I suspect that it wasn't all that rosy back then. We get a distorted picture of the times looking at TV reruns of Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch. Affluent upper middle class families living in well to do suburbs. Mr. Brady worked as an architect supporting 6 kids, a full time housekeeper, his beautiful stay at home wife, and owned 2 cars, and lived in Pacific Pallisades. Yeah right. Maybe it was that ideal of prosperity, "the good life" that made the show so popular however unreal it was.
The reality was I think a lot of parents both worked and lived in modest houses- a lot smaller that the ones now, and were frugal, maybe had their own gardens, and did side jobs - at least that was how it was where I grew up.
I do think however that our American standard of living has most certainly declined from our hey days of the 50's when the norm was that a one income household was able to support a family of 4, own a home, have a new car every 3 years, take a family vacation every year, and have mom stay at home - cook, clean, raise kids. The phenomenon of middle class women taking jobs started out as a liberalization of a women's right to work in the 60's and 70's but has ended up being a necessity just to get by and survive today.
Not to knock women's rights but there was a time, I think up until the early 70's where women were only "accepted" in two main professions - teaching and nursing. Consequently since it was the only field they could advance within, only the best and the brightest women taught American kids and it had a great impact on the quality of grade school education - we lost that valuable resource when professional women sought other more lucrative or interesting jobs after women's lib and I don't think public education ever recovered. I think it was the start of the slow decline of the educational system in this country.
I wonder if we are really better off now, if we are going to have it better than our parents or grandparents. Socially no, standard of living-wise....? I guess it's hard to compare apples to oranges, then to now. Does it matter? Is being nostalgic on the past going to make the present or future any better?
And when did we start looking back for our inspiration instead of looking forward for it?