The Golden Age of Something

This Recording shares a glorious LIFE magazine feature, A Generation of Esthetes?, first published in 1951:

They show no strong urge either to glorify or to rebel against their surroundings. They are without public heroes or villains. They are reported to be not so wild as their parents, nor so hard working. They gripe less and hope less. They are willing homemakers and fall quickly into monogamy, more from imitation than from any moral or economic imperative. They are refreshingly free of bigotry or race prejudice; and they believe, if in anything, in democracy and the brotherhood of man. Yet they seem skeptical and incurious about the machinery and safeguards of democracy.

Of course, the fact that the profiled youngsters are a) paying for music and b) doing so with money earned at “their pick of the jobs that abound” and c) not arguing about Girls does anchor the piece firmly in the era for which it was destined.