The great depression destroyed the social fabric of the us more thoroughly than did the civil war. The 1950s weren't normal, they were the result of a generations want for stability and domesticity when they had no idea what either looked like. For one thing the end of generational households to be replaced by nuclear family households was seen by the people at the time as worse than single parent households are today and with good reason.

That the majority of conservatives today pine for the 50s us that we not only lost the ability to have a stable society but even the memory of what one should look like.