's household: what do you like/don't like about it? - 
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