Raising Kids In 1950s Households Vs. Today's

The Hartford Courant ^ | May 8, 2013 | John Rosemond

[OldPossum]

Thanks for post #47. It made me remember listening to the radio at night with my parents and sister in the late ‘40s. I can remember listening to The Jack Benny Show, Amos ‘n Andy, and The Green Hornet, among others.

Darn, those were good days!

[SamAdams76]

All this yakety-yak about how life was so much better in the 1950s than now...

Well just this week, I was in a suburb of Chicago and we wanted to find a good place to eat. So we opened the "Local" app on our smartphone and immediately 40-50 restaurants popped up in our local area. We chose a German restaurant based on the ratings and headed over there - just 2.3 miles away. We gorged on beer, wienerschnitzel and sauerkraut. Who would have known such a German restaurant was so close by back in the 1950s?

That alone is reason enough not to go back to the 1950s.

[Last Dakotan]

The former Warner & Swasey machine tool plant in Cleveland. We still have W&S lathes running in our facility.

America once had industry.

[nascarnation]

The good old days
Fisher Body
Euclid Road Machinery
Standard Oil refinery
US Steel, LTV, J&L, Republic
Towmotor

and dozens more I can’t remember

[Owl558]

“Uh, Rock ‘n Roll?”

LOL, I understand Plato was quite the lead guitar.

[Nea Wood]

I've got a story that beats that. My friend lived right across the street from her son's middle school. She drove him to school...across the street! Only dorks walked to school, you see, so the son demanded she drive him, and she did.

[Outership]

The days before leftism were so much better. The 50s were all right, but the golden age of America was the time before the government “schooling” system.

Pre 1900s, everyone home schooled. What you believed was directly passed to your children. Everyone back then was Christian, so morals were the most important subject of study.

Wives stayed in the home and raised the little ones to the age they could run outside on their own. Preteen daughters learned cooking, tailoring, child raising, housekeeping, and even the arts. Preteen boys were taught the family business or sent to a neighbor’s for apprenticeship. They would be taught something they were guaranteed to be able to make a living at. They would be taught real skills like carpentry, plumbing, construction (house or ship), shopkeeping, farming, animal husbandry, tin smiting, coopering, fishing, pharmacy, candle making, the list goes on and on. They would have been able to actually create something that others would pay them for. Or they would learn the merchant skills. Everyone back then was taught how to read so that the family could read the Bible together.

A preteen boy could also join the Navy and by his teens might even make Lieutenant. He would have learned navigation, mathematics, geography, and languages that teens today could never be able to learn. He would also have learned and probably even participated in naval warfare (maybe even as an acting captain), something that no teen today could ever be able to do.

By 15, men (for they were adults at 12 in those days) were established in their trade enough to be able to afford a home and marriage. And the 15 year old women were ready for them. The goal was to have as many children as they could. It was common to see 12 or more children per family. And you could have living great great grandparents, because they would be the age today’s grandparents are. Having a large number of grown and established children meant that if anyone in the family needed something, they only needed to call on a relative. Since the whole family lived in the same county, family was always there for each other. If your family was large enough, the county might even have been named after you!

But most of all women and men were taught impeccable morals. These morals were passed onto their children by mere example, such was their strength. People had morality, dignity, self control, honor, trustworthiness, responsibility, respect, integrity, generosity, and wisdom. They dressed up for each other and were polite and kind to each other. They kept their word even unto death if necessary. The most important thing was family and reputation.

Today’s world is the exact opposite. Such is the price of giving your children up to the state to raise.