The Perfect American Lifestyleof The 1950S. What Is The

The Perfect American lifestyle of The 1950s What is the perfect American lifestyle, was there ever a perfect American lifestyle. This paper will analyze Stephanie Coontz’s â€Å"What We Really Miss About The 1950s† and the idea of the ideal America Lifestyle. The perfect American lifestyle of the 1950s started with the ability to earn money as Coontz notes â€Å"it’s easy to see why people might look back fondly to a decade when real wages grew more in any single year than in the entire ten years of the 1980s combined† (Coontz). Growing wages allowed for more spending and more spending created for a better economy. However, Coontz says that the feeling for the 1950s was more than just money. As according to Coontz â€Å"it’s more than just a†¦show more content†¦Coontz once again shows skepticism as she says â€Å"Even people who do pick the 1950s as the best decade generally end up saying, once they start discussing their feelings in depth, that it’s not the family arrangements in and of themselves that they want to revive† (Coontz). Coontz finally shows the reason for her skepticism of the 1950s family. As Coontz says that â€Å"They don’t miss the way women used to be treated, they s ure wouldn’t want to live with most of the fathers they knew in their neighborhoods† (Coontz). Coontz starts to paint an ugly picture of the 1950s American family. And Coontz backs up her statement about women with an article from Judith Wallerstein â€Å"The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts† says that â€Å"100 spouses in â€Å"happy† marriages, she found that only five â€Å"wanted a marriage like their parents’.† The husbands â€Å"consciously rejected the role models provided by their fathers. The women said they could never be happy living as their mothers did† (Wallerstein) Coontz goes on to say that really â€Å"What most people really feel nostalgic about has little to do with the internal structure of 1950s families† (Coontz). So maybe it was not all it was cracked up to be maybe it was more a â€Å"belief that the 1950s provided a more family-friendly economic and social environment, an easier climate in which t o keep kids on the straight