What We Miss About the 1950's

In the story, "What We Really Miss about the 1950's," Coontz is trying to capture the essence of happiness. She talks with many people that were living in that decade about what made it so great. A lot of people began to describe why the 1950's were so great, and when they started getting deep in their conversations, they realized that even if they could they would never go back. Many didn't like the way that women were treated, how their fathers treated them, or how the parent to child dynamics were. It wasn't anything that they could really describe about why it was so great. What I got from the text is that although times were rough and poverty levels were high, the world was a much safer place. Children's innocence was truly protected in that decade. The saying "ignorance is bliss" is correct on so many levels. The narrorator was telling of time when she was 12 and she wanted to rent a book from the library, but they wouldn't let her because the book had too much adult content. She compared it to the movies of this current decade. There are so many bad things out in the world today that were not there in the 1950's.