70th birthday gift ideas for a mom or dad born in 1957

Start with the month they were born

You do not need a big idea. You need their birth month and about an hour.

1. Find three prices from that month. Milk, eggs and coffee work well, because they moved. Coffee fell almost every month of 1957, from 108.2 cents a pound in January to 95.0 cents in December.
2. Find the record at the top of the chart that month. In September it was "Diana" by Paul Anka, who was sixteen. From late October it was Elvis with "Jailhouse Rock."
3. Pick one news story from the same weeks. For a fall baby, that is easy. Sputnik went up on October 4, and on December 6 the American Vanguard rocket rose about four feet and blew up on live TV.
4. Leave room for their side. Write down three questions only they can answer, and plan to ask them in person.

That is the whole gift, in rough form. A card with those four things on it already beats most cards.

One 1957 detail for every kind of parent

Every parent has a door into 1957. Pick the one that fits yours.

For the music fan: on January 6, CBS filmed Elvis Presley from the waist up on The Ed Sullivan Show, so people at home could see him sing but not move. By August, American Bandstand was showing teenagers dancing to the same music every weekday.

For the sports fan: the Milwaukee Braves beat the Yankees in the World Series, winning game seven 5-0 in New York. That same autumn, the Dodgers and Giants said they were leaving for California.

For the reader: The Cat in the Hat came out on March 12, 1957. Your parent may well have learned to read on it.

For the car person: in April, Ford sold the Skyliner, with a steel roof that folded into the trunk at the touch of a switch. It cost $2,945.

For the parent who lived through hard news: on July 6, Althea Gibson won Wimbledon. Eleven weeks later, it took soldiers of the 101st Airborne to walk nine Black students into a school in Little Rock. The Library of Congress still marks her win.

Three facts about the day they were born

A toast or a card needs one line that makes people stop. The book's first chapter has a few.

• They arrived in a crowd. There were 4,254,000 American babies born in 1957, more than in any year before. When the record finally fell in 2007, the government called 1957 "the peak of the postwar baby boom."
• It almost certainly happened in a hospital. By 1955, 95 percent of American births took place in one. Two generations earlier it was about a third. Their own grandmother was probably born at home.
• Being born had a price. One hospital bill from 1957 survives in the book: $19 a day for the room, $4 a day for the baby and $20 for the delivery room. Five days came to $196.80. That is one family's bill, not an average.

Pair the story gift with something she will use

Most gift lists for a mom turning 70 lean on comfort and experiences: a soft robe, a spa day, a trip, a dinner out. Those are fine. They just do not ask her anything.

The two work well together. Give the comfort gift on the day. Give the story gift with a plan: tell her you will come over next Sunday with a pen. Then do it.

The card is signed and the gift is still a guess

It is a week before the party. You have a card. You have a gift card for a store they never go to. You know it is fine. You also know it is the same thing everyone will bring.

Here is the thing nobody says out loud. You want to know about their life, and you are too shy to just ask. Most of us are.

A gift about their year gives you a reason to ask, and gives them a reason to answer.

How The Year You Arrived: 1957 does the work for you

This is the problem The Year You Arrived: 1957 was written for. We like it because Nancy Whitaker did the slow part: every price and date has a source, and the sources are listed at the back.

For the Person Giving This Book is a short note just for you. It tells you where to start and why the blank pages matter most.

The Year, Month by Month gives each month of 1957 its own page: the news, the top record, the jobless rate and the actual prices recorded that month. The food prices come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics bulletin printed in 1959. Turn to their birth month first.

Your Own 1957 is the blank part. Questions about the day they were born, their first house, their first teacher and what they thought seventy would feel like. You can fill it in with them.

If you want help with the questions, see our page on questions to ask your parents about their childhood.