Although I enjoyed Pleasantville, I'm not sure it's going to help your novel, since it filters the 50s through a modern lens. You might do better to put movies and TV from the 50s in your Netflix queue. (I recommend I Love Lucy for starters--it's set in New York, too, and until well into the series the couple is childless.)
Several years ago there was a schmaltzy "Remember the Good Old Days" email making the rounds. I wrote this reply and sent it to those who'd shared their unoriginal warm fuzzies and longed for those days to return.
Maybe you’re among the thousands of Boomers who’s received the nostalgic remember-when e-mail glorifying a simpler time. While we all appreciate the warm fuzzies of childhood memories, let us also remember when...
...the word “cancer” was a death sentence;
...the Catholic church held services in a language almost none of the believers could understand;
...you heard the words n*gger, sp*c, gr*aser, sp**k, and k*ke every day, in conversation and in racial jokes and epithets, and thought nothing of it;
...birth control was entirely the man’s responsibility—and he often had to ask the pharmacist to purchase condoms;
...women in abusive home situations were counseled to return after the police gave him a good talking-to (since hardly any shelters existed for battered women and their children);
...there were no television programs that originated anywhere but New York City, and therefore no shows which resembled the lives of most Americans;
...game shows asked questions that required knowledge (and some of the shows were rigged);
...girls who were interested in medicine could only be nurses;
...the closest thing to “fast food” was reheated left-overs;
...hardly anyplace sold “pizza pie” and of the few, none delivered;
...black citizens were kept from registering and voting;
...most families owned a single car—and the husband took it to work daily, and drove wife and family where they needed to go evenings and weekends;
...TV was black and white and the ‘remote control’ was the nearest child available for channel changing;
...no specialty television stations aimed at a particular audience (Spanish-speaking, sports lovers, children) existed;
...a raped 15-year-old who found herself pregnant had two options: having a rapist’s baby, or having an illegal (and therefore unsafe) operation;
...virtually all clothing required ironing;
...the wearing of practical and durable blue jeans meant you were a farmer;
...bras pressed the breasts into cones;
...cars didn’t have seat belts and relatively minor accidents launched people through windshields face-first, assuming they weren’t impaled on the steering column;
...homosexuality was not only illegal but was unacceptable everywhere, and gay men and women sometimes killed themselves when their secret lives came to light;
...public schools included Christian religious instruction routinely, from Bible reading to prayer, and children of other beliefs were not excused nor their beliefs acknowledged;
...criminal suspects had no idea they were entitled to an attorney—for free;
...a promising Hispanic or Negro had almost no chance for financial aid in college, dooming him or her to jobs rather than a rewarding career;
...women wore girdles just about every day;
...everybody smoked, and very few public places didn’t permit smoking—smokers lit up in movie theaters, elevators, grocery stores, college classrooms, even church;
...people followed only four sports (football, hockey, basketball, baseball);
...men called their wives “the little woman” with straight faces;
...good Catholics didn’t even consider birth control and accepted more children than they could afford as God’s will;
...we knew very few sordid aspects about celebrities’ lives and thought their seeming glamour made them worthy objects of worship;
...with only a single income, taking the family to a mid-price restaurant was a special event;
...when a kid who couldn’t read was kept back a grade, sometimes repeatedly, despite the shame and his or her best efforts, because there was one way to teach, and if the child didn’t learn, he or she was at fault;
...women in Westerns were wasp-waisted, either whores or widowed ranch owners, both needing a man’s protection;
...kids and teenagers routinely made untraceable prank phone calls;
...styling your own hair involved sleeping on curlers;
...many of our favorite sexual practices were something decent people never, ever did;
...we kept our razors and changed the blades—and cut ourselves deeper and more often;
...you didn’t know anybody who looked Chinese or Mexican or Indian but talked and thought pretty much like anybody else;
...the best black music didn’t become a hit until a white artist recorded it;
...only Hispanics listened or danced to a Latin beat;
...the concept of judging someone by character while ignoring color was so revolutionary it frightened many people;
...somebody, usually the woman, had to wash dishes as many a three times each day;
...drying clothes meant lugging heavy baskets outdoors, stooping and stretching to hang each item on a clothesline, then hoping it didn’t rain—and made little allowance for mud underfoot, pregnancy or advanced years, kids and pets knocking down or dirtying the clean clothes hanging, winter, etc.
...the Mom who served hearty portions of red meat, potatoes mashed or scalloped with whole milk, butter, and plenty of salt, buttered vegetables, white-bread rolls with butter, and ice cream was largely responsible for Dad’s heart disease;
...the finest fighting forces in the free world relegated women who wanted to serve to hospitals and offices, and segregated soldiers of color;
...a significant portion of the people over 50 had full dentures which didn’t fit well;
...regardless of the day’s anticipated activites, from gardening to housework to nursing to supervising a playground, grown women rarely wore pants;
...Mexican, Italian, and Chinese food were unknown to most Americans;
...correspondence and major school papers were typed on a machine which did not permit invisible correction of errors;
...unless you had a ditto machine or mimeograph, carbon paper allowed you to make only four increasingly poor copies of any document;
...banks were open only from ten to three—good luck if your lunch hour at work was too short to let you get there during business hours;
...aging relatives unable to care for themselves lived with family, regardless of dementia, incontinence, or the need for round-the-clock care and supervision;
...the family car got only a dozen miles to the gallon, at best;
...you had to go out to enjoy high-quality ice cream;
...nobody you knew ate yogurt—and it was spelled ‘yoghurt’;
...there was no way to get cash in the middle of the night for an emergency;
...city gangs did not have handguns but made ‘zip guns’;
...you could not contact someone who was away from the telephone at home or work, or who was traveling;
...airmail cost extra;
...patients had little access to medical information about their own illnesses beyond what their doctors told them;
...a kid in your neighborhood had polio;
...nobody you knew would admit to having had, or even considering, an abortion--a dangerous procedure, since it might be performed by someone with only minimal qualifications under conditions far from sterile;
...you knew a kid whose dad beat him with a belt—all the time;
...unless you were rich, you shared a phone line with neighbors, and if they eavesdropped there wasn’t much you could do about it;
...cellophane “Scotch” tape was so shiny it always showed, and it yellowed after a few years;
...your mom, your aunts, your sister, even your grandma, might be the victim of an obscene phone call;
...men felt free to tell their wives how to dress and what to think, and most wives complied;
...bars and restaurants only had a few beers on tap;
...families whose dad (or mom) drank the welfare money went hungry, since food stamps didn’t exist;
...only jazz musicians and a few movie stars did drugs, not anybody you knew, even slightly;
...if your family included anyone who was mentally ill or disabled, they ‘went away’ to an institution and were not discussed outside the family;
...everyone assumed that all girls would grow up to be wives and mothers—and nothing else;
...black people sat in the back of the bus, drank from the filthy water fountain, and so on;
...couples remained in loveless or abusive relationships rather than divorce;
...few moms worked, unless they were widows. Single women were sometimes required to leave teaching jobs when they married, or once married, when they became pregnant;
...few kids were involved in any activity which was interracial or intercultural, from school or sports to scouting to worship--same as their parents.
Maryn, glad to live now, thank you
Her husband (who's loosely based on my husband) did remind her of why she didn't want to have children.
