Perspective

Growing up in the 90's, I was always made aware of the decline in our country's social values over the past decades. While my parents told me about the innocence of the 1950's, I witnessed the damage divorces did to friends of mine and saw kids in my supposedly nice suburban town lost to drugs. When in high school, I remember hearing a story about a group of 8th graders at a nearby middle school who had been caught running a prostitution ring for the boys. To me this was just further proof that society was getting worse every year. For my Sex and Marriage in American History term paper I've been reading City of Eros about prostitution in old New York. Scholars' best numbers show that back in 1870's New York 10% of women engaged in prostitution at some point in their life. As bad as current society can be, I doubt it's anywhere near this number. The crime rate and gang warfare then was also horrendous. I keep coming across stories in the papers of the time about young women visiting the city and getting kidnapped to be held as a sex slave or about men out with their families being accosted on the main city thoroughfares. Even the 1950's, as we have learned in this class, were more complex than people realize. I shall blog more about this in the future.