What was the last 1T like?

[Eric the Green]

(03-16-2022, 03:03 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(03-16-2022, 11:03 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-16-2022, 12:11 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: Like most millennials, I clash a bit with boomers over a few issues, but at the same time, from what I do know about the immediate post war period...it's hard not to empathize a little. When you consider that societal values tend to spawn most intensely in a 2T, and that Civics tend to pass on values primarily from the Idealist midlifers around when they were growing up, it means not only strongly enforced conformity, but growing up with values originating 3 turnings (like 60-70 years) ago. 

So I guess the question is: what was it like back then? Did you like it better then? Better now? In what ways did you feel constrained?

I noted Eric's response to this, and share much of it.  I'll try to stick to the 1T.

It was safe and wide open at the same time.  Even as a preteen, I could leave home on a sunny summer morning, and not be expected back before lunch; leave again and return for dinner.  Where I went and what I did was pretty much on the honor system, though stay at home moms all tended to watch-out for children in general.  On the other hand, by my teen years, I noted the lack of openness.  Sex? Sh-h-h-h, not discussed except as a guide to how babies were made -- and none to graphically.  We had many girls get pregnant due to lack of what to do to prevent it, and lack of available birth control in any case.  TV, radio and recorded music were clean as a whistle.  Too sanitary; too boring!

And so began the cycle of parenting troubles of which Gen X was the recipient. This is an interesting point from my perspective, because it means we need to take some of the blame off of boomers and place in onto the Silent and GI for not preparing young boomers of childbearing years with the tools to handle things responsibly. As it takes a village to raise a child (one of the few things HRC said which I wholeheartedly agree with), so too must the village as a whole be blamed when negligence in child rearing occurs.

Since the pill and greater openness arrived at least by the mid-1960s, what David mentioned about pregnancy and birth control applies most to the older cohort of boomers such as himself who were teenagers during the late 1T, as well as to Silents and GIs before them. Even the mid-range boomers like me who reached their teen years in the 2T and then child-bearing and marriage age soon after (although I myself did not do those) had more advantages in these regards. And once the 2T started, the boring music, TV and radio went away in a flash. In spite of growing up in the late 1T, the oldest boomers however emerged as better educated, more optimistic, and more "well-bred" and "well behaved" and less prone to youth problems than the younger ones, and the best of them were good leaders.