The Myth of the Fifties: In his book called The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, Alan Petigny—professor of history at the University of Florida—challenges the stereotypical ideas that the 1950s was such a conservative period and dives deep into the true radical changes taking place in American life at the time. Petigny argues persuasively that the 1950s were not truly conservative. Unlike other revisionist accounts that lean heavily on anecdotes, this study is firmly rooted in statistics and serious research. Petigny discusses a variety of topics from sex to rock ‘n’ roll, from psychology to religion, and gives the reader a true empathic picture of an emerging way of thinking he calls 'The Permissive Turn'. In contrast to those who see the 1950s as essentially a conservative period and the 1960s as a time of rapid moral change, The Permissive Society points to the emergence of a liberalizing impulse during the Truman and Eisenhower years. During the 1950s, a traditionalist moral framework was beginning to give way to a more relaxed style of child-rearing, the loosening of sexual attitudes, and the increasing influence of modern psychology.
The era usually denoted as “the Fifties” generated a remarkable set of social indicators. For the one hundred years prior to 1941, the American marriage rate was in decline. The proportion of the adult population that was married also fell steadily, while the divorce rate began a seemingly inexorable rise; by 1910 (thanks largely to Nevada), the United States was the divorce capital of the world. Fertility also showed relentless decline, falling more than 50 percent among the native-born population. A nation dominated by freehold farmers became a land of sharecroppers and urban tenants. In political terms, conservative values and free markets gave way to secularism, progressivism, and moral individualism. Then came the 1941–65 period, “the Fifties,” and the marriage rate soared; the average age of first marriage fell to twenty for women, twenty-two for men.
By 1960, the proportion of adults, age forty, who were or had been married reached 96 percent, a record high. Even the divorce rate, after a postwar spike in 1946, declined for the next dozen years. Most notably, marital fertility climbed sharply, almost doubling by 1957 in the celebrated Baby Boom. At the same time, measures of income inequality (such as the Gini index) shrank as the numbers of the very rich and very poor fell while the great American middle class swelled. Undergirded by federal housing and mortgage insurance programs, a revolution in property ownership commenced. Between 1945 and 1960, the number of owner-occupied homes nearly doubled, restoring America as a land of property owners. Church membership soared, Sunday schools were bursting at the seams, and President Dwight Eisenhower beamed a comforting, genially conservative smile over the land. A budding youth culture was being fueled by rock ’n’ roll.
Petigny challenges in particular what he calls “the four great myths of the 1950s”: (1) the belief that religious piety was on the rise, seen in the popularity of Billy Graham and rising rates of church attendance; (2) the proposition that American sexual behavior was relatively stable during this time, with the sexual revolution arriving only in the 1960s; (3) the claim that the status of women was losing ground during this era of domesticity; and (4) the belief that the youth culture of this period represented a vigorous challenge to the values of the adult world. Instead, he argues that American values were going through a fundamental transition in these years, driven by the democratization of psychology, the “medicalization” of ailments such as alcoholism (formerly seen as moral sins), the emergence of a therapeutic theology in the churches, and the liberalization of child-rearing practices under the influence of Benjamin Spock and other sociologists.
In all this, Petigny sees “an inversion” of the Marxist understanding of the relation between ideas and the material world: “the ideological superstructure took precedence over the material base.” This change of values represented a permissive shift in American life, but one beginning in the 1940s, not the 1960s. He gives special emphasis to the human displacements that occurred during World War II: fifteen million young men into the military, and five million young women into the factories. This great mixing of young adults spawned massive changes in sexual relations, ranging from a rise in the proportion of premaritally conceived pregnancies among whites and blacks alike to the emergence of egalitarian “companionate” marriages.
Such an argument is not completely new. John Costello anticipated this dating of the start of the sexual revolution in his serious book, Virtue Under Fire (1985); so did Allan Sherman in his insightful Official History of the Sex Revolution (1972). In The Hearts of Men (1983), feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich also emphasized—as does Petigny—the significance of the founding of Playboy magazine in 1953 as a transformative challenge to traditional sexual ethics long before the first bra was burned in the 1960s. And Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound (1988) showed the complexity of husband-wife relations during the postwar years. The author notes “the decline and fall of original sin,” evidenced at the theological level in Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and also in the popular new psychology of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. By the mid-1950s, Petigny shows, Billy Graham was moving away from fundamentalism, moderating his message, and declaring his admiration for theological liberals such as Norman Peale and Reinhold Niebuhr. Meanwhile, both Protestant and Catholic clerics moved enthusiastically into a new form of pastoral counseling, shaped by Freudian psychoanalysis.
Petigny demonstrates keen insight into other contentious issues. He challenges, for instance, the common argument that the introduction of the birth control pill in the early 1960s launched the sexual revolution, showing evidence that the use of condoms and other forms of birth control was spreading well before the arrival of the Pill. Condoms and contraceptives began to fall under more scrutiny from the FDA, thus making them more readily available. Thus, the more liberal attitudes on sex were becoming more prevalent. As such, the 1950s closed out with the birth control pill, a stronger condom, and leading to cutting down STD rates. As a result, the US saw an uptick in single mothers. Petigny speaks of a “commoditization of sex” during the 1940s and 1950s, in the popular films and music of that era.
Petigny asserts, “During the 1960s, Americans were simply more willing to acknowledge the extracurricular activities of their youth than they had been during the previous decade.” The prevalence of out of wedlock birth “between 1940 and 1960,” as Petigny proclaims, “increased by 2.5 fold.” Such evidence suggests there was an increase in premarital sex, making apparent the drastic liberalization of social norms–particularly those dealing with sexual promiscuity–taking place before the 1960s. The increase of premarital sex in the 1950s makes evident that a “permissive turn” took place before the 1960s. The Youth Culture and Sex chapter talks about how the teens practiced “going steady” because “the greater intimacy of going steady facilitated higher level of sexual intercourse amongst the young.” Sexual promiscuity no longer branded a woman as undesirable wife material by a majority of the educated middle class, although these attitudes were not always reflected accurately by Hollywood (Splendor in the Grass). While the 1950’s is not credited for being a time of feminism it most definitely was. Petigny remarks: “Feminism in the 1950s was less a movement or ideology than a new sentiment or set of attitudes.”
In addition, Petigny mobilizes survey data to deny feminist complaints that American homes during this era rested on the systematic repression of women. Instead, most homes were based on “egalitarian” relationships. The number of working women climbed steadily during “the Fifties,” partly because of a Baby Boom–driven demand for teachers and nurses. Women made real political gains as well, with the proportion of women in Congress and the state legislatures climbing steadily. Petigny even makes a compelling case that the Boy Scouts of America actually lost ground in this era. Myths regarding the youth culture of the era also fall before Petigny’s analysis. While acknowledging the musical revolution implicit in rock ’n’ roll and the alienation portrayed in James Dean’s Rebel without a Cause (1955) and in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), the author notes the widespread support that this new music found among adults and youngsters alike. The problems shown in Catcher in the Rye were not about prevailing American values; it was Salinger's complaint about the failure of “phonies” and how to live up to personal expectations. An overturning of stylistic conventions ranged from Jackson Pollock’s paint-spattered canvases to the jazz improvisations of Charlie Parker.
The Social Conservative’s Dilemma: Adult acceptance of rock ’n’ roll also grew naturally out of the permissive child-rearing practices of the postwar era. That explains how a new celebration of spontaneity reshaped the arts during the 1940s and 1950s. The surge in fertility during the 1950s is particularly striking. It violated all the “laws” of sociology, including the general rule that the more education a woman has, the fewer children. While fertility rose for all American religious groups during the 1941–65 period, it rose far more impressively among Catholics. The total marital fertility rate for non-Catholics averaged 3.15 per woman in 1951–55 and 3.14 in 1961–65; for Catholics, the respective figures were 3.54 and 4.25. Only 10 percent of Catholics under age forty reported having four or more children in 1952–55, close to the Protestant figure of 9 percent. By 1957–59, the Protestant figure was unchanged, but the proportion for Catholics had more than doubled to 22 percent.
At another level, however, Petigny’s analysis leaves social conservatives facing a fairly large dilemma. The Fifties seemed to be the one clear example in modern American history of social, cultural, and moral renewal. Families appeared to be growing stronger. Burgeoning church construction and swelling Sunday schools betokened a measurable form of religious revival. The suburban revolution seemed to restore America as a land of property owners, with adult consumption patterns focused on family life. In essence, Petigny’s argument is that these were all ephemeral developments, almost illusions, and the strongest evidence in support of his view is the rapidity with which these signs of social health evaporated in “the Sixties” (even “Catholic exceptionalism” on matters of family and fertility had vanished by 1970). The implication for twenty-first-century social conservatives is that there are no secular or easy paths back to social health. In this respect, The Permissive Society is not only a valuable work of history and a refreshing correction to the myths that surround the Fifties. It also indirectly summons a searching of a more difficult, yet real, form of social renewal for the future.
During the late 1940s and 1950s, there were two different points of view on how people looked at guilt. On one side, the Christians would naturally think of guilt as one of the main factors of mankind’s spiritual believes that would ultimately show them the difference between right and wrong. On the other side though, Freud and modern psychologists view guilt as one of the biggest problems that are facing mankind in modern times. The reason that it is being viewed as a problem is because that despite civilization developing, they will lose their happiness if they allow their sense of guilt to increase over time. The only thing that is confusing about Petigny's analysis is the guilt factor. This part of his study does not specifically say if everyone feels guilty for being happy or guilty for wanting to develop civilization. Source: home.isi.org
Buddy Holly fitted the nice guy archetype and the non-conformist archetype at once. His was a triumph of subversion. Buddy introduced Edwardian fashions to rock ’n’ roll, years before they became popular in the sixties. He wore an ascot and a greatcoat with a fur collar, displaying a style that was radical, even unthinkable, in an era of Brooks Brothers sack suits and buttondown collars. Tasteful and vaguely aristocratic, Buddy had repeatedly reinvented himself until finally achieving a sort of beauty. Duane Eddy, whose twangy guitar made him one of the top rock’s instrumentalists, saw Buddy at this time and described him, in Reminiscing magazine, as an impressive sight—tall, powerful, and strikingly handsome. As Rolling Stone’s Robert Palmer would write from the perspective of 1990, “It is a measure of fifties rock’s genuine revolutionary potential (as opposed to the revolution-as-corporate-marketing-ploy so characteristic of the sixties) that while sixties rock eventually calmed down, was co-opted or snuffed itself out in heedless excess, fifties rock ’n’ roll was stopped. Cold.” Buddy Holly only saw one good royalty check during his lifetime. He received his check on August 26, 1958 for $14,462.74. Holly was in the process of dissolving the Prism partnership right before embarking his last tour. Ray Rush was reimbursed and Buddy agreed to let Norman Petty take 2000 $ out of his Prism account for the Ampex. Whatever record label Holly was going to run, it would have been without Norman Petty. Manny Greenfield had booked the Crickets on the Dick Clark Show, the English tour, and other venues. In return, he and Buddy had had a word of mouth agreement that Greenfield would receive a 5% commission. These commissions were dutifully paid and there are receipts and checks as proof. Sometime around July or August of 1958, Manny Greenfield felt he was Buddy's manager and should be receiving a commission on all of Buddy's earnings. "Not so," said Buddy. So the assets were being held up by Greenfield. Buddy wanted Irvin Feld (the promoter of the Winter Dance Party tour) as his new manager after the break-up from Petty.
I wrote Runaround Sue about a real girl in the neighborhood, but we changed the name to protect the guilty. She was the kind of girl who loved to be worshipped and worked hard to get a guy’s attention; but as soon as she had him, she’d lose interest and start charming somebody else. We used the name Sue because it fit and because it lends itself to a lot of rhymes. Now, let me put you wise: Contrary to what has been reported everywhere, the song is not about my wife. It is not about Susan Butterfield. Susan has had to endure being introduced as “Runaround Sue” at least a thousand times since 1961. She smiles through it all. And she may one day be canonized for it. Even The New York Times (December 3, 2000) reported that she was the “iinspiration” for the song. The New York Times! The song hit number one in September 1961.
I’ve written songs about Susan but never managed one that captures the wonder of it all. Her love is like God’s love, a mystery I’ll never fathom. You’ll notice something about the best rock and rollers: They tend to be outsiders. When they were kids they were loners. They didn’t fit in. They felt excluded. They made music to ease their pain. The great thing about writing a song is that it enables you to present a huge problem––loneliness, betrayal, fear, rejection––and then resolve it in three minutes. All it takes is a few verses, a chorus, and a guitar solo. The problem is that nothing’s really resolved at the end of the song.
The pain’s still there, inside––and that’s exactly what happens to the greatest rockers. The pain remains; and if you don’t find a way of dealing with it, you die. That’s the way it ended for too long a litany of rockers. They died from overdose, self-abuse, or reckless living. Others died inside. Some went crazy, or just burned out, or turned into misanthropes. But others grew up, which is, I think, the better way. At some point you need to grow up, even if you’re a rock star. Buddy Holly did change my life. I believe he founded the rock's avant-garde. For many people, he was the King of Rock and Roll, although Elvis kept the title. I got to know Buddy Holly pretty well. In New York I introduced him to Manny’s on 48th Street and a clothing shop on Third Avenue. He was 22 and very decisive and he impressed me because I was 19 and insecure. Buddy told me once, "Dion, I don’t know how to succeed, but I know how to fail: Try to please everybody." If he didn’t tell me that, I probably never would have done "Runaround Sue," or "The Wanderer." I miss those guys (Buddy, Ritchie and The Big Bopper). I feel they are helping me out. I have three angels up there.
I think John Lennon's intentions were good, though he wasn’t the most informed participant on the scene, and the drugs got in the way of his clear thinking. Nowhere is the murk of his thought more evident than in the most popular song of his solo years. “Imagine” has become an anthem for internationalism––one-world government––and a favorite hymn for those who are “spiritual but not religious.” Imagine there’s no heaven... Lennon was talented, but this song represents a huge failure of imagination. In 1971 we didn’t need to imagine atheistic internationalism. Communism was living and active and it wasn’t producing peace. The Eastern Bloc was a repressive, unhappy place. China was sustaining its self-holocaust into Chairman Mao’s senility. What made it possible for so many leaders to issue the orders for atrocities over the course of a half-century and more? They feared neither heaven nor hell. Imagine that. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine polled a select group of recording-industry professionals, critics, and artists, and they ranked “Imagine” the third-greatest song of all time. In the video for the song, John plays a white grand piano in a white room. His wife, Yoko Ono, walks around the room, throwing open the curtains on all the windows, one by one. When I saw the video, I wanted to shout: No! She should be closing the curtains! The song isn’t enlightening anything. It’s a deepening darkness.
John Lennon wanted good things. “All you need is love,” “Give peace a chance.” The problem is that those things slip away like eels unless you have a clear idea of what they are. How could John preach love to the world when he had a hard enough time showing love to the people closest to him? What right did he have to preach world peace when he couldn’t even get along with the Beatles? Peace isn’t the chaos of liberty, anarchy, and license. It is, as St. Augustine said, “tranquility of order.” It’s the train on the track (“Slow Train Coming,” as Dylan put it). It’s good to want a revolution, and it’s good to give peace a chance, but the only true revolution that produces lasting peace is the one that Jesus started. The alternatives just make you pick sides among the warring factions. So John ended up throwing his support behind armed terrorists in the IRA and Black Panthers, even though they really weren’t interested in giving peace a chance. ––Dion: the Wanderer Talks Truth (2011) by Dion Dimucci
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