Baby Boom In The 1950s

After World War II, in the 1950s the United States domestic economy prospered drastically, therefore, it is usually named by historians as the age of affluence. Unlike the USSR, the United States took advantage of the war and became a world power. Even though, there was fear of the nuclear emergencies American citizens wanted to forget the atrocities of the war by an influx of new technologies as the automobile and many others. One of the essential factors of domestic change was known as the “Baby Boom”, meaning as an immense population growth in the United States. Due to this phenomenon, the United States consequently became mainly consumerism and several reforms were introduced principally in education. Additionally, during World War II,

By 1954 financed by the Federal Housing Administration many identical houses were constructed at a lower cost with the purpose of being more secure than that of the cities. Growth in the suburbs was not only a result of postwar prosperity, but innovations in the market for single-family homes with low-interest rates and mortgages of 20 to 30 years, and low payments, especially for veterans. William Levitt was one of the most influential individuals that revolutionized American families and ushered inexpensive suburbs. The most famous known as “Levittown” in Long Island, as a result, in 1950 was the first year that more Americans lived in suburbs than any other type of region. With all of these cost-saving measures, the earliest Levittown houses were only $7000, or $29 per month for a mortgage, compared to the going rate of $90 per month for an apartment in the city (Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States 1985). As a result, more and more families wanted safer houses for the new generations of the “Baby Boom” and at the same time automobiles also impulsed this massive migration. Large cars then became a symbol of wealth in the American society, and the need for highways expanded rapidly. However, it was later relieved by President’s Eisenhower ratification of the Interstate Highway Act

Surprisingly, more babies were born between 1948 and 1953 than were born in the previous thirty years, and all those babies in the future years, fueled the economy as families bought food, diapers, toys, and clothing for their expanding broods. The nation’s educational system also got a boost, and the new middle class, America’s first college-educated generation, placed a high value on education (Galbraith, John Kenneth 1998). The Baby Boom generation was also characterized by the influential books as Dr. Benjamin Spock’s best-selling “Baby and Child Care” which sold million of copies after its publication in 1946. Dr. Spock’s philosophy introduced new changes in the American parenting, and even after his death, the book continued to change the traditional nurture of these new generations. For instance, urging mothers to abandon the “rigid feeding and baby-care schedules of an earlier generation,” and recommending mothers to be constantly available to their children (Spock, Benjamin