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    1950s Childhood: Growing up in post-war Britain
    1950s Childhood: Growing up in post-war Britain
    1950s Childhood: Growing up in post-war Britain
    Ebook101 pages42 minutes

    1950s Childhood: Growing up in post-war Britain

    By Janet Shepherd and John Shepherd

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    About this ebook

    Children of the 1950s have much to look back on with fondness: Muffin the Mule, Andy Pandy, and Dennis the Menace became part of the family for many, while for others the freedom of the riverbank or railway platform was a haven away from the watchful eyes of parents. The postwar welfare state offered free orange juice, milk and healthcare, and there was lots to do, whether football in the street, a double bill at the cinema, a game of Ludo or a spot of roller-skating. But there were also hardships: wartime rationing persisted into the '50s, a trip to the dentist was a painful ordeal, and at school discipline was harsh and the Eleven-Plus exam was a formidable milestone. Janet Shepherd and John Shepherd examine what it was like to grow up part of the Baby Boomer generation, showing what life was like at home and at school and introducing a new phenomenon – the teenager.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateFeb 10, 2014
    ISBN9780747814542
    1950s Childhood: Growing up in post-war Britain

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      Book preview

      1950s Childhood - Janet Shepherd

      INTRODUCTION: FROM AUSTERITY TO AFFLUENCE

      THE FORTUNATE GENERATION born after the Second World War, between 1946 and 1960, are now often identified as the ‘baby-boomers’, because birth rates soared as men returned from the armed forces to civilian life (a similar phenomenon had previously occurred after the First World War, with a hike in the birth rate that reached a peak in 1920). This generation, which is reaching retirement age in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is a feature of most western democracies and comprised about a quarter of the British population in 2013. Its best-known members include the pop stars Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Elton John, the politicians Edwina Currie, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the actress Maureen Lipman, the journalists Jon Snow, Melanie Phillips and Bel Mooney, and many other household names.

      This book explores the lives of this generation of children, who constituted a massive rise in the United Kingdom population, and who grew up during some of the most interesting years in post-war Britain – the 1950s. It examines their health, homes, schooling, consumer habits and leisure pursuits as the decade progressed.

      The 1950s, between the wartime 1940s and the permissive 1960s, was a time of change as well as some continuity. Early post-war austerity gradually turned into the affluence of the decade’s later years, based on full employment, welfare state services and relative prosperity as mass consumer goods became increasingly available. By 1957 the mood of the nation was captured in Harold Macmillan’s words: ‘Most of our people have never had it so good.’

      Demographic forecasts in the 1930s had visualised Britain moving towards a static, or even declining, population. However, after the advent of the Second World War, there was a sudden surge in the birth rate, and these predictions proved inaccurate.

      The first boost occurred after soldiers returned on leave in 1942–3, followed by another increase at the end of the war, with births rising to a peak of over a million per annum by 1947. Other factors contributing to a post-war ‘baby boom’ included the extra allowances for soldiers with families, women’s increased ability to support children financially due to increased wartime employment, and the opening of more pre-school nurseries.

      The 1950s’ baby-boomers have been depicted as ‘uniquely healthier and wealthier’, and more privileged than earlier or later generations. During more recent difficult economic times, they often feature as the subject of public debate over, for example, the provision of state pensions. This was the first ‘National Health Service generation’, nurtured from birth with a ‘welfare state’ providing free orange juice, milk and cod-liver oil to safeguard their health. At the start of the 1950s it was still a post-war world, with rationing and queues for basic food. Sugar, butter, cheese, margarine, cooking fat, bacon and tea were all still rationed. A final item, meat, did not come off ration until 4 July 1954. Memories of these years included home-made dresses, the lack of refrigerators, cold rooms and smelly paraffin heaters.

      The broadcaster and writer Melvyn Bragg, eleven in 1950, thought ‘respectability and aspiration’ underpinned the decade. Traditional family values dominated: ‘male breadwinners’, full-time ‘stay at home’ married housewives, and ‘2.4 children’. In 1952 the psychoanalyst John Bowlby wrote a News Chronicle article titled, ‘The mother who stays at home gives her children a better chance’. Francis Beckett, commenting on the early 1950s, wrote: ‘it was illegal to buy Lady Chatterley’s Lover, to get an abortion, to have a homosexual relationship, or stage a play without first obtaining permission from the Lord Chamberlain.’

      However, such was the relief after the war years that the nation was very ready to celebrate events such as the 1951 Festival of Britain and the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest. Most notably, people came out onto the streets in their thousands for the coronation of Elizabeth II. Even more watched the event on the new medium of television. Television, perhaps more than anything else, revolutionised home life in the late 1950s, bringing recreation and entertainment into people’s living rooms.

      The post-war era placed a high importance on child welfare. Children were the future; it was ‘to them the new welfare

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