The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Everyone belonged to the political and economic center, and no one doubted that American values worked and that anyone with even an iota of common sense would want to admire them. In that sense the family sitcoms reflected—and reinforced—much of the social conformity of the period. There was no divorce. There was no serious sickness, particularly mental illness. Families liked each other, and they tolerated each other’s idiosyncracies. Dads were good dads whose worst sin was that they did not know their way around the house and could not find common household objects or that they were prone to give lectures about how much tougher things had been when they were boys. The dads were, above all else, steady and steadfast. They symbolized a secure world. Moms in the sitcoms were, if anything, more interesting; they were at once more comforting and the perfect mistresses of their household premises, although the farther they ventured from their houses the less competent they seemed. Running a house perfectly was one thing; driving a car one block from home on an errand was another. Then things went wrong, although never in a serious way. Above all else, the moms loved the dads, and vice versa, and they never questioned whether they had made the right choice.