My mother came from a family with two generations of young widows. From bitter experience she knew that a woman could not rely on a husband to keep her from want. She was very keen on her three daughters being educated and having professions. As she said, in an offhand manner, marriage isn't a career, most people get married.
She was offered an opportunity to return to work on a part time basis when my youngest sister started nursery - and she grabbed it and worked for the rest of her life. She worked because she wanted to, not because she needed the money.
I am not so sure our life was quite so innocent, it just wasn't sexual. I was born during the war and the 1950s were awash with books and newspaper stories of the horrors of the Holocaust and the dreadful treatment of British PoWs in prison camps in the Far East. It was impossible to grow up then without reading detailed descriptions of everything that went on in the concentration camps in Germany. Bullying school was accepted as part of life.
No anti-bullying policies or even care about the bullied, you just had to tough it out. Both DH and I experienced vicious physical attacks from school bullies.
Life was different then, certainly, but no better, just bad things now were better then and bad things then are better now.