Dwight D. Eisenhower
THE POSTWAR BOOM
THE AMERICAN DREAM
IN THE 1950S
1950s Economy
a. Post-war spending trends
continued into the 1950s
b. Americans invested in items based
around the home and family life
c. The American consumer was
praised as a patriotic citizen –
one who contributed to the
overall success of the American
way of life
Consumerism
Westinghouse Refrigerator
Example of 1950s Consumerism
d. Defense spending accounted for half
of the federal budget
e. Nation’s first nuclear power plant
opened in 1957 – the chemical and
electronics industry boomed
f. Beneath this widespread prosperity,
poverty was becoming more
prevalent and the gap between rich
and poor widened (more than 1/5
lived below the poverty line)
THE SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE
a. After WWII, returning vets
faced a severe housing
shortage
b. In response to the crisis,
developers used assemblyline methods to massproduce houses
c. Developer William Levitt
bragged that his company
could build a home in 16
minutes for $7,000
d. Suburbs were born
With the help of the GI Bill,
many veterans moved into
suburbs
THE SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE
The American Dream complete with
a white picket fence
e. Most Americans worked
in cities, but fewer and
fewer of them lived there
f. New highways and the
affordability of cars and
gasoline made
commuting possible
g. Of the 13 million homes
built in the 1950s, 85%
were built in suburbs
h. For many, the suburbs
were the American
Dream
Big Business and Labor Unions
a. Big business flourished in the 1950s
– less than .05% of American
corporations controlled more than half
of the nation’s corporate wealth
b. Advances in science and technology
decreased the amount of labor
necessary for industry and agriculture
to be financially successful which led
to consolidation of industry and
agriculture into large corporations
c. Unions consolidated as
well – AFL and CIO
merged in 1955
d. Prosperity meant high
wages and few labor
complaints – depriving
unions of the needed
membership
Affluent Society
a. Term coined by John Kenneth
Galbraith in The Affluent Society
(1958)
b. Ironic term that described the
1950s U.S. as rich in the private
resources but poor in public ones
because of misplaced priority on
increasing production of trivial
consumer goods
John Kenneth Galbraith
c. Galbraith argued the U.S. should
shift resources to improve
schools, the infrastructure, and
social services
d. Galbraith will influence social
reform efforts of the 1960s
e. The term Affluent Society has
lost its original ironic meaning
– today it is used to indicate
widespread prosperity
Baby Boom and the Overall Impact
a. Prosperity led Americans to start
families earlier and have more
children
b. Birth rate grew steadily from 1950 to
its peak in 1957
c. U.S. population grew from 150 million
to about 180 million during the 1950s
d. Baby boomers represent the largest
generation in the nation’s history
What are the official years of the Baby
Boom Generation?
1946 - 1964 saw a marked increase in the number
How did the birthrate rise and fall
during the baby boom years in the
US?
1940
2,559,000 births per year
1946
3,311,000 births per year
1955
4,097,000 births per year
1957
4,300,000 births per year
1964
4,027,000 births per year
of births in North America.
1957  1 baby born every 7 seconds
1974
3,160,000 births per year
It seems to me that every other young housewife I see is pregnant.
-- British visitor to America, 1958
WHAT IT WILL MEAN TO YOU
Your generation will be supporting an increasingly
aging American population
WHY SO MANY BABIES?
Why did the baby boom
occur when it did?
a. Husbands returning from
war
b. Decreasing marriage age
c. Desirability of large
families
d. Confidence in economy
e. Advances in medicine
ADVANCES IN MEDICINE
AND CHILDCARE
a. Advances in the
treatment of
childhood
diseases included
drugs to combat
typhoid fever and
polio (Jonas Salk)
Dr. Salk was instrumental in
the eradication of polio
DR. SPOCK
ADVISES PARENTS
Dr. Spock’s book sold 10
million copies in the 1950s
a. Many parents raised
their children according
to the guidelines of
pediatrician Dr.
Benjamin Spock
b. He thought children
should be allowed to
express themselves and
parents should never
physically punish their
kids
c. Dr. Benjamin
Spock author
of Baby and
Child Care
(1946)
suggested
mothers devote
themselves to
the fulltime
care of their
children
Baby Boom
Dr. Benjamin Spock
and the Anderson
Quintuplets
d. Popular culture depicted marriage
and taking care of the family as
the primary goal of the American
woman
e. Religious messages began to merge
into popular culture – during the
1950s Congress added “under God”
to the Pledge of Allegiance
(due to the fight against communism)
Fads of the Baby Boomers
Hula Hoops
Frozen Foods
Poodle Skirts and Saddle Shoes
What celebrity deaths have most
affected the Baby Boomers?
Panty Raids
John F. Kennedy
Barbie and GI Joe Dolls
Bikinis
Marilyn Monroe
Frisbees
Martin Luther King
Yo-yos
John Lennon
Ouija Boards
Dune Buggies
Consumer Culture - Television
a. TV dominated American culture
during the 1950s – only 6 TV
stations broadcast in 1946 and
by 1956, 442 stations were
operating
b. 7 million TV sets were sold in 1951
c. TV portrayed a cookie-cutter
stereotyped image of happy,
prosperous Americans
POPULAR CULTURE
d. A new era of
mass media led
by television
emerged in the
1950s
e. In 1948, only 9%
of homes had T.V
f. In 1950, 55% of
homes had T.V.
g. By 1960, 90% of
American homes
had T.V.
h. TV brought
messages of
conformity
and
consumerism
i. TV produced
fads for the
hula hoop and
Davy
Crockett’s
coonskin cap
Despite their success, some workers questioned whether
pursuing the American dream exacted too high a price, as
conformity replaced individuality
THE GOLDEN AGE
OF TELEVISION
J. The 1950s was
known as the
“Golden Age of
Television”
k. Comedies were
the main
attraction as
Milton Berle,
Lucille Ball and
Desi Arnaz were
very popular
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball
starred in I Love Lucy
TELEVISION EXPERIMENTS
WITH VARIOUS FORMATS
l. Television innovations
like on-the-scenenews reporting,
interviews, westerns
and sporting events
offered the viewer a
variety of shows
m. Kids’ shows like The
Howdy Doody Show
and The Mickey Mouse
Club were extremely
popular
TV ADS, TV GUIDES AND TV
DINNERS EXPAND
n. TV advertising soared from $170 million in 1950 to
nearly $2 billion in 1960
o. TV Guide magazine quickly became the best selling
magazine
p. Frozen TV dinners were introduced in 1954 – these
complete ready-to-heat meals on disposable aluminum
trays made it easy for people to eat without missing
their favorite shows
A SUBCULTURE EMERGES
a. Although mass
media and
television were
wildly popular in
the 1950s,
dissenting voices
emerged
b. The “Beat
Movement” in
literature and rock
n’ roll clashed with
tidy suburban
views of life
BEATNIKS FOLLOW OWN PATH
Beatniks often performed poetry
or music in coffeehouses or bars
c. Centered in San
Francisco, L.A. and
New York’s Greenwich
Village, the Beat
Movement expressed
social nonconformity
d. Followers, called
“beatniks”, tended to
shun work and sought
understanding
through Zen Buddhism,
music, and sometimes
drugs
MUSIC IN THE 1950s
a. Musicians in the
1950s added
electronic instruments
to traditional blues
music, creating
rhythm and blues
b. Cleveland DJ Alan
Freed was the first to
play this music in
1951– he called it
“rock and roll”
FREED
ROCK N’ ROLL
c. In the early and mid-fifties, Richard
Penniman, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and
the Comets, and especially Elvis Presley
brought rock and roll to the forefront
d. The driving rhythm and lyrics
featuring love, cars,
and problems
of being
young --captivated
teenagers
across the
country
THE KING OF ROCK AND
ROLL
e. Elvis Presley’s
rebellious style
captured young
audiences
f. Girls screamed
and fainted,
and boys tried
to imitate him
Consumer Culture -Rock-nRoll
g. Elvis Presley epitomized
rock-n-roll of the 1950s
h. Born in Tupelo, MS in 1935
i. Presley produced 14
consecutive records between
1956 and 1958 – each sold
over a million copies
THE AUTOMOBILE CULTURE
a. After the rationing of WWII,
inexpensive and plentiful fuel and easy
credit led many to buy cars
b. By 1960, over 60 million Americans
owned autos
INTERSTATE HIGHWAY ACT 1956
a. In 1956 Ike
authorized a
nationwide
highway
network –
41,000 miles
of road
linking
America
THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY
SYSTEM
b. “Automania” spurred
the construction of
roads linking major
cities while
connecting schools,
shopping centers and
workplaces to
residential suburbs
IMPACT OF THE
HIGHWAY
Trucking is the #1 means of
moving cargo in the United
States today
c. The Interstate
Highway system
resulted in:
1. More trucking
2. Less railroad
3. More suburbs,
further away
HIGHWAYS
“HOMOGENIZE” AMERICA
d. Another effect of the
highway system was
that the scenery of
America began to
look the same
e. Restaurants, motels,
highway billboards,
gas stations, etc. all
began to look similar
f. The nation had
become
“homogenized”
Anytown, USA
“Our new roads, with their
ancillaries, the motels, filling
stations, and restaurants
advertising eats, have made it
possible for you to drive from
Brooklyn to Los Angeles without a
change of diet, scenery, or culture.”
John Keats, The Insolent Chariots
1958
Duck and Cover
a. Fears of nuclear attacks
from the Soviets prompted
a new social phenomenon
b. Americans began building
bomb shelters or fallout
shelters
c. U.S.
Government
produced
Duck and
Cover (1951)
as a public
awareness
campaign to
illustrate that
nuclear
attacks could
occur at
anytime
d. School
children
helped in making
the project – the
cartoon
character “Bert
the Turtle” was
used as the
subject of
practicing duck
and cover tactics