pageTracker._trackPageview(); my mum used to say China, Im sure adults used used a variety of countries! In the 1950s, America underwent some major changes in the political and economic spheres, which in turn were responsible for its social makeover. For contemporary children, it may be difficult to imagine kids having fun in the 1950s. Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act in 1994, signed by President Bill Clinton. The school's authority was backed up in the home, and a child who misbehaved at school would often be subject to further consequences from his parents. Too many cooks spoil the broth.etc. They helped around the house, wore dresses and skirts, and were taught to be deferential. Pranks just got a whole lot easier with these clever and witty texts. My mum found them entertaining and enjoyed reading them to us and telling us about how Victorian children were brought up. At the same time, most children were too busy helping their families survive to express the same type of defiance kids often do today. The gruesome picture above is especially for my sister who still has both her thumbs! 1. A healthy dose of discipline and structure and a general respect toward society are all important lessons we can take from the discipline of the 1950s. 6. Family became a powerful unit, efficient enough to subdue the demons of war that were haunting the common man. While domestic corporal punishment is illegal in more than 50 countries around the world, thats not the case in America, where 17 states still allow corporal punishment in their public schools. But you're far from alone. Even though the parents of the 50s were trustful when it came to providing independence-oriented freedoms, they were more likely than modern moms and dads to dictate and maintain the rules. In fact, children were often meant to be "seen but not heard." Little girls were expected to be "nice." Instead of an egalitarian family style in which everyone gets a vote, parents during this time were directive. As children, their proliferation drove the construction of new schools and suburbs. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a census among eyewitness accounts of what it was like to be a child in the '50s that discipline produced a greater fear of authority than what exists today. Punishments or rewards were then allotted accordingly. His mother came from an affluent background and raised six children . As parents struggled to feed their families, little thought was given to disobedient children. 3. This new hierarchy of adults meant the principal, not the teacher, started to dole out discipline. Teachers wanted to focus on teaching, not behavior problems. Some educators have believed in harsh discipline methods like corporal punishment, suspension or expulsion. He encouraged parents to be reasonable, consistent, open, and friendly with their kids not regimented or authoritative. From "rod and reproof" to trusting in children. Suburbs were free, social, friendly, and family-oriented. If you gave a child a clip round the ear nowadays, they'd probably sue you and put you up in front of the European Equal Rights Committee or something similar! During the 1950s, most parents tried, unsuccessfully, to make their children stop listening to Rock-and-Roll because they believed it caused juvenile delinquency and knew it challenged social and racial barriers. Usher in the warmer weather with a cute letter board quote that's blooming with fresh spring flair. There was also the crippling Polio virus. After the Great Depression and WWII devastation, it was a time when people sought to create a peaceful and prosperous society. /* 160x90,50s60s */ In fact, you would usually not even bother asking, in the 50's most would eat as a family and leave the Table together. Today, many look back at the '50s and see the corporal punishments that adults inflicted on children as unnecessary and unfair. document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', function() { It is redolent of eras in the past where the fathers were the absolute head of their households and were quite remote and strict. There are children starving in . My elbow was broken. 4. While psychology did not emerge as a separate discipline until the late 1800s, its earliest history can be traced back to the time of the early Greeks. Dads spent less than 20 minutes with their children. At School, every Teacher was referred to as 'Sir' or 'Madam' and upon entry into the Classroom, everyone would stand and unanimously say "Good morning Sir". Thankfully, though, medical advances and reduced social stigma surrounding mental health issues allowed for treatment to become both more focused and more widespread. All rights reserved. Between 1890 and 1918, high school enrollment increased by 711 percent. Nowadays, students are often trying to keep their iPhones hidden under their slim desks, hoping the teacher doesn't catch them (or, the teacher is perfectly fine with them texting and doesn't really care). Things we never even dreamed of in the 1950s. For example, the creation of antipsychotic drugs and advancements in health care caused the number of mentally ill patients institutionalized at public hospitals to decrease by 92 percent from 1955 to 1994, according to a report from Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. The same aunt later locked him in his room to punish him for hitting her own child (who was biting Augustus). There are many options children in abusive situations have in order to better their lives. Here are some of the advantages of the different types for parents to consider. In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Goss v. Lopez that schools could not suspend a student without a hearing. Her articles have appeared in "Pittsburgh Parent Magazine" and the website PBS Parents. Even though the parents of the 50s were trustful when it came to providing independence-oriented freedoms . And, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of teens and tweens diagnosed with anxiety or depression rose recently, from 5.4 percent in 2003 to 8.4 percent in 2012; and more than 78 percent of those diagnosed with depression were able to receive treatment. Schoolroom discipline in the 1930s was abrupt and absolute. In the 21st century, moms are able to do it all. Sure, moms and dads today still deal with changing diapers, taming temper tantrums, and getting grape juice stains out of white shirts, but they also have to cope with cyberbullying and the various threats to their children that seem to loom at every corner. This new form of music gave teens an outlet for their rebellious energy. You would also offer them your place in a Queue when alighting a Bus. In contrast, the man was the "breadwinner." For example, a grade school-aged child may have walked to school by herself or gone out to play in the neighborhood on the weekends with no adult supervision. If anyone objects to my use of any image, please contact me and it will be removed. In the 1960s, dads seldom pitched in around the house. "School would train children how to behave, how to be members of society, be good citizens, be responsible," Kafka said. Parenting trends come and go, and they're usually a good reflection of the society around them. So, the stereotypical nuclear family of the 1950s consisted of an economically stable family made up of a father, mother, and two or three children. He once knocked me down and threatened me with a stick. Children's mental health issues were taken less seriously. Opening the door for someone, especially a woman or an adult, was necessary, as was letting her exit before the child did so. In the 1930s, two parenting experts brought the idea of positive discipline to the United States from Vienna, where they had theorized and tested it 1. Seventy years ago, moms were younger and they worked far less. //-->. document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); Teenagers with their own income, coupled with an allowance, were free to buy pretty much what they wanted, and a serious escalation of advertising aimed at teenagers began. Among the group that grew up in the 1950s, approximately 40 percent of respondents said that they were able to walk to school alone starting in just 2nd and 3rd grade. The mother was arrested for this, but whats really remarkable is how many people see her on her way out and do nothing to stop her. Though the fundamentals are still the same, parenting has changed quite a bit in the past 70 or so years. In most contexts, this intrinsic helplessness motivates the protective instincts even of adults who arent related to the child. 10. Heres Augustus Hare, in 1896, remembering a punishment he was subjected to by a maiden aunt when he was around five years old: The most delicious puddings were talked of, -dilated on- until I became, not greedy, but exceedingly curious about them. Few husbands spent "quality" time with their children or helped around the house. "Teachers wanted discipline to be put in their contracts to be very clear what they were responsible for," Kafka said. My sister was a confirmed suck-a-thumb and was both horrified by and strangely drawn to the picture of the severed thumbs! Its worth remembering that our parents had been brought up by parents who had Victorian parents and some of the rigid expectations of children from that time were passed down through the generations. But by 2012, dads were clocking an average of 59 minutes of quality time with their kids. xhr.open('POST', 'https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', true); Physical punishment was a common way of disciplining children in New Zealand. Children were expected to be quiet and well-behaved at school. Daily care activities, discipline and communication with children was the woman's job. Kids walked to school together and had next door best friends. There was a greater consensus that good manners were more important in society back then and this impacted how people disciplined their children. Children had to stand up on any occasion when an adult would enter the room, even if that adult was the child's parent. physical punishment could bring salvation to children. Children were expected to be quiet and well-behaved at school. Education reformer Horace Mann called it "a relic of barbarism" and argued that students should learn how to monitor their own behaviors. Generally, parents were permissive and wanted their kids to have a more fun and comfortable childhood than they'd had during the war effort of WWII. Child-rearing practices of the past were more than abusive; they were flat-out insane by modern standards. A child would be taught to say, "I would like," and was taught never to say the words, "I want." ), No TV, no Games Consoles. var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); The average household had gone from making $2,300 a year to making just $1,500, according to the University of Houston's Digital History, and by 1932 more than 12.5 million people were out of work. 2020 by kidsofthe50sand60s in 1950s, children, families, Uncategorized Tagged 1950s, 1960s, Books, . Teachers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, adults in story books they all dished them out. "The truth of the matter is that none of these changes will achieve what we want unless schools are safe and ordely places where teachers can teach and students can learn," he wrote. I dont remember my parents saying it but older relatives would come out with it if they thought the children were talking to much or just annoying them. Studies have shown that the most effective way to foster healthy relationships with children and give them the ability to learn and utilize self-control is through positive discipline. As always, I acknowledge that I have sourced my images from the Internet and made efforts to copy only those which are marked as available for re-use. According to the book No More Perfect Kids: Love Your Kids for Who They Are, positive discipline is based on minimizing the childs frustrations and therefore reducing misbehavior rather than giving punishments. Girls were not groomed or encouraged to attend college, and if their parents did provide them with higher education, it was with the expectation that they'd meet a suitable husband and have a career they could fall back on. } The education system as a whole buried that message for centuries. According to data from the Pew Research Center, the average mom in 2016 spent 25 hours a week on paid work, up from 8 hours a week in 1965. How Does Family Structure Impact Language Development? Often when we talk about shaming, we talk about the obvious forms: spanking or other . Children were precious assets and the center of the family. They've been forced to shutter over safety hazards. If you didn't you'd get ticked off for sure. Children are a blessing, so says the sage, but youd never know that by watching the way adults have treated kids for centuries. They talked on the family phone for hours, kept diaries, rode their bikes, played games, watched TV, had sleepovers and dance parties. The Children Act 2004, which pushes forward the main proposals of the green paper - electronic children's files; children's directors; and a children's commissioner - is passed by parliament. var sc_invisible=0; Wiley Online Library: Journal of Marriage and Family: Have Authoritarian Parenting Practices and Roles Changed in the Last 50 Years? 8 ^8 8 start superscript, 8, end superscript As adults, they gave birth to an "echo boom" generation of children, a smaller but still significant generation of . Most left school much earlier, with many starting work at 14, and far fewer people had the chance to go on to further education. It is best write how things were back in the 1950's by just giving examples and the 'rules' which existed, most of which are long forgotten I'm afraid. A 50-year study of Swedish families showed that from 1958 to 2011, parenting roles changed significantly, shifting to more equal parenting, according to the Journal of Marriage and Family 2. In the 1950s, life got a lot easier for most Canadians, with one exception: the housewife. There were bomb and fallout shelters, and weekly "Duck-and-Cover" drills that required students to duck under their desks and cover their heads in preparation for what seemed to them an inevitable atomic attack. Many people, especially those under the age of around 45 will often hear 'us oldens' say "If I'd have spoken to my parents like that, I'd have got a clip round the ear". Theres no pudding until your plate is empty/ youve eaten your greens. Many families lived close together, and there were all sorts of group social activities. They should tell their children they were special, feed them when they were hungry, put them to bed when they were tired, and discipline them with words rather than corporal punishment. Instead, disciplining, at any age, is about correcting and guiding him toward more appropriate behavior. . By the way, those last two totally contradict each other which always puzzled me when I was younger! "The theory was that by providing severe consequences to minor infractions, it would send a message to students that disruptive behavior was unacceptable," said Russell Skiba, professor of educational psychology at Indiana University. by Lucy McGregor / in Lifestyle. It was quite common for a disruptive child to be rapped over the knuckles, on the . Today, it remains legal in 19 states. Somewhat paradoxically, it involved a high level of trust granted from parent to child along with the simultaneous enforcement of a rigid, top down rule structure. So, the stereotypical nuclear family of the 1950s consisted of an economically stable family made up of a father, mother, and two or three children. Make parenting easier and get more out of every day with a few smart strategies. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. But in 2011, the average father spent 7 hours on child care and 10 hours on housework, indicating a much more equal division of responsibilities. I grew up in the countryside in the 1950's and 1960's. What do you want to be when you grow up? Parents wanted their children to have better lives than they had had and did everything possible to make life "good" for their kids and grow them into successful adults. . The traditional one-room schoolhouse gave way to multiple, stratified classrooms and a principal who oversaw them. Detention was given for many misdemeanours, and children were never meant to speak back. I bear the marks, and suffer pain from it to this day, and always shall as long as I live. It logically follows that we can choose to pick out the "good" parts about what it was like to be a child in the 1950s and avoid the "bad" parts and integrate them into what it means to be a child today. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a census among eyewitness accounts of what it was like to be a child in the '50s that discipline produced a greater fear of authority than what exists today. The science of child rearing was becoming popular at this time and new experts and published theories created a more dynamic, and confusing, environment for parents caught between listening to a pastor or following new child-rearing philosophies many of them spouting conflicting messages about how much permissiveness should be allowed versus how much discipline should be used. Had she only hit her child repeatedly, without leaving marks, she would have been on the right side of the law in all 50 states. Every morning, when entering the classroom, a teacher would be greeted with a chorus of "good morning sir" or "good morning madam." The general thinking was "spare the rod and spoil the child." for two days. Every morning, when entering the classroom, a teacher would be greeted with a chorus of "good morning sir" or "good morning madam." In the first half of the 20th century, having a happy home lifeand a few kidswas an integral part of the American Dream. I can remember this photo being taken (Can't remember what I did yesterday though! Children are driven from within themselves to grow, explore, experience, learn, and build relationships with other people, the latest edition of Baby and Child Care reads. Still, Hollywood also produced films like Them!, which was a 1954 cautionary tale about giant irradiated ants that fed into teenage fears about the Soviet menace and nuclear war. Take it from the Old Testament, strict corporal punishment has been a popular form of discipline for a long time. Although 1950s parents saw their teenagers behave in ways that shocked them, such as listening to rock-and-roll music, new risque dance moves, and their overall self-determining and defiant mindset, compared to 21st Century teens, these teens were extraordinarily innocent. In the 1940s and early 50s we were brought up and disciplined quite differently to the way that most children are today. Discipline at home in the 1930s was viewed purely in the form of punishment for bad behavior, according to Ted Johnson in his thesis on child-rearing practices up to the 1950s. These books were a recent memory for our parents. Mr. Grimes is an "old sour puss" who hates "confusion and disorder." His bratty students keep acting up, but the narrator explains that the kids' bad behavio. Stern words from our parents is usually all it took to keep the discipline in our homes.PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTSThanks for watching.My website http://southern. Many parents were so fearful of Polio that they volunteered their children to be experimented on as "Polio Pioneers.". 2023 LoveToKnow Media. Even in the Medieval era, an age that put heretics on the rack and subjected adulterous women to breast rippers (yes, thats the technical title), physical harm to children was far more controversial than violence towards adults. Boarding schools deliberately underfed children on the theory that it was healthy to get up from a meal feeling as hungry as when they sat down (also, its cheaper), and the general lack of understanding of human psychology allowed just about any weirdo to work out his or her pet theories on the red, welted backsides of children. When the weather was nice, neighbors gathered in one back yard or another to cook, eat, and chat. Benjamin Spock's "Baby and Child Care," which was first published in 1946, greatly influenced how children should be raised. Children had to say "please" and "thank you," and if they didn't use these words correctly, they would be informed by adults that they were being rude. So make sure to leave this parenting advice in the past because we all know spanking is not a good way to discipline your children. They were put on the table before me, and then just as I was going to eat some of them, they were snatched away, and I was told to get up and carry them off to some poor person in the village. or no parental guidance and discipline caused by World War II, with fathers off to war, mothers in the work force, and children left to fend for themselves, contributed to adolescent problems. However, with a swelling teenage consumer market, jukebox operators, radio stations, and deejays played to their teen listeners' tastes, and record stores stocked up on 45 RPM recordings of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and more. When wearing a hat, it would be suitable etiquette to take it off when going indoors, into a shop or when talking to a lady on the street. Read on to discover what parenting was like in the 1950s. There is a rich history of parents ripping their hair out over their children's less-than-desirable behavior. When Dr. Spock's book Baby and Child . Most states dont even define what parental physical abuse consists of, and Delawares rule against closed-fist punchesinflicted, youll remember, by an adult on a childis actually unusual. In fact, children were often meant to be "seen but not heard." Benjamin Spock's "Baby and Child Care," which was first published in 1946, greatly influenced how children should be raised. At length le grand moment arrived. When any adult, excepting your Parents, entered the Room, you would stand up. However, the suburbs also reflected socioeconomic and racial homogeneity. That started to change around the turn of the century. They were also wildly popular and considered just one of those things, which makes you wonder what sort of things were doing to kids today that will horrify those kids grandchildren. Discipline was strict in schools, as boys got a caning and girls got slapped on the knuckles with a ruler. Wed have been glad of that when food was rationed. Of course, Augustus Hare was a privileged lad from a good family. All Rights Reserved. She has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Connecticut. Children had to say "please" and "thank you," and if they didnt use these words correctly, they would be informed by adults that they were being rude. The general thinking was "spare the rod and spoil the child." In the aftermath of WWII's significant instability came the 1950s, suburbia, and the dream of a "picture-perfect" family. Not only were there were no video games, even children's television programming operated at a bare minimum, with the medium still in its infancy at that time. Psychology Today: Why Have Trustful Parenting and Children's Freedom Declined? By the early 1900s, some childrearing experts proposed new methods of pressuring children into good behavior. One method was called the scorecard, posted in the childs home and gold stars or black marks were placed where it said Rising on time, Cleaning up room, Writing to Grandma, and other tasks and duties (sound familiar?). Students knelt on sharp objects or stood for long periods of time. The techniques are based on treating children with more respect than was commonly seen in that era and focused on parental education in the ways of child rearing to better prepare parents for the sociological impact of their discipline techniques. Just as it isnt unusual to see three people smoking up the inside of a car in a public parking lot, so it also happens that parents will sometimes slap or swat their children in front of other people. Proverbs 29:15 offers parenting advice in the form of, the rod and reproof which it says give wisdom while a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Yes, strict discipline methods were generally accepted for millennia, but there is history of dissent that is just as deep. Discipline isnt, by definition, a bad thing. Recent research has cast doubt on the supposed trend of rising juvenile crime at the time, but standardized rules regulating school discipline soon followed. The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s triggered a renewed fear of gang violence and greater efforts to punish criminals both inside and outside of schools.