>Decades always have the same general trends: 50s are socially conservative, 60s counterculture, 80s mass privatization, ect.
The 1950s was so stiflingly socially conservative as a direct result of WWII, the return of G.I.s from overseas, and the Baby Boom. All those returning soldiers got married and started families pretty fast due to them having just stared death in the face and not wanting to lose their chance at a life, as well as things like the G.I. Bill, giving those same soldiers enormous steps ahead in getting an education or starting up a business. This sudden uptick in families required vast amounts of cheap living space to be found, and this is where the modern suburb got its start, as Levittowns began popping up all over the nation. Levittowns, the idea of which was created by one William Levitt, were efficient in the fact that they created the huge amounts of housing the Baby Boom required, but at the cost of every house being identical, sometimes even down to the paint job and shutters. Living in a suburb where every house looks the same, where every man goes off to work in the mornings and returns in the evenings, where every woman was simultaneously a housekeeper and a babysitter while also holding down the odd job, and where every child went to now-ubiquitous public schools, it was almost impossible to
not be conformist, something only amplified by the Fourth Great Awakening. While some artists like Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys broke from the status quo (Elvis in particular was very controversial for his 'suggestive' dance moves, which basically entailed slightly gyrating his hips to his music), everything was, on the surface, conformist, neatly encapsulated in the box of social conservatism and the Second Red Scare.
(I'm just regurgitating two APUSH chapters now, but screw it, I'm running with it.) With all this in mind, the 1960s essentially
have to go on the proverbial marijuana-fueled, sex-crazed, anti-war, anti-establishment acid trip that was the counterculture movement. America had been basically governed by the same societal rules since the 1930s, after the Great Depression killed off the high of the 1920s and conservatized the nation. That was something that could continue no longer, especially as things like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War flared up. Each and every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the reaction to the 1950s was counterculture. Honestly, the movement could have probably been pushed back a few years, but it'd be next to impossible to kill entirely if the 1950s of a timeline are anything like OTL. Can't really say anything about the 1980s, though. That's not my area of expertise.
TL;DR: If World War Two goes off similarly to OTL, the 1950s and 1960s will also be largely similar to OTL. Not
identical, but similar.
