"In My Times..."

If your dad is 55, and was not active in the '68 movement, it's quite possible that he arrived late to the opening of society, at least in Mexico.

In any case, I can bet, almost for sure, that his parents were sexually repressive. All your grandparents' generation lived by taboos.

1968 broke that, but only for the urban university educated middle class. Things changed little by little, but constantly, over the next decades. Faster with some social groups, slower with others. But the transformation has been throughout.

So yes, it's a good guess to say that in his times, things were different.
Not all of them, but most of them were worse. Keep that in mind.

(I'm 50, Avándaro generation -if that means something to you-, and had to fight, with many of my peers, for our social, sexual and political freedom, back then, when Mexico was a big moral/social jail, disguised as a country).

Your pater was born in the late 1950's, and that was a very different time. People tend to acquire their values from their parents and peers. From infancy to around the age of five, the family environment is supreme. From around five up until puberty, children are progressively more influenced by their peers, and the world outside the family. To understand your parent's world, you need to know the something values and circumstances of your grandparents.

Your grandparents were the product of the Great Depression and World War II. They had experienced great hardship, and were for the first time feeling secure and optimistic about the future. An Armistice had just halted the fighting in Korea. The Cold War was on and Communism backed by a bloated military armed with atomic weapons was a threat. The McCarthy witch-hunt had Americans looking under their beds for spies and Communist fellow-travelers. Eisenhower the heroic war leader was in office, and the public loved his lack of fervor and fire. Nixon was Vice-President. Americans were wealthier than their parents, and were determined to live the good life. Home ownership soared, and the G.I. Bill provided young veterans with useful University educations. Professionals were thought to be doing very well if they earned $10,000/year, and inflation was low. Gasoline cost much less than a dollar a gallon, and you got a premium prize for filling up the tank. Your grandparents probably weren't long off of the farm, and family farms still made up a significant part of American agriculture. The Federal Government had returned to a "hands off" policy when dealing with the internal governments of the various States, and of large businesses. Credit buying was generally looked down on. Savings were high, and most families worked hard to remain within their means.

Television was only available to reasonably well-off folks who lived near major urban areas. Radio was mostly AM and pop music tended toward romantic ballads and comic tunes. Baseball was still America's game, and attendance in support of the local team was high entertainment. Movies were still mostly produced by the large studios who had iron-clad contracts that permitted them to control their stars lives. Movie scripts had pass a censorship board if they were going into general release. Sex was only talked about in very round-about ways, and never in mixed company. Unmarried pregnancy was a deep family shame. Abortion was illegal everywhere, but backstreet illegal abortions killed thousands of young women annually. Drug use was uncommon, except for alcohol and tobacco, both of which were accepted and used widely, often in excess. Children were pampered, but disciplined and required to show respect for their elders and other authority figures. Summer was for outdoor sports, like baseball and touch football. Girls seldom played with boys after around age 5-7. Boys emulated their fathers, and girls aspired to be like their homemaking mothers. Indoor games were for inclement weather, and kids spent a lot of time outdoors playing with friends.

Blacks were still lynched in the South for being "uppity", and Jim Crow Laws were still common even outside the South. Police officers could obtain confessions by torture, and defendants had no inherent right to legal counsel. Capital punishment was accepted and practiced in most States.

Your parents early values and expectations came from the family (1958-63). As your parents began to look outside the family, things were changing pretty fast. To understand those influences you need to know about the 1960's. Camelot, The Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights activism, individualism, Rock'n Roll, and the early stages of Vietnam all were part of your parent's first exploration of the world outside the family.

With the election of JFK, a younger generation was rebelling against the drabness of their parents world. People were becoming more politically and socially active. JFK was much more assertive of American interests overseas, and encouraged the young to join the Peace Corps. Communist challenges to American interests were met much more firmly than before, and JFK's administration began to "push back" against Communist probes. Vietnam and Cuba are two fine examples. The nation was more frightened of nuclear holocaust. bomb shelters became more common.

JFK was idolized. He was a handsome war hero, who was still young and vital. He and his perfect family were cultured, sophisticated and the model for many Americans. Rock music had been around for awhile, with Elvis introducing "Race" music to American teens. By the early sixties the music was well launched, though still scandalous to the older generation. The Beatles and English rockers were beginning to take America by storm. Television was now more common, and a color television was available for the Disney Hour. Young America was much more urban, and small towns and villages suffered population loss. Higher education was beginning to be the norm for many middle-class youth. The old Hays Office was scrapped and movies began to push the limits. Married people in the movies now seldom had twin beds, and teenage passion was sympathetically treated.

The old Beat Generation that followed WWII morphed into the Hippies. The Hip life style was dedicated to poverty, but personal actualization. Free love remained a constant from earlier bohemian movements. Poetry and Jazz were hip. Rebellion against the strictures of society was thought a virtue. To be arrested and jailed for demonstrating against war or Jim Crow was to become a hero. Cheap wine and half-baked idealism filled countless coffee houses. Marijuana was common, but speed and the opiates were frowned upon. LSD was legal, but not nearly so prevalent as hindsight seems to make it. We rejected the plodding middle-class values of our parents, at least publicly.

Your parents would have been too young to likely have been a part of any of these movements, but they would have seen them on television, heard their parents and friends talking, and probably fantasized running away to join a commune, and striking a blow for Universal Peace, and Civil Rights. They were probably the last of the generations to be raised in real old-fashioned families. I can certainly understand their nostalgia.

Fbaezer, I share your perception of social cultural change in Mexico. I lived for a year in Mexico City in 1955-56, and have visited there regularly (I've lived in the state of Chiapas--a very different environment--three years off and on). Mexico City was a charming city in that year, but its mores were atrocious. Women in particular lived in moral straight jackets. The change has been remarkable. The political corruption remains and pollution is disastrous, but the social life has improved/relaxed immensely.

I think Mexicans are more sexually conservative than Americans, generally speaking. Things like kids getting married at a very young age to leave the house. It translates in the US as Mexican-American and other Hispanic kids having sex at a young age, not getting married and having children. Conservative social structures concerning men and women are also still very prevalent in Mexico, whereas in the US women's liberation and feminism have made enormous strides. US conservatives even like to claim women's rights as their own accomplishments.

But all the same, I know of many, many people who belong to "the older generation" in Mexico who have illegitimate sons and daughters--love children--from early love affairs. Heck, my father, who is old enough to be my grandfather, he's eighty years old, had an older half-brother who was illegitimate from my grandfather. But that was near the turn of the last century, and I guess things were very different for the hacendados, and that kind of lifestyle no longer exists in Mexico.

Thanks for the historic background Asherman, though Ill have to state a couple of things...

He wasn't born in the late 1950's, its late (very late) 1940's. And although many of the events that you narrated did affect the global society, some had impact, for the most part, only in the States.

It is the values part that interests me though... definitely sexuality is much more exposed now due to a number of factors (yet I guess not as much in Mexico as in the US), there are a lot of single women with children, some people are getting married at very young ages (and some prefer to not even marry), and homosexuality is being more accepted. But, they all existed back in those days right? Is society running to its own doom? Are this bad times compared to those?

i think that regardless what happened within the world as a whole, times not only change but cease to exist in physical and mental mediums.

for instance your father my also be referring back to His time, relating to the hardships he faced as an individual. He may refer back to a time when he was dating for the first time, which would be "back in the day"

I too am only young, but me and my friends increasingly find ourselves remembering better times, as it were.

In regards to single mothers and their general acceptance 'nowadays', in WA, Australia, there was an institute dedicated to 'helping' single mothers. As they were outcasts of society, the church found it necessary to 'assist' them by allowing them to board in a basic orphanage. Here, they were worked everyday and forced into being practicing catholics and believing that however they had concieved was wrong. The fathers of these children were never punished however, so it is interesting, as you say, to note the greater acceptance that single mothers have today. I think the world is gradually realising that Man, and in particular White Man, has no greater rights over other races or genders.

If i can remember correctly i think there were also many feminist movements in the decades your father has lived, and much has been won for women.
The same is also true about racial discrimination.

Ashermans history is very interesting. however, although you said many things only directly affected the Americas, America is the most powerful nation in the world, like it or not, and thus everyone is affected. If Something happens in USA, then the world thinks "Oh USA did it, we should do it".

My current (hopefully not for long ) prime minister "John Howard" currently kisses George W's arse daily. And is campaigning to basically follow the big GWB all the way to hell. (no offence to anyone)

So i think it is justified to say times have changed, and id say that you will probably start noticing for yourself how things change rapidly and affect everything around you.

Just be prepared to accept it the day you say: "In My Times, ... Things Were Different...!"

El Poh,

I'm sorry, I failed to note you live in Mexico. The principles are the same, but the social context would obviously be different. I was born and raised on the border at Douglas, AZ. Those we knew of Mexican heritage weren't much different than the Anglos, though the Mexicans were more uniformly Catholic. Mexican ranch owners and my Grandfather were friendly and seemed to have a lot of the same attitudes. Ranch hands were deferential to ranch owners, and the ranchers we knew treated hands almost like family. The hands always ate with the family, and when they returned to Mexico took with them cash, cloths and good things from our family to theirs. Some ranch hands had worked seasonally for over a decade on our rancho. It was a world of order, ruled by honor. Proper behavior was expected and the rules seemed very clear.

I remember at around age 7 being sent "in charge" of a work-party to build a small bridge across an arroyo. Of course, I was also told to strictly follow the advice of the senior hand. The Ranch lives forever as my homeplace, and the center of the universe. I've never had any trouble understanding why the Apache fought so hard to keep our homeland, and hope that when I die my ashes will be returned to a hidden spring there that marks the navel of the world.

My math was wrong, but that would only accentuate the perceptions I was talking about.

What was Mexico like in the sixties, culturally, morally and politically?

It was somewhat squizofrenic: an inward looking nation with a will to modernize. "Revolutionary Nationalism" meant to underline and praise the differences between us and the rest of the world ("Como México no hay dos"), to defend certain values of modernization while at the same time mantain other, traditional, values.
In politics, this meant that an authoritarian government had some pseudo-democratic ways, while at the same time it created a protection against a continuus one-person power. In the words of a professor in the 70s: we had "party bonapartism".
This cultural and political elements were key to the mores of the times. Strong machismo with open double-standards for men and women, strong influence of the Catholic church in everyday life, corruption, hierarchy (Father and Father Government Know What's Good For You), etc.
The middle class was weary with this state of things. This was more obvious with the young, who wanted drugs, sex and rock'n'roll but, most of all, social and political freedoms.
The whole structure started to brake in the '68 movement. It wasn't a once-and-for-all revolution, but a series of changes, with Mexico City as the focus. It radiated, in several waves, from the more urban, less traditional and more educated to the rest of the country.

Typically, most boys born before 1950 would have their first sexual encounter with a prostitute, and been taught to divide women in "good ones" (to get married to) and "easy ones" (to lay with, but not respect), to hate homosexuals and anyone "different", to sanctify hypocrisy.
Some of those boys -and their female counterparts-did not accept the rules and were the key to social change. But they were the minority.
Then came the "younger brethren". Many more, not only middle class, not only from Mexico City, and the numbers grew higher and higher until a generation passed away.

---

In this sense, things have changed in Mexico faster than in the United States.

According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2003 (an international poll on several themes):
In Mexico 68 % of the population favors both spouses to work (58% in the USA, 80% in Germany, 34% in Egypt).
In Mexico 61% thinks it's necessary to believe in God to be moral (58% in the US, 13% in France, 92% in the Phillipines).
In Mexico 54% considers homosexuality should be accfepted by society (51% in the US, 83% in the Czech Republic, 9% in Pakistan)

I can bet that, one generation ago, the social-moral views of the Mexicans were a lot closer to those of Egypt, Phillipines and Pakistan.


el_pohl

I really don't know your father.

Good one, Joe

On one level, "Times Change" for everyone every day.
Yet on another level an argument can be made that one person's experience of living through, say 1968, in the same block, let alone the same country as another person, might be radically different, though they lived next to one another through precisely the same times.

Your & my & everyone else's experience of 2004 is actually radically different on some levels, yet the same on others. Yet 30 years from now we'll look back and try to say: "oh yeah, look at the times we lived through" like it was all the same for us all every day. I don't buy it. Its all so superficial. Such a superficial construct.

We're in this human race at this particular time. I think most of the "differences" between now and 1968 and 300BC Greece are relatively superficial.

Your dad was & is experiencing the Human Condition, and so are you. Any differences in outer society in ~30-40 years are superficial relative to Ultimate Reality.

And another thing. (Warning: here comes a rant). Lets suspend disbelief and pretend "In My Time" might not be so superficial in the larger sense. The phrase "In My Time" always struck me as kind of preposterous and so random. You know, our 55 year old dads sit around saying "In My Time...blah blah blah." Yet how do they choose when "Their Time" was? George W. Bush is 58, and I'd say, like it or not, These are His Times, in a way. Reagan was 75+ when he was President, so was "His Day" when he was 30 or 77? Who is to say a 55 year old hasn't reached "His Time" yet? When exactly was "Their Time?" Why? For Bush & Reagan & many others, Their Time wasn't even had yet at 55. Yet some had Their Time at 17 or 25 or 35. Random. Well, one thing is certain: if s/he believes His/Her Time has passed, it most likely has, no matter what his/her age is. (/end rant)

On one level we're all the same, experiencing the same Ultimate Reality over & over, ad infinitum through millennia. Yet we're all different, experiencing each second in our own unique way.

I find these perceived "generational gaps" etc. to be mostly superficial. We're all more the same than we like to admit. And history repeats itself more than we like to admit.

The world would be better off if more people got off the superficial differences of time, country, culture, etc., and focused on the underlying constant at the foundation of the dance: Ultimate Reality.

Now excuse me while I go blow $8 on a 2000 calorie coffee milkshake at Starbucks.

Extra Medium,
"On one level we're all the same, experiencing the same Ultimate Reality over & over, ad infinitum through millennia. Yet we're all different, experiencing each second in our own unique way."

Very good. Unity and diversity occur simultaneously.

Enjoy your coffee.

Fbaezer, a very good portrait of Mexico past. It is the Mexico I have experienced since 1955, urban Mexico that is (I havn't been back since 1994). Provincial Chiapas has not changed significantly. I am very impressed by the changes suggested by the Pew survey. 68% favoring both spouses working? Is that middle class urbanites? Poor people (the so-called indiada) have always accepted, indeed required that everyone in the family work. But more amazing to me is the attitude toward homosexuality (54% acceptance). Again, I don't know if it is just the urban or both metropolitan and provincial Mexico. But I remember in my youth when transvestites from Guadalajara would go to the Feria de San Marcos in Aguascalientes in drag and work the food booths but flee back to Guadalajara once the fair ended and the ban on "puto"-hunting lifted. They might be killed in normal time.

Thanks fbaezer!

Extra Medium, I think what his dad is trying to say is that those were 'his times' simply because his son did not exist back there... in that relationship those were his times...

Or he could be saying 'my times' like you say when someone says he 'drank a glass of water', you immediately know that the person drank a glass filled with water... 'my times' might be saying 'when I was young'

On a direct answer to the question, I am only 19 and I have seen how things have changed, homosexuality is a great example, it's kind of trendy now. My dad has told me he has some trouble approaching me because he never had a close relationship with his dad. Those were different times, when dad and son couldn't be friends and more like boss and son, the man's word in the first half of the century was the law on a family and while this might still be true in many cases, it's nowhere near as popular as it was back then.

Okay, I guess the phrase "In My Time" is fine. Perhaps I was just having a caffeine headache. "In My Time" seems fine today. Note to self: Don't forget to take meds (coffee).

"A cup of coffee in the morning? Thats nothing. In My Time we'd drink 10 cups a day on our way to Starbucks.

We had to, because we had to walk 10 miles to school each day. And walking to school & home was all uphill--Both Ways!"