In the West. Currently, the received practice (it seems to me) is to speak of the 1950s with a sneer, as if this were a byword for a dark age that represented everything bad (rightly or wrongly). This is the only attitude I have ever really known. I was wondering if there were any social historians on reddit who could explain when or how that came to be. Did liberals in the 70s sarcastically mention the recent fifties in order to denigrate something? 80s? Was there ever an age of 50s nostalgia, like when Back to the Future was made? Was it ever a widespread idea to the think of the 50s as a safer and more wholesome time?
BTW, I know that there are good and bad things to be said about the 50s; the only thing that concerns me here is how people afterwards looked back on that time.
Sorry if this is too recent social history or otherwise an incorrect use of /r/askhistorians.
I'll speak to part of your question on a way in which some denigrate the 1950s. In the 1950s, the middle class was growing as good jobs were relatively plentiful. It was easier to support a family on a single income. Women faced social pressure to stay home, raise kids, and be perfect housewives. The Feminine Mystique is definitely worth a read, even just the first chapter, "The Problem that Has No Name," as it speaks to this social shift and the resulting dissatisfaction that many women felt as housewives. Thus you have the "1950s housewife" being used as a way to reference a sort of unattainable, unrealistic goal for how a woman should be as well as a way to represent the oppression of women (a lack of focus on women's education and career development).
I would argue that the post war period is one of the most overly venerated periods of American history despite it's faults.