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Answers: im writing a project about how it was to be a teen in 1950-1959

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it was like scouting our father mothers were not allowed to date with out chape rone a brother or sister then they had not the freedom of going to the movies so much or dancing it was different !! you all are lucky !! edit no color t/v no cd's not disney no universal studios no no no many many things !!

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Most importantly, there was almost no birth control (except condoms) available, and no legal abortion available in the USA. This had a huge effect on everyone's behavior and ideas.
The terror of a girl getting pregnant infused every social situation---not only would the pregnancy be blamed on her, she would be a social outcast, and often forced to give up the baby for adoption. (UNWED MOTHER and BLUE DENIM are 2 films that deal with this. PEYTON PLACE has a girl who is a victim of incest who is in terror, too.)
In A SUMMER PLACE, Sandra Dee's mother is so concerned with Sandra's virginity that she has her forcibly examined by a Doctor before accepting her assurances.
Don't ask, don't tell was just about it for sex education, and homosexuality, inter-racial romance, child abuse, pedophilia, were never even discussed. Many people, adult, and teen, had no idea what homosexuality was.
"Wait until you're married" was the blanket answer given to every sexual question.
Sex without marriage was considered shocking, taboo, dangerous, deadly (because of disease, botched illegal abortions, etc).
Drug addiction only existed, usually, in large cities (a ground-breaking article appeared in LIFE magazine about heroin addicts "We are animals in a world no one knows"---but the heroin addicts made every effort to appear normal to the outside world).

The other interesting feature of Teen life in the 1950's was the dominance of teens in the media in all ways----thousands of "exploitation" movies were made about teen life for cinema and drive-in movie houses, basically after about 1954, because Television was becoming the main entertainment of the whole family, and fewer adults were going to movies. Soon, only teens and children would go to films, and be the deciding audience. The spending power and tastes of teenagers would dominate all other markets too---cars, gifts, clothes, foods, magazines, music, etc. Suddenly there were lots of middle-class teens in the USA, with plenty of free time and money to spend.

Career choices for girls were quite traditional by today's standards ( Nurse, Teacher, Librarian, secretary, shop assistant, waitress)---again, the "get married" mantra was the main message. But plenty of women had been going to college to work in all fields, gathering numbers and political clout to enter more, if possible. Many famous women today started in the 1950's, and just kept at it. (Joyce Brothers, Sandra Day O'Connor, etc.)
Television, and movies, were strictly censored until the late 1960's, but there was plenty of drama going on in these censored stories.
TONS of great movies on this subject, if you can hunt them down on dvd's.

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