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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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This is called "conditions that existed in the late 1950s US".

And do those conditions remain, today? How many couples can afford to have a non-working outside the home member? People make economic decisions based on what they would like, and what they can get. Mortgages for houses generally assume a dual-income couple. Renting is a problem as well (see housing shortages, space for kids, etc.) The cost of living requires that there is some kind of income stream from both spouses, which often leads to the ridiculous result that the wife's earnings largely go on paying for childcare so that she is free to work.

In some ways, I'd have no objections about going back to the 50s or 60s. But you can't stuff all women in a time machine and send them back, while leaving men in 2023. Both together, or not at all, else we won't fix anything and we'll be back at the 50s tradition also of men wanting to sow their wild oats before getting baby-trapped into marriage. Look, for example, at the 1960 movie (so right on the cusp of the turnover of the decade) The Apartment: it's described as a "romantic comedy" but what's so romantic about the premise? men will cheat on their wives because marriage is boring and dull:

The film follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon) who, in the hope of climbing the corporate ladder, lets more senior coworkers use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct extramarital affairs. He is attracted to an elevator operator (MacLaine) in his office building, unaware that she is having an affair with his immediate boss (MacMurray).

The "romantic" part is that the characters played by Lemmon and MacLaine end up together, but what kind of augury is the rest of the movie for their marriage? Now he's one of those execs who want a bit on the side for some excitement, and she will either be the boring housewife who let herself go after marriage (so he's justified in having an affair) or she will cheat herself, given that she already has been engaged in adultery before marriage. The ending message tries to be "true love wins" but the rest of the time has been undercutting the very idea of marriage and fidelity: nearly all the men in it are adulterers, and the image of the "swinging playboy lifestyle" is what will be promulgated in the new decade.

And here we are after the Sexual Revolution, and I wish you well of it.