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Why were people happier then?
On a morning show Len Goodman shows how life was in the 1950's. Everyone seems happy and except for the skirmishes of the Mods and Rockers all seemed to enjoy life.
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When everyone had nothing there wasn't anything to be jealous of. There was no "keeping up with the Jones" because they had nothing too. Now we are more affluent and subjected to a barrage of advertising we all "need" a 42" Tv, the latest Android phone, a PS3, new car etc. Our horizons have been opened and it's now virtually impossible to close them.
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Just my two pennyworth.
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Just my two pennyworth.
I think people were more CONTENT then, which made them probably happier.
People had little money so were content with what they had.
Now there seems to be so much pressure on people to buy the latest gadgets, there is pressure from adverts to buy the latest must-haves.
You only have to look at the adverts on TV nowadays to see adverts for getting loans, sueing people for your injury, clearing your debts, claiming on your missold PPI or whatever, it is all money, money, money.
Back in the 1950s people only spent what they had. If you REALLY wanted something you might buy it on hire purchase (HP), and only then very reluctantly.
Nowadays you get people in their late teens or early 20s who are £5,000 or £10,000 or more in debt, because they HAD to have the latest expensive ipad or handbag, or go on an expensive holiday.
A few years ago, when my teenage daughter got her first mobile phone you would not believe the ANGER if she could not get a phone signal, or did not get a reply from a text she had sent 10 minutes ago. I used to think t would do her good to live in Africa for 6 months then should would REALLY have something to complain about.
People did not have guns in the 50s (only a few major criminals) yet people seem to get shot every week in the UK nowadays. Stabbings were rare, yet every week you hear of a teenager stabbed to death.
Some things are better like health, length of life, labour saving devices like dishwashers, washing machines etc
But I have to say on the SOCIAL side of things we have really gone downhill in the last 40 years or so and I think there is far more stress, depression, and illnesses like anerexia.
People had little money so were content with what they had.
Now there seems to be so much pressure on people to buy the latest gadgets, there is pressure from adverts to buy the latest must-haves.
You only have to look at the adverts on TV nowadays to see adverts for getting loans, sueing people for your injury, clearing your debts, claiming on your missold PPI or whatever, it is all money, money, money.
Back in the 1950s people only spent what they had. If you REALLY wanted something you might buy it on hire purchase (HP), and only then very reluctantly.
Nowadays you get people in their late teens or early 20s who are £5,000 or £10,000 or more in debt, because they HAD to have the latest expensive ipad or handbag, or go on an expensive holiday.
A few years ago, when my teenage daughter got her first mobile phone you would not believe the ANGER if she could not get a phone signal, or did not get a reply from a text she had sent 10 minutes ago. I used to think t would do her good to live in Africa for 6 months then should would REALLY have something to complain about.
People did not have guns in the 50s (only a few major criminals) yet people seem to get shot every week in the UK nowadays. Stabbings were rare, yet every week you hear of a teenager stabbed to death.
Some things are better like health, length of life, labour saving devices like dishwashers, washing machines etc
But I have to say on the SOCIAL side of things we have really gone downhill in the last 40 years or so and I think there is far more stress, depression, and illnesses like anerexia.
"People did not have guns in the 50s".
Plenty of people had guns. You could buy shotguns from any of the catalogue companies. My 4.10 was £1 10s and paid for over 6 months from the Grattans catalogue.
A 12 bore wasn't much dearer. The difference was people didn't use guns to shoot people but to shoot rabbits for food and to dispatch vermin. I was taught how to use a gun properly and with respect when I was about 9 years old.
Plenty of people had guns. You could buy shotguns from any of the catalogue companies. My 4.10 was £1 10s and paid for over 6 months from the Grattans catalogue.
A 12 bore wasn't much dearer. The difference was people didn't use guns to shoot people but to shoot rabbits for food and to dispatch vermin. I was taught how to use a gun properly and with respect when I was about 9 years old.
Len Goodman's show, although pleasant enough, isn't a balanced programme. It looks at the fifties through rose coloured glasses. After World War II in the forties, things may have appeared better in the fifties, but life was far from perfect.
Towns and cities had overcrowding with many still living in slums. In the country, services were still at 1930s level. I lived in a small village, where electricity had just arrived in 1948. But, we still had no mains water, only water from a well. Also, no sewerage system. Only three, better off families had cars, and about the same number had a telephone.
Compared with today, women's lives, like my mother's, were hard, with few labour saving gadgets. No vacuum cleaners, no washing machines and certainly no tumble dryers! Also, very few homes had the luxury of a fridge or a television.
But, as we were all in it together, people did seem to enjoy themselves, life was less hectic. Children could play in the street and not worry about the traffic. In the summer holidays us kids would be away all day sometimes, playing in the fields or woods - our parents didn't worry about us, we certainly never encountered any dodgy characters. As we grew older, no one worried about drugs, it just wasn't a problem, not in my neck of the woods anyway.
Having said all that, Len Goodman's show is quite watchable - and as it's still ongoing, perhaps it will show the other side of the coin, portraying some of the hardships that people had to endure.
Towns and cities had overcrowding with many still living in slums. In the country, services were still at 1930s level. I lived in a small village, where electricity had just arrived in 1948. But, we still had no mains water, only water from a well. Also, no sewerage system. Only three, better off families had cars, and about the same number had a telephone.
Compared with today, women's lives, like my mother's, were hard, with few labour saving gadgets. No vacuum cleaners, no washing machines and certainly no tumble dryers! Also, very few homes had the luxury of a fridge or a television.
But, as we were all in it together, people did seem to enjoy themselves, life was less hectic. Children could play in the street and not worry about the traffic. In the summer holidays us kids would be away all day sometimes, playing in the fields or woods - our parents didn't worry about us, we certainly never encountered any dodgy characters. As we grew older, no one worried about drugs, it just wasn't a problem, not in my neck of the woods anyway.
Having said all that, Len Goodman's show is quite watchable - and as it's still ongoing, perhaps it will show the other side of the coin, portraying some of the hardships that people had to endure.
vhg, there was stress, depression, anorexia, abuse, adultery...it was all still in existence bit not talked about. We had children at my school who came to school in the dead of winter (walking, no car or bus) in sandals and no coat because they had none. We were schooled from a young age not to comment if we saw other children at school in clothes we had outgrown. And we were working class ourselves and by no means well off. Harvest festival food went via the church to people who would have gone hungry without it who lived locally to me in London.
I don't think they were, just that after all the tribulations of WW2, rationing, things looked a lot more rosy than the reality. We lived in fairly cramped conditions, weren't well off by any means, and that goes for many in the country. employment was high, and wages decent enough for the time in retrospect, your money seemed to go a longer way, and then of course there was the music, much from America which was great. And our home grown talent was coming to the fore. Many places were still heavily bomb damaged, and rebuilding didn't start in many places in London until the early 60's. The fact is that every age has its pros and cons, and 1950's was no different.
Of course guns existed in the 50s, but the trouble-making youths of the day were called 'cosh-boys', a cosh being a club or truncheon of one sort or another. In other words, they did not go out "armed to kill", as today's equivalents do, whether with gun or knife.
Even when violence was involved, it was more guided by 'rules'...for example, they didn't boot your head in if you ended up on the ground and little girls dancing in shops tended not to get paralysed in random shootings.
As already mentioned earlier on the thread, contentment was vastly higher than it is today, so - despite hardships and privations - people actually COULD be said to have been 'happier'.
Even when violence was involved, it was more guided by 'rules'...for example, they didn't boot your head in if you ended up on the ground and little girls dancing in shops tended not to get paralysed in random shootings.
As already mentioned earlier on the thread, contentment was vastly higher than it is today, so - despite hardships and privations - people actually COULD be said to have been 'happier'.
I think it depends where you lived whether you were happier or not- guns were absolutely everywhere anyone could own one with no difficulties at all and not always for good reasons.
There was grinding poverty less help for those needing it and lots of judgement for those not conforming to society. I can't imagine many happy single mothers or many happy gay people, many happy women denied contraception or abortion trapped within a system that didn't care for them, many happy beaten wives ( fairly socially acceptable in some areas at the time) or many happy poor people-
' We were poor but we were happy'- biggest lie ever been told.
There was grinding poverty less help for those needing it and lots of judgement for those not conforming to society. I can't imagine many happy single mothers or many happy gay people, many happy women denied contraception or abortion trapped within a system that didn't care for them, many happy beaten wives ( fairly socially acceptable in some areas at the time) or many happy poor people-
' We were poor but we were happy'- biggest lie ever been told.
It's very easy to make the '50s look utopian with a bunch of films where everyone is smiling. Or, indeed, if you happened to be a child in the '50s - most peoples' childhoods are happier than their adult lives, so naturally they associate the times they happened to be children in with happiness. If I hadn't been so unhappy at school, I would probably in 30 years look back very fondly on the 1990s, and doubtless in 30 years I probably will look back very fondly on the 2010s. Why? Because, so far, they happen to have been pretty good to me. But it would be fairly ignorant of the future me to be extolling how great it was and ignore all the hardship currently going on in the country.
What hardship was there in the 1950s? Well, if you happened to be gay, you weren't allowed to exist - or not outside prison, anyway. If you were a woman seeking a divorce (say, if your husband was beating you) your chances were virtually hopeless and in some cases you risked being sent to a mental hospital. Social mobility hadn't yet started improving as it did in the '60s - if you were born into a working class family of miners, it was pretty much expected that you went down too regardless of if you wanted to.
The 50s do seem to have been more stable, however. But that's largely because implements of social control were strongly intact.
What hardship was there in the 1950s? Well, if you happened to be gay, you weren't allowed to exist - or not outside prison, anyway. If you were a woman seeking a divorce (say, if your husband was beating you) your chances were virtually hopeless and in some cases you risked being sent to a mental hospital. Social mobility hadn't yet started improving as it did in the '60s - if you were born into a working class family of miners, it was pretty much expected that you went down too regardless of if you wanted to.
The 50s do seem to have been more stable, however. But that's largely because implements of social control were strongly intact.
In December, my eldest son told me that his teenaged daughter had presented him with (quote) "a four-figure Christmas shopping-list" of items she wanted. I told him that my two sisters and I also presented such lists to our parents in the 1940s. The only difference was that my grand-daughter's list totalled over £1,000.00 whereas ours added up to such "four-figure sums" as £1/12/6...one pound, twelve shillings and sixpence!
As I said earlier in the thread, people back then were much more contented and easily satisfied than they are now and surely contentment and satisfaction are major elements in happiness.
As I said earlier in the thread, people back then were much more contented and easily satisfied than they are now and surely contentment and satisfaction are major elements in happiness.
Times were indeed hard back then, but us children didn't realise it. We never had much, but then neither did our peers, so there was no jealousy about possessions.In 1950 I lived in my granma's 3 bedroomed terrace house, along with 10 other relatives. My granma said things were good as we were always clean and never hungry. I appreciated the 60's, the main reason being that it was so easy to get a job.
Many have said that times and people where not happier in the 50s, but they have not informed us if they ever lived through those times.
Yes there was poverty, but then there is poverty now, so they are constantly telling us, so many children in child poverty, parents going without food to feed their children etc,etc.
Some ABers have mentioned, no fridges, no washing machines, etc etc. These are all material things, along with TVs, dishwashers etc,etc. No the 40s and the 50s were happy times, and I am talking from true experience.
Yes there was poverty, but then there is poverty now, so they are constantly telling us, so many children in child poverty, parents going without food to feed their children etc,etc.
Some ABers have mentioned, no fridges, no washing machines, etc etc. These are all material things, along with TVs, dishwashers etc,etc. No the 40s and the 50s were happy times, and I am talking from true experience.
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