The 1960's: Flower Children and Happy Families

The 1960's was a decade consisting of both a rise in colorful decoration and prejudice against those with colored skin. It was a time of comfort and quality family time for many, and at the same time, a time of poverty and separation from family for others. Rebellion in youth rose like a tidal wave and brought with it an increase in drug use, an increase in alcoholism, and the sexual revolution. These teens and young adults called themselves flower children and reflected their name in the bright and colorful clothes they wore. On the flip side, members of older generations were very critical of the flower children and they clashed prominently. Besides these, there were working class families with little to no cares and African Americans dealing with prejudice. The majority of people fit into the working class, average family category. Working class at the time really meant a quite nice lifestyle with hardly any money shortages and lots of time to spend with family. Most people, for this reason, remember the 1960's as a sort of golden age.
     My grandma, Bette Wolterstorff, was 19 in 1960. Although she herself was not one, she recalls that flower children would often group together and share a house. Not only did this cut expenses to a minimum and give them an escape from their parents, it also meant more freedom to party and to be immoral in various ways. They were not happy to just rebel a little, flower children went all the way. They wore clothes considered scandalous and pushed for women's rights as well as wearing attention grabber make-up such as drawn on eyelashes. Often, walls between parents and their children either caused teens to rebel or went up because of the excitement of rebellion. For conservative parents, this movement was especially hard, because it often meant their son or daughter shunning them. In the documentary, Family Life in the 1960's(BBC), the Meadow family experiences a taste of this when their girls "move out". Of course, on the other hand, some parents were the ones shunning their kids because of how they dressed or what they did in secret.
     Often, because they were so young with low wage jobs, flower children lived in poor living conditions. In the documentary two girls try out what it would be like to be flower children and live for a few days by themselves. Their apartment consists of one room and a cramped bathroom so dirty, they refuse to use it at first. A lot of the time, this was how flower children had to live. As far as money went, my grandma recalls them having very little and being considered lower class. For some teens and young adults, this was too high a price to pay and so they stayed with their parents under their restrictions.
     For my grandmother, a married mother of two and a nurse, the 1960's were a calm period with no financial strain and much less drama than society today. She does admit, however, that her sweet recollections are partially due to the way memories tend to put the past under a halo. She never really thought about money very much, she admits, because although there wasn't necessarily a plethora of it, it was never lacking either. In fact, vacations were very common for her and she went lots of places, including Canada, Texas, and Arizona. On top of that, her house was pretty nice, though small, and it was about a tenth of how much it would be today. This was partially due to the value of money, but it was also due to a healthy economy. Although events such as John F. Kennedy's assassination shocked and saddened her, (as well as the rest of society) she was never very personally effected by them and so life was pretty smooth. At the time it was socially acceptable to watch your toddler playing outside through a window and people were much less paranoid about kidnapping, so she had more freedom within her time then she would now.
     In the documentary the Taylor family has a similar experience. Both parents were working(like my grandma), but they still had casual free time and flexibility within their budget to go on plenty of vacations. The kids were also not especially supervised and could run around and have fun. They had a pretty nice house for being lower class, too, and didn't really have to worry about money.
     Some other similarities between my grandma's experiences and the experiences of the individuals in the film are the style of clothing people wore, housekeeping trends, and segregation. In both, the girls wore a-line outfits with high waist skirts and shorts and a sort of blunt flair. They also were both involved in bettering their house. in fact, in both accounts, they put wallpaper up to make their house look nicer. lastly, both were aware of and encountered segregation against African Americans.