The Undermining of Marriage in the 1950's

This is not a pleasant subject but I think it is important for Christians to know how a happy home life is undermined by falsehoods that are deliberately spread around to reduce our faith in the Biblical design for the family. Many sources went to work to dismantle this perfect arrangement. 

I have just read a blog article called "Divorce is Dumb" that explains in detail how marriage was undermined by the malcontents  in the 1950's.  A quote from this essay is pasted below:

"In the 1950's...Christian family life was well represented, and well-respected, on television and in magazines.  In addition, advertisers, radio shows, large corporations, and manufacturers embraced the glee and reinforced the happiness that millions of young married couples were experiencing. In retrospect, the 1950s were truly America’s “Happy Days.”

The article explains how women desired marriage as the highest thing they could ever achieve in life, and married women were greatly admired.

The author goes on to say,

"But for those who’d made bad choices, or were brought up in non-Christian homes or were incapable of finding personal happiness, the domestic bliss of the 1950s was grating. The happiness of the masses served only to magnify their personal shortcomings.  And so, in the midst of all this gladness, these people quietly began to sow the seeds of discontent. Subtly, they initiated an effort to convince the happy Christian suburban families, and the country at large, that their happiness was all an illusion."

The essay continues:

"New ideas began to take shape, aided by the movie industry in particular, which insinuated themselves into the subconscious minds of the joyful masses. Those who promoted the ideas asserted that just beneath the happy surface, lay the “real” truth – that Christian men were actually wretched, calculating, unbalanced, mean people with bad thoughts. Of course the truth was just the opposite. The conclusions drawn by these paranoid proponents of the dysfunctional family were in fact a reflection of their neuroses, and unhappy family lives, rather than a reflection of the sincerely happy masses of American Christian families.

Initially, books were written, and plays were produced, promoting the unsettling idea that behind the pleasant façade of suburbia lay a disturbing psychosis. These “proponents of pain” were, under the pretext of “entertainment”, supposedly exposing women to the “truth” about the “harsh realities” of the “dysfunctional” men in their midst, when in fact, it was based on their own individually depleted lives. Their personal lives did not reflect the vast majority of Christian people’s lives.

The personal demons that “inspired” the writings of these deviant authors began with F. Scott Fitzgerald (alcoholic), John Steinbeck (alcohol abuser), Earnest Hemingway (committed suicide), and Eugene O’Neill (suffered depression and alcoholism), and continued with William Faulkner (alcoholic and adulterer), Arthur Miller (communist and abandoned his retarded child), and J. D. Salinger (recluse and religious fanatic).

The traditional advice given to new writers, “Write about what you know”, was taken down to new depths of depravity by these writers, as they did just that."

To read the entire essay, click on the the link I provided at the beginning of this post, "divorce is dumb." It shows how people desire to break up marriages.

All this craziness that surrounds us can get overwhelming but when you educate yourself on the beginnings of it, it is easier to understand and to warn your children.

All is not lost, however, as there are always writers and teachers who promote happiness and marriage through their literature.  There are always blaring reports of divorce everywhere but there is a quiet side of life that patiently continues to carry the good messages and the good examples.