1960’s Time Capsule
Kaplan University

1960’s Time Capsule
To some people, the 1960’s were the best of times, to others they were the worst. By some the 1960’s were looked at as a period when numerous things went wrong with society. Why did people have such different ideas about the 1960’s? I believe the different ideas came from all of the changes that were witnessed during this era. During the 1960’s, many different changes were made. Some of the changes were made for the good, and some were seen as horrible changes. The people referred to as liberals believed in individual choices and to have greater freedom. The liberals supported things such as the contraceptive pill and abortion. On the other side of the coin were the traditionalists who believed that many of the changes made were bad, and society had broken many boundaries. The traditionalists believed many changes that had taken years to build were now being torn apart.
The five things I found in my time capsule were: The hippie movement, the breakdown of the nuclear family, legalization of abortion, homosexuality, and the initiation of the BBC channel.
The Hippie Movement
The first thing I found in my time capsule that people struggled with in the 1960’s was the hippie movement. People in the 1960’s that dressed different highlighted their lives on “love and people” were labeled as “Hippies”. They were often seen in large groups and could be found at “sit ins” protesting war and wearing peace signs around their necks. The traditionalist thought the hippies were people that abandoned all responsibility and made society weaker because of their behavior. The liberals thought it was good to let people be who they wanted to be and to have the freedom to do what they wanted to do. This way of thinking between the traditionalist and liberals eventually led to many people disagreeing about the styles of clothes the hippies wore, they way they wore their hair and the way they lived. Many people laughed and made fun of the people that took the hippie movement seriously. The hippie movement became increasingly more popular just as the contraceptive pill became available for the first time in 1967. Many traditionalists believed that the pill encouraged more people to have sex out of wedlock with the pill easily supplied to them without needing parental permission. The liberals believed that being able to get the contraceptive pill in such a simple way was a good thing because it decreased the number of illegitimate births and was also a choice that people could make individually. In addition, the pill was not only taken as a way of not getting pregnant but was known to reduce painful menstruation and acne. I believe the hippie movement could also be connected to the beginning of the breakdown of the nuclear family.
The Breakdown of the Nuclear Family The second thing I found in my time capsule that people struggled with in the 1960’s was the breakdown of the nuclear family. The two adult traditional married couple with a boy and a girl was becoming less common. The amount of illegitimate births escalated from 5.8% in 1960 to 8.2% in 1970 with the number of marriages that ended in divorce going from about 1 in 15 to more than 1 in 10. These statistics were both related to the baby boom that occurred after World War II and the “decade of the teenager” (the past is a blast.com). The traditionalist believed children should be born within a marriage and felt it was too easy to get a divorce. Whereas, the liberals believed that divorce was a good option for women who were not happy in their marriage and had a way to gain their independence. During the 1960s females began gaining their independence and were beginning to make changes in their lives without a man telling them they couldn’t. It was a freeing time for women.
The Legal of Abortion in UK The third thing I found in my time capsule that people struggled with in the 1960’s was the legalization of abortion in the United Kingdom. Abortion became legal in the United Kingdom for the first time in 1967. Before this, statistics showed that around 100,000 women had abortions that were referred to as “back alley or back street abortions” (meditrust.org). These abortions were proven to be very dangerous because they were performed by unskilled people, and many times resulted in permanent injuries to the female and many times death. Individuals such as feminists agreed with this change with their justification being women were finally being allowed to plan their lives more efficiently with this choice. Also, supporting the feminist groups were the liberals, because they believed that it gave women greater control over their own individual lives. On the other hand, the traditionalists believed abortion was too open and let women take the easy way out. This is what led to the thinking within society in the 1960s that abortion was the wrong choice. A topic that has been fought over during every single election year. A further pressure came with the Feminist movement that was being made clearer as the 1960’s went on. The traditionalist did not like this idea because it began to challenge all the traditions that took many years to build within the roles of women in society, the economy and the family. In 1960, “The Housebound Housewives Register” was founded as a way for women to get together and discuss non-domestic issues (getbracknell.co.uk/news). (This register is now referred to as the National Women’s Register.) The traditionalists also did not like this register because they thought the core values of society were being undermined by it and women should stay at home and look after the children while the men go to work and provide for their family. The Liberals believed the register was a good thing because women were finally speaking and acting out if they were not happy, and the freedom that they wanted was within their reach.

Homosexuality legalized in the 1960’s The fourth thing I found in my time capsule that people struggled with in the 1960’s was the legalization of homosexual relationships. I found this topic caused a huge separation among society in the 1960’s because it was going against all the traditional values and norms many were brought up believing. A big step made in 1967 happened when parliament voted to legalize homosexual relationships that took place, but only in private. Even though the relationships were taking place in private they were still looked upon as unacceptable. Despite the liberal’s views of freedom, little steps were being made to make it easier for people to be themselves. In addition homosexuality also caused the breakdown of the tradition of the nuclear families. Now there were two women or two men who wanted to raise children and it seemed unnatural to society. People began stepping out of the closet and even wrote books about how they came to realized they found out they were a homosexual. This kind of thinking was looked at as something that went wrong in society.
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 2 Channel The fifth thing I found in my time capsule that people struggled with in the 1960’s was the initiation of the BBC 2 Channel. In 1964, BBC 2 was set up and was meant to be a channel with more serious topics than BBC 1. The traditionalist groups believed this was not a good decision because it pushed the boundaries of the traditional ways of life, and showed an increase of sexual scenes that were thought of as immoral. These channels also showed the problems that were being faced by people in society at that time. This became quite a controversial topic because the traditionalists saw only the bad part of the channel (the sexual scenes) and the liberals saw this as a good thing in the sense of the channel being an educational tool and people being able to have the freedom of things to watch.
Legal changes that were made in Britain seemed to begin trickling into the United States not long after. Unfortunately for families; family life was weakened when Parliament gave women a much stronger legal position in marriages. Feminists supported the Married Women’s Property Act in 1964 that allowed women to retain half of the money they saved from any housekeeping tasks. This was obviously thought of as a good thing by the liberals but not necessarily the same by the traditionalist. This act showed that society was becoming more equal between men and women because before this act it was a society dominated by males. Traditionalists believed the changes being made in law appeared to encourage the breakdown of marriages and discouraged people from trying to make marriages work. The liberals thought it was a great benefit because it was easy to get out of unhappy marriages and to have own personal freedom.

Conclusion In conclusion, during the early 1960s one of the main elements was the family with the family being dominated by the male. But by the late 1960s Britain was being seen as an individual’s era and the family was put to the side. Society was being built around freedom and self-expression. In addition marriage and homosexuality laws were changing and being seen as a bad thing in society by the traditionalists and a good thing by the liberals. Throughout the 1960s many people thought that changes were being made for an individual’s best interest, many disagreed and thought the 1960s was a period when numerous things went wrong and it all came down to what you truly believed in at the time. The difference was in if you were part of the society that liked the more traditional way of life and agreed with the traditional standards or if you were a liberal and like the new modern way of life better.

References
Retrieved from http://www.thepastisablast.com/funfacts/fun_facts_1960s.htm
Retrieved from http://www.mededtrust.org.uk/files/40yearsimpact1967Abortion.pdf Retrieved from http://www.getbracknell.co.uk/news/s/2078734_national_womens_register Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ Retrieved from http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/WR-10.html (Purchase Marriage is Not Allowed, Li Kuei-ying, China – 1960)