I was glad to see Barbara Billingsley defend the show as realistic as far as she could remmeber, on one interview a few years ago.
While I was going to high school (1982-1986), in one of my classes, out of the blue the teacher pulled out the 16mm projector to run a couple of films. The films turned out to be instructional films from the early 1950s. Cant recall the EXACT titles, but I think one was called "How to be polite", and the other was "How to ask for a date". The films were cheaply made with cheap looking sets, and unknown actors. In the films, the actors were incredibly polite to each other and the only rare slang words that were used by the teens in these films were along the lines of "golly" and "gee whiz".
Throughout the films, my fellow classmates laughed uproariously at the obviously antiquated words, slang and ways of how people communicated and dealt with each other. Except for me. I was the only classmate not laughing because I found the films quite enchanting. Here was a rare glimpse into another, much nicer world in which people treated each other with more kindness and respect than they did in the present.