Was Rock & Roll Responsible for Dismantling America's Traditional Family Customs in the 1950's and 1960's

No R&R did not break up the traditional family. The suburbs, Hollywood, and drugs took the U.S. on a new path. The car had become the most important liberating factor for teenagers across the land.Rock and Roll did save the radio, with TV becoming so powerful as in the advertising for Chevrolet. "See the USA in your Chevrolet" was advertising at its most powerful. So when the teenager was yearning for the freedom of the road and James Dean was making his counter-culture movies TV was passe to the teenager since he/she were on the road where TV didn't play, but the radio became so powerful.

The influence of Rock n Roll on family life in the 1950's was very different in the US and the UK.

In the US - especially in the South - Rock n Roll was seen as a Black music (which it very nearly was). White families who were racially prejudiced (especially Christian ones) had a fundamental objection to their children listening to Black music, and there were many racially-motivated campaigns to prevent radio stations from playing the music. (The film the Buddy Holly story has some essentially accurate reflections on ingrained racism in the Texas music scene of the time).

In the first instance Rock n Roll led to major generation conflict in traditional families (though in the longer term it probably helped soften the new generation's antipathy to Black culture).

In the UK the race problem was different (most Black British were from former colonies - particularly in the Caribbean) and Rock n Roll was more a generational than a race thing. In the UK the frictions caused by Rock n Roll usually varied on a family to family basis.

Some parents didn't like "jungle music," which made the kids like it even more. Baby Boom "culture" is, basically, rock 'n roll. And just look what happened! These days Rock is so simultaneously Establishment and "Hep" that the poor Generation Z kids are afraid to rebel against it! All commercials on TV now sound like the Ramones! Rock didn't just Stand, it Loomed!