Home

Normal Growth

As human beings, we go through seasons of life. The psychologist Erick Erickson is perhaps best known for viewing life in distinctive stages and identifying the characteristics of each. They include:

 Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy from birth to 18 months)

Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Toddler years from 18 months to three years)

Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool years from three to five)

Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority (Middle school years from six to 11)

Stage 5: Identity vs. Confusion (Teen years from 12 to 18)

Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adult years from 18 to 40)

Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle age from 40 to 65)

Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair (Older adulthood from 65 to death

Erickson’s stages of development might be applied to national life. Nations are born, mature, age, and many die. Without trying to force all eight stages on American history, we can see this general trend in the narrative of our own nation. We look back on its infant stage: the colonies, the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the writing and adopting of our Constitution that established our government essentially as find it today. Then came the growing pains seen in the Civil War and our transformation from a predominantly agrarian and rural nation to a more industrial nation with the migration of people to towns and cities. Perhaps we might view World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II as the times when America grew to adulthood. During that era we became the dominant military and financial nation in the world.

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, our nation experienced a fairly high degree of stability. There were the usual political and societal disruptions encountered by every nation, especially one the size of the United States. However, national life seemed quite stable and predictable. The point has been made that though the two dominant political parties had differing platforms, looking back, the distinctions were not all that great.

Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver was a TV sitcom, airing from 1957 to 1963, that depicted a middle-class household living in a suburban American town during the post–World War II era. The plot features the everyday life of the Cleaver family. Theodore “Beaver,” Cleaver,  was depicted as a well-meaning and good kid but who frequently got into minor trouble. Beaver’s parents displayed the love but authority typical of that era. Many in our nation view that program as symbolizing life in America during the 1950s.

Many older Americans, who personally experienced that era, identify those years as representing the real America. That culture embodies who we are. For then it conveyed our nation as they remember it and as it should be. It was the America of low crime, low taxes, marriages and families together, fathers working, moms raising kids, drugs virtually unheard-of, most everyone going to church, starting the school day with Scripture reading, prayer, and the pledge of allegiance, an almost universal commitment to the mandates of Scripture, and people living responsibly. Yes, the racial problem existed, but great strides were being made to rectify that problem, and had we continued on the trajectory of that culture, the racial problem would be virtually non-existent today.

Some people in contemporary America deny that the Leave It to Beaver America ever existed. Rather they contend that it was only a “made for television” fiction. That is not true. I happened to live through the 1950s and can attest to the idyllic nature of that era. We never locked our front door at night or our car doors when we went shopping in a larger nearby town. In 1953, Frankie Lane recorded “I Believe,” and in 1955 the McGuire Sisters released a version of the popular song “He,” that extoled the greatness of God, His desire to have a relationship with human beings, and willingness to forgive. That song reached No. 10 on Billboard‘s chart of Most Played in Juke Boxes. Pat Boone, in 1958, released “A Wonderful Time Up There,” about future rejoicing in heaven. When it came out, that recording ranked No. 4 and made No. 24 on Billboard’s year-end list for 1958.

Leaving Erickson’s Trajectory

What if America had stayed on that trajectory? Sure, America would have changed. Just like with Ericson’s stages, time produces change, and that change can be good and healthy. We can only speculate what America might be like today if we had managed to carry the culture of the 1950s through the decades that intervened and into the present. Had we followed Erickson’s stages of development while maintaining traditional America culture, we might anticipate that America would have moved into the role of a global grandfather, enjoying the security and stability engendered by its Christian cultural roots, supported by a stable governmental system, protected by our natural boundaries on East and West, our vast store of human capital generated by our Christian culture producing unparalleled wealth, and employing that wealth and power to promote peace and stability at home and among the nations of the world. Though perhaps we might anticipate that, like other nations, America ultimately would die, the advantages listed above seem to suggest that it would have lived to a ripe old age.

However, history reveals a different outcome. A different version of America emerged. We will discuss that new rendition of America next.