Why were children and women devalued so much in the 1950s and before?

 The primary reason was just that children died a lot especially between zero and 12 from childhood diseases and accidents. If you look at how dangerous the things were that people did with kids then on many different levels you can see why so many children died from neglect, ignorance, accidents, childhood diseases etc. And in regard to women often men didn't take them very seriously and lied to them a lot about a whole lot of things. There was definitely men speak and women speak and men and women had totally different things they said to each other than to members of their own sex. To some degree it's still that way in parts of the U.S.

Here is one example of my experience as an 8 year old. My father rented me a horse at age 8 and put me on it in Griffith park in Los Angeles and slapped the horses behind and it took off running. "I was a cowboy like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans!".

But, eventually the horse slowed down and begrudgingly did what I signaled for it to do with my heels and the reins and my body positions. But, this was the first time I was left alone with a horse and I had never had one riding lesson in my life. It was sort of like a father throwing his child into the water in the hopes that the child learned to swim. At one point I did this with my own son when he was 4 to see if he could swim. He could sort of but it also traumatized him until I jumped into the water with him and assisted him. 

But, on horseback I was now several miles from the stables alone in someplace I had never been before at 8 years old on a horse I never met before who had to ride with hundreds or more different riders over the years. So, this horse when I turned him back towards the stable and hay and water took off at a run with me and almost killed me on barbed wire and fences and tree branches. So, only because I was an am very coordinated and survival oriented did I actually survive all this.

When I returned to the stable I had a different perception of my father than before. I realized he wanted me to be a man and to make my own decisions just like he had been forced to from 4 years old on too.

I had more respect for myself and my father after this but also realized that some fun was on the edge of death too. So, I had to think differently if I was going to survive everything I would have to encounter in life.

But, also remember this is the 1950s when things were very very different than now worldwide.