@Chuckles A lot of the "simplicity" was just enforced conformity.
There were no Black people in my Bay Area neighborhood because the VA wouldn't write home loans for them there (and the deeds probably had racial covenants).
There were no gays in public life because coming out was social suicide.
Women stayed home and took care of the kids because few of them had any other option.
It looks simple in retrospect, but it wasn't. It was a strenuously maintained illusion, an invisible prison.