What was 1950s like

Housework was much more difficult, as for example people did their washing by hand, instead of in a machine, and with refrigerators being a luxury item for most people, food had to be bought daily.

It was less common for married women to work and many took on the childcare and housework, while their husbands went to work. The film clip below from the Yorkshire Film Archive shows the Watkins family having tea at home in Yorkshire in the early s. It helps to give us an insight into how people lived in this period and what they did in their spare time.

Tea with the Watkins Family in the s. They thought they would See: Women cooking the tea, with food like cake, jam and meat. The men wearing suits are coming home from work, and tuning in the radio.

A girl is in the garden picking flowers. Hear: The family having a conversation. The sound of the radio and the clock ticking. The children then used information they had collected from the video, plus other research about life in the s to write a description of a child from the s. The baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. The G. Bill subsidized low-cost mortgages for returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in the city.

In fact, the booms of the s had a particularly confining effect on many American women. A growing group of Americans spoke out against inequality and injustice during the s.

African Americans had been fighting against racial discrimination for centuries; during the s, however, the struggle against racism and segregation entered the mainstream of American life. For example, in , in the landmark Brown v. Many Southern whites resisted the Brown ruling. Despite these efforts, a new movement was born. In December , a Montgomery activist named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white person.

The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union , known as the Cold War , was another defining element of the s. This idea shaped American foreign policy for decades.

It shaped domestic policy as well. In the s, televisions became something the average family could afford, and by 4. Elvis Presley. Sam Cooke. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. Buddy Holly. People swayed to The Platters and The Drifters. Music marketing, changed, too: For the first time, music began to target youth. On February 3, , American musicians Buddy Holly. Ritchie Valens and J. The booming prosperity of the s helped to create a widespread sense of stability, contentment and consensus in the United States.

However, that consensus was a fragile one, and it splintered for good during the tumultuous s. The Elvic Oracle. The New Yorker. Rolling Stone. The Day The Music Died. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Novak. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.