Applied Nostalgia Applied Nostalgia--A Parental Look Back Without past memories, Americans lack a standard to base present conditions upon.
These memories lie carefully shuffled and categorized in the giant shifter called the brain to crudely approximate the present standard of life. They hope to draw gratification and fulfillment in the progression of the quality of their and especially their children's lives. This innate desire to compare the past to the present drives personal and political decisions, especially conservatives who advocate a change to the policies and values of the past. Today, the faded memories of an emerging group of parents of their post-World War II upbringing, like cherished family dinners around the kitchen oak table and careless excursions into town, against a perceived modern backdrop haze of random violence, date rape, and single parent households, turned a group of parent's hearts and minds to the bygone 1950s. They hope to revive their cherished childhood memories.The Medveds, parental authors, recall their upbringing: "The women enjoyed being home for the kids" and "peers came over for basketball and homemade lemonade" (Paul 64).
Shalit, author of Return to Modesty: A Lost Virtue remembers when past women helped around the community and raised their children with a unparalleled dedication (Paul 64). In the wake of the Colorado school massacre such a move seems justified. Yet, even in spite of many social ills of our "drug-addicted, sex-obsessed, morally lax and spiritually bankrupt society" (Paul 64) parents remain skeptical. of such a drastic reversal in a drastically changed time.
For now, the skepticism over the reversal to the past merits further examination before any drastic action. The parents advocating a change to the past promote a bleak present and future with problems ranging across the social, political, and economic spectrum, afraid that their worries might mirror in their kids. Adult fairy tales that "marriage will last forever, sex produces only pleasure, loyalty to an institution will be returned, and elected leaders are benevolent and wise"(Paul 63) are to unbearable to be placed on the weak shoulders of their children. Thus, they shield this information from the children.
Armed with reams of statistics, especially in the drop the number of nuclear family homes in the United States (Two 1), they present a fair case for the reversal to the parenting style of the aging baby boomer population.An incomplete list of their claimed ills includes single parent households, an overly demanding work environment, influx of undesirable media, and the feminist movement. Fatherlessness, as David Blackhord president of Institute for American values points out, is the most harmful demographic trend of our generation..and the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society.
It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime, to adolescent pregnancy, to sexual abuse, to domestic violence against women. The evidence is now strong that the absence of fathers from the lives of children is one of the most important causes [of the above problems] (UCSF 1) In one augmenting study performed by the University of California at San Francisco on California's family makeup reported that twenty percent of children under age eighteen are currently raised by a single adult. Accusative fingers of these nostalgic parents turn like an vengeful hinged gate from family structure to the work environment, citing statistics on the economic difficulties that modern employers cause, or on personal obsessions with work that deters from the infinitely more important job at home. "With parents trapped in consuming jobs, they leave their kids to fend for themselves" (West 2).
The type of work and work environment changed in the last few decades with the advent of new technologies and pressure on employers to cut costs. According to the parents and researchers who advocate a reversal to the past, the modern work environment is besieged with problems. Reductions in real wages, corporate downsizing and the cessation of the 'company man' ethos that governed American labor relations during the 1950s and 1960s has made it impossible for parents to devote necessary time to their children because they have to work harder than every just to make ends meet (West 1).The goals of financial success have placed the goals of raising a kid to the back burner. These impersonal parents scrape up the few extra dollars to buy the hearts of their children (McCallum 2).
"In our materialistic society, parents are more concerned about the physical things they provide their children that about the values and habits that prepare children for a life on their own" (McCallum 2). The nineties have been defined as the information age and rightfully so. Any individual who accesses today's wide variety of electronic medium--computer, Internet, television, radio, compact disks, CD-ROMs, and interconnected libraries--finds ample information on any subject, regardless of content. The nostalgic argue that when these kids contact this huge barrage of 'objectionable' material without guidance from parents, the material acts as a surrogate mother, advising the children with undesirable choices.
Such choices include rash violence. TV permeates every nationwide household, and its flickering light is the de facto babysitter for overworked and underpaid parents, who often have to support the family without the spouse present. Their version of a modern parent falls victim to the media's hidden messages. The media portrays dads in deadbeat ways that do not reflect on actual parents.
In movies like the Shining, the father was an abusive alcoholic and rap music epitomizes poor examples of deadbeat dads and their crack addicted single mothers.As a result mothers are more likely to ditch their boyfriend of husband for single parenthood convinced they will raise the child in a better environment without the father. In conclusion, "what you have is an all-out war on parents, the result of which is ultimately the decline of civic virtue and the overall welfare of the nation" (Schaffer 2). Tagging along with the nostalgia movement is a new women's movement that tries to reverse the effects of the first (Paul 64). Shalit, in her book Returning to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, points out that the social progressions has left women is poorer condition than before the movement started (Paul 64).
Our mothers tell us we shouldn't want to give up all the hard-won 'gains' they nave bequeathed us, and we think: what gains? Sexual harassment, date rape, slaking, eating disorders, all those dreary hook-ups? Or perhaps it's the great gain of divorce you had in mind. (Paul 64) The ramifications, at least to these overseeing parents, of living in the current structured parenting environment of the United States is vast and include an increase in the rate of crime, teenage pregnancies, drugs, rape, divorce, poor relationships, and abuse.Those with a "proper" upbringing, a hopelessly undefinable and impossibly utopian word, commit less violent acts. The pivoting ramification, and a central pivot for both this paper and the emerging nostalgia movement is the possible loss of "innocence". Innocence to proponents equals the lack of harming children (opponents deny the occurrence) by cutting children's exposure to all adult material.
The word adult is not used in the traditional pornographic sense, but as a general category defining all information that the average child should not know. This includes such topics as sex, marriage, work, and violence. Now, as information rapidly increases, the rush to protect kids from this incoming blow increases. Today innocence, the isolated and lighted room in a mansion of despair, could be defined as an escape from the informational age. Open the door, and the light (innocence) escapes, forever departed.
Knowledge is potent stuff; that's why we keep it away from small children. And its shy we must keep some of it for ourselves. In careless of unscrupulous hands, knowledge is dangerous and the innocent are powerless to oppose it (Paul 65). A few adults are even becoming sick of the amount of information: "Our time's tree of knowledge is so heavy with apples that we've grown sick of tasting them" (Paul 65). The Medveds, authors of Saving Childhood: Protecting Our Children From the Natural Assault on Innocence, say "the secrets of adulthood are harsh, morbid, oppressive, and seamy," bringing nothing but "obligations, troubles, burdens and the potential for depression and gloom" (Paul 64) and Shalit says the loss of innocence causes most young women's problems including eating disorders and unsatisfying relationships.
Jeffery Schwartz sums up the argument: innocence is "the highest of human accomplishments" and "the defining mark of those who have achieved genuine victory in facing life's innumerable challenges" (Paul 64). Many of the underlying problems remain constant throughout the decade, including ensuring that the family had a reasonable standard of living, taking care of their children's growth and development, and maintaining their commitment to the spouses they swore to remain with until after death, (West 1) yet the average American family today cannot meet these new burden. The result? Just pick a problem and fill in the blank. An aggregate of these aforementioned problems may be justly deserved, but without a comparison to the past then the present conditions cannot be analyzed. Each decade is shaped by a series of events that often dictate the outcome of the resulting socioeconomic conditions.An investigation begins with an inquisitive look into the events leading up the 1950s.
The 1950s were an exclusive product of the great depression and World War II. The great depression hit America like an oppressive summer heat wave, a constant ominous presence of discomfort which is utterly inescapable. Unemployment rose rapidly as job earnings decreased rapidly, thrusting families into severe economic hardship, unrepeatable in America's history. So, as with any abnormal circumstance, humans compensated. People became fanatical financial savers.Every cent was spend on the bare necessities of life.
Only a few had the money to spend on superfluous items (Raasch). World War II brought Americans out of the great depression. From the dusty dirt bowl to the ravaging meat grinders euphemistically called the frontlines, trudged a line of young soldiers dripping with ideas and courage, both of which would be brutally tested. At home women entered the work force to support their sons and husbands across seas.
With posters like "Rosie the Riviter" spurring on the hardworking proponents at home, women diligently assembled much of the machinery that eventually made its way over to Europe (Raasch).These women began to accumulate money, but were unable and unwilling to spend it, due to war shortages and conservation of popular goods and the ideals inevitably left over from the Great Depression. Instead, families across the United States began to accumulate savings (Raasch). World War Two revitalized the American economy. Removed geographically from the hell overseas and the years of painful rehabilitation of the landscapes, political systems, and economies, the war scarred United States plunged lustfully into work. Factories proliferated like fruit flies across the country, and citizens trailed the growth, pushing America into the most powerful economic force in the world (Raasch).
Financial security allowed women for the first time in several decades to stay home and raise the family planned during the hardship. Women could and did stay home with kids during that decade--the resources existed for this.Women also found that with the return of the men, most jobs were replaced by men. Women did not yet have the social backing to continue in the typical male dominated jobs (Raasch).
So far, an almost postcard perfect picture. However, the 1950s, despite this facade of bliss, hid huge blistering problems that surmount the 1990s difficulties and permanently cloud over the generation. Teenagers formed huge gangs.A scenario plays our beautifully in the Movie Matinee as a gang terrorizes the town, over a backdrop of missiles pointed at the Untied States from Cuba.
The movie is disturbing because this movie is a recreation of an actual event (Matinee). Following World War II, Americans fell into the cold war. The cold war lacked the open fighting and bloodshed; instead the cold war stirred a constant background stress. Nuclear weapons proliferated exponentially in Russia and the United States, and the respective leaders wove them around hoping the other country would back down.Instead both the United States and Russia pulled new technology from their pocketbooks and forcing the other to reciprocate (Raasch). As the technology race continued, Americans geared for the aftermath and tried not to think of the inevitable, utter, and complete annihilation of both the United States and the USSR.
Families spent weekends building a bomb shelter. Schools periodically held practice drills where kids slipped under their desks, undoubtedly all wondering how the thin sheet of plywood over their heads would save them from the destruction of the nuclear bomb, a bomb that in Japan reduced great edifices to crumbles and threw the permanent shadows of ashen-reduced people onto walls (Raasch). Meanwhile in the South a civil rights battle loomed as blacks, tired of the apartheid imposed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and average white citizens struggled to gain equal rights, a guarantee under the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution.Most minorities struggled with oppression in a white male dominated society, an often overlooked condition in the desire to switch back to the 1950s (Raasch). Progress to 1999, the last year before the zeros roll around on the Christian calendar's odometer.
Crime still besieges society, albeit of a different type, and the nuclear family prevalence decreased. In the past decade Americans endured terrorist attacks and countless school shootings. I one opens the newspaper, the tragedies spill forth.However, in light of the problems of the 1950s the charge flickers, ...
