Did it even exist?

mammajess · 2022-01-08T06:20:16+00:00

I'm gen X, my mum is Boomer and my grandma was Silent Gen. Silent Gen people were of dating/marriage age in the 1950's.

This is my understanding of how things worked from what my mum has told me of stuff she worked out by observing the older gen when she was young. Not everything was this dark but there was a hell of a lot of dark things going on under that shiny façade and there is a reason the Boomers had a social revolution against this culture that changed our society forever.

People got engaged to start having sex. Engagements didn't always result in a marriage, people could have a falling out and not end up getting married. If people got pregnant then a marriage had to result. Many women were in early pregancy when they got married. My own mum worked out she was born less than 9 months after her parents wedding. She mentioned it to my grandma and was told to shut up.

Young women who got pregnant outside of marriage were taken to a kind of prison where they waited to give birth and then their babies were stolen for adoption. It was not that uncommon for people to find out later that their much older sister, who perhaps was sexually abused as a child and got pregnant, was actually their mother. Many secrets were hidden by families about abuse and unwanted pregnancies to avoid stigma. Young women could be taken to various kinds of prisons posing as health care etc for having behavior society disapproved of. This could even happen in my mothers generation.

Women weren't necessarily good mums in a way we would consider it now. It was popular to leave babies crying on their own and deny small children affection so you didn't "spoil" them. It was normal to make your kids leave the house during the day and only let them back in for dinner. This changed when child abductions and murders increased. Physical punishment was considered normal. Children weren't really allowed to have an opinion or defend themselves against abuse, that was called "talking back" and justified further abuse. Children were to be "seen and not heard".

Men commonly drank a lot and domestic violence might have been looked down on and victims considered sympathetically by caring people but the law wasn't interested in defending the wife from her drunken husband beating her. Some men would escape to the pub/bar on a Friday night to drink/gamble/hire sex workers to the extent that women sometimes had to run around trying to find their husband and get the majority of the pay packet to ensure that the family had enough to eat for the following week. We have to remember, not that it excuses being a horrible abuser, that many of these men would have been horribly traumatised from war considering the time period we are discussing.

Just as men were not controlled in their abuse neither were women. Sociopathic women could torture their husband and children without much concern that child protection, the school or police would get involved. The home was considered private and therefore anything that happened within it that was below the level of murder was often not considered anyone else's business. This is why so many boomers ran away from home in the late 60's and the 1970's and were very cynical of older generations i.e. "don't trust anyone over 30".

Divorce was very hard to get. It involved going to court and proving that your partner had committed a crime against you in many cases. It also involved opening your family up to public scrutiny. Many people wanted to be divorced but didn't have the heart to blame their partner when really they were just incompatible. As soon as divorce on demand became an option it was like the flood gates opened and soooooo many unhappy couples got divorced. This means that people were NOT having an idyllic married life.

The 1950's were all about propaganda to promote the appearance that married life was idyllic because governments needed a baby boom after 1950 to replenish the population and get industry charged up after the devastation of WW2. It is quite remarkable really that that propaganda is so powerful it still works today on men who are several generations removed from the reality of it.

HelenHavok · 2022-01-08T07:20:24+00:00

This idealized version of the 50s in the public consciousness almost entirely originated from TV of the time, which was a highly fanciful and sanitized version of reality.

If you were a person of color, you might imagine this wasn’t exactly a golden era. In the post-war boom, young white families were able to buy in new developments and begin building equity. Black veterans, however, were prevented from capitalizing on the GI Bill (by design) through neighborhood covenants that actually prevented Black families from purchasing property in those quintessential 50s suburbs and through legal redlining that prevented families from qualifying for home loans based on their race, even though the VA guaranteed veterans low-interest mortgages.

When subsidized public housing appeared for the first time in the late 40s/early 50s in an attempt to solve awful slum conditions in cities, they were whites only. Poor Black families had to make do on their own while their white neighbors were lifted out of dangerous and squalid living conditions by the government. Schools were segregated, there was a resurgence of organizations like the KKK, and really just a whole lot of malfeasance by the government that ultimately culminated in the civil rights movement a decade later.

petaura · 2022-01-08T06:35:56+00:00

It depends on what past you are talking about. What era, what country. It depends on a lot of different factors, I think. I see a lot of idealization in the RedPill of the idea that the man provides and the woman depends on him to sustain herself. Supposedly this would increase men's options, but I don't see it that way. Unless it is a penalty to be single, I think families would take it upon themselves to marry their daughters off to men who had money and leave out men from lower classes. Also more normative monogamy would stagnate the dating market. There are many people within the RedPill who talk about having empathy for incels, but at the same time turn a blind eye to the possibility of women resorting to hypergamy (in its original meaning) to mate once they are unable to earn an income on their own.

Back to your post, I am from a Latin American country. I don't know about my great-grandmother's life, but my grandmother was married by her parents at 15 to a man 20 years older. As soon as she had the chance, she ran away from home and left her husband and children. I don't know what she did during those years, but she spent 10 years away, until my mother got older and met my father. On the other hand, my grandmother on my father's side was also forcibly married to my grandfather and eventually did the same thing, ran away from home and left her children living with other relatives. Neither my grandfather nor my grandmother took care of them, and only interacted with their children when they were much older. I literally defecate over traditionalist wet dreams upon learning this. Were the women happy? HAHAHAHAHAHA good joke dude. women were traditional? women wanted to be married to a complete stranger and reproduce with him? Well, I don't think so.

RealRussShackleford · 2022-01-08T13:07:10+00:00

Women weren’t any more “pure” in those days. This fascination with that period does provide excellent insight into what the RPers actual problems are though.

Women were more “faithful” back then because of three main factors:

1) Women were financially wholly dependent on their husbands. Little job opportunities for women and once you had children those opportunities dropped even further.

2) Divorce was almost impossible to get if a woman was requesting it

3) Domestic violence laws were a complete joke. Essentially the only way that a man was even going to jail was if he hospitalized the wife. Anything short of that such as bruising, black eyes etc, was totally acceptable.

Remember when you hear these guys rally against “feminism” and long for “the way things used to be” These are the things they’re fighting against, specifically.

Mh882130 · 2022-01-08T07:54:17+00:00

If you want to understand an era, read it’s creative literature especially plays.

Tennessee Williams arguably one of the greatest playwrights of that time wrote very realistic portrayals of people in the 50s.

Another playwright and whose wife actually taught me in Theatre school was David French’s plays specifically his Mercer play leaving home which is another realistic portrayal of 1950’s only in Canada.

partyorca · 2022-01-08T15:16:57+00:00

My grandmothers and great grandmothers, happily married young and to the same man for their entire lives, had always worked.

It’s not women in the workforce making you po’, guys. It’s the rich at the top hovering up the surplus from any gains in productivity over the last 40 years.

UnitedIntroduction48 · 2022-01-09T03:46:36+00:00

Rpers will either say the milkman gave housewives babies that the husbands raised or women acted like women depending on which way the wind blows. They just say whatever is convenient so none of it makes sense

Some_Garbage_4049 · 2022-01-08T19:50:20+00:00

50s were followed by the 60s

Tostitos153 · 2022-01-09T21:01:39+00:00

Dude most guys who are talking about “traditional women” and referring to the 1950’s as “the good old days” were still in their cribs in the 90s lol no perspective or experience whatsoever.

Title	Did it even exist?
Author	castion12
Upvotes	11
Comments	17
Date	January 8, 2022 5:19 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/rys8fy/did_it_even_exist/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/did-it-even-exist.1094038 https://theredarchive.com/post/1094038

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