I'd only be in it for the ability to buy a house, except that I'd share it with friends instead of getting married and settling down. I'm a bit too demiromantic for that right now.

He was younger…. He wants to go back to a time when he was young and free perhaps

Personally, I want to go back to the way in the 1950's had livable wages where people could afford housing, food, and health services. I would also like to go back to an internet before corporations destroyed it with all their AI and tracking.

It's never about the real past for them. It's about the fake shallow image of the past they yearn for.

The 50s, yeah, when 'howl' was published and every single adult was on meth qaaludes cocaine and a BAC that would today get you rushed to the ER for just about every waking moment. But thats not what they remember. They get the simplified idealized propaganda version, and like it. Everything is fantasy rp to them.

Same with the crusades, early america, and everything else they like.

people that wax nostalgic for the 1950s are either:
A) folks who only see how advantageous it was for a white middle class cis straight man with a GI Bill, and just forget and ignore the rest of the reality of the era, or
B) folks that actively want to roll back civil rights for minorities, and would probably prefer the 1850s, if only they had pickup trucks back then.

He was young.

Being young, is nice. Mostly because you don't have to deal with a lot of the issues that e.g. a house, children and maybe the marriage is not as loving as it used to be.

So he misses being young, but instead of realizing that he was just young. He thinks about what was different and as your responses imply, he blames foreigner for the change. As you expressed that he thinks of you as just a girl, he is probably also sexist and the 50s were much more sexist as it still is.

In other words, culture changed, he didn't and he is old.

It is because he has a mythical view of that decade.

Because the propaganda aimed at getting women to remember their place and get back to domestic chores, still lingers today and people think that's HOW it was, not that they had to try and shove a cat back in a bag, somehow. When women had to do all the blokey jobs while the men's were all at war, and realised, yeah, they're capable of this, sometimes better at it, earning a wage, something unheard of for women, as they would still need a man to have a bank account or credit card or sign anything or have a lease on a house, until the 1970s, in some places. But yeah. It wasn't like that. Women were miserable and oppressed and drugged up just to get by. Grandma's hydrangeas were sometimes the only way to leave a violent relationship. But yeah, probs was fine for the blokes. They got to fight in a war, pocket some trauma to take home, force themselves back into the daily grind with no recognition of that trauma and nowhere to outlet it... I'm not going to start on intergenerational trauma, I promise.

Either that or, the grass is always greener.. Yk.

The USSR existed back then and the USSR was doing very well at the time up until 1975,
right after the petrodollar scheme was made and SWIFT was introduced.
Because of that, the US had strong labour unions.
Socialism was popular back then,
although the US was also able to propagandize that it was explicitly not doing that in the slightest.

Nowadays, the US will have to fight again against capitalism.
And capitalists are warring to survive, not just abroad,
but at home as well.
Their ideology currently is that capitalism has won,
communism has lost and therefore any concessions to the left
will no longer have to be made.

And US Social democracy isn't coming from the top this time,
when FDR decided to take a turn for the left and continued going left,
up until Jimmy Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagen.

This time it's coming from Zohran Mamdani
and this time it looks like it's taking the form of democratic socialism,
a step more to the left than social democracy.

With better job availibility, your father would have had a much easier time
maintaining a good income and thus a family.
You however, would have a trade-off.
Better job security, but little to no knowledge of your sexuality.
Also terrible medical practises, barbaric in some fields.

~~Better~~ good wages

I want the economy of the 50s and civil rights for everyone.

Sadly, it seems like we're moving the economy further away from the 50s and only bringing civil rights back there...

I feel like it would be harder for me then as a queer person.

This is why they want it