Was casual sex really any harder to get back in the 50s/60s? (war, Roman)
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When the Fed Govt tied highway funding in early 80s to drinking age it went from 18 to 21 pretty quick.
I could legally drink at 18 and I turned 18 of my senior year in HS and I used to go to clubs and bars on school nights. Meanwhile a few years later Juniors in College could no legally drink.
DWI was rarely enforced in 1970s and very early 1980s. It was not until MAAD and SAAD started up. I once went to nickel beer night when I was 18. Had at least 20 beers, somehow drove 10 miles to a disco had a few vodka and tonics and was going this curvey road and as soon as I hit a main road a cop pulls me over. He goes I crossed the yellow line I go so what the road is curvey. He then says you crossed the yellow line 23 times in last two miles. He checks my license and goes you are only like five miles from home, go home or you are in trouble. Made it two miles up road and went to another bar.
The DWI laws, raising drinking age to 21 and Herpes/Aids all happened between 1979 and 1984.
I remember driving around with a beer and when you passed your buddies you'd raise your beer. It was all legal too.
One thing that has changed in that is that illegitimacy has lost much of its censure from the community at large.
Girls who got pregnant in high school were oftentimes expelled. Those who weren't went away to "help grandma" and came back later. Everyone knew what the true story was if it was a small town.
Also, most pregnancies carried to term which didn't result in marriage had the child given up for adoption. Unwed mothers raising their child was almost unheard of.
Ironically tied to current goings on with demographics, white/European populations are shrinking both in Europe and North America due to forces unleashed in the 1960's and 1970's.
Access to safe and legal abortions along with reliable birth control has all but emptied out "homes for unwed mothers" and so forth. Where once places like post-war Britain had a surplus of children so much they shipped them to Oz, now a healthy white/European infant or child for adoption is hard to find on both sides of the Atlantic. White/European couples and singles both straight and gay have turned to the booming surrogate industry to have children.
These were Catholic institutions were girls who either got into "trouble" and or for host of other reasons were shipped off to and or placed by social services/courts. Some never to emerge from those convent walls ever again.
I have the impression that the 50s were one thing, and the 60s were something else again.
with the advent of birth control in the late sixties even the average guy was getting laid. Sigh.
I was stripped of my senior High School Awards because I was the students "condom" connection.
Of course, TODAY I'd receive an ADDITIONAL Award for preventing teenage pregnancies.!!!!
Birth control wasn't even really the spark* behind the sexual revolution. Penicillin was. Read up on it.
The sexual revolution lasted from the end of syphilis to the beginning of AIDS.
EDIT -- * I'm not saying The Pill had no effect, mind you -- but without penicillin, it wouldn't have had nearly the effect that it did.
*Thank you!* Wanted to mention this but didn't want to come off as a know it all.
While premarital sex did lead to problems (unwed motherhood) pregnancy is a self ending condition. After giving birth the child could be given up for adoption, that or methods could be employed to end before term. In any event much of the harm fell to the side it historically did; females.
Venereal disease OTOH was huge fear behind both sexes abstaining from premarital and or sex with someone you weren't sure was "clean".
Until post WWII when penicillin was released to the general public most other methods of dealing with Syphilis and other such diseases had limited effects. Syphilis was the most dangerous as it otherwise can lead to some very nasty outcomes including insanity and ultimately death.
By the 1950's and certainly into the 1960's and beyond a whole host of antibiotics for the first time in history made getting rid of VD almost a simple matter. A few (though painful) shots along with a healthy dose of shame and that was that.
Yes, it was more difficult. For one thing, girls matured more slowly, relatively speaking, so many had no interest in sex until the late teens or college age. Women had their first periods a little later, so pre-puberty lasted longer. Also, fear of pregnancy and STD's kept in line those who were at least curious about sex.
Films were made about this, back then. I forget the name of it, but there was one famous one that was about how teens had to restrain themselves, and one girl had a nervous breakdown as a result, and ended up in a "sanitorium", to recover.
The above statement flies in the face of people I knew who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s who assured me that the only real difference between then and now was 1) discretion; and 2) what "base" young couples were willing to go to. (Lots of "triples" were being hit back then, apparently.)
People "waiting" past their early teens is a very, very, very recent societal trend. Many of the posts on this thread are counter-intuitive from a basic biology standpoint.
The above statement flies in the face of people I knew who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s who assured me that the only real difference between then and now was 1) discretion; and 2) what "base" young couples were willing to go to. (Lots of "triples" were being hit back then, apparently.)
People "waiting" past their early teens is a very, very, very recent societal trend. Many of the posts on this thread are counter-intuitive from a basic biology standpoint.
Not really. Most of us have stated or inferred things varied in the 1950's an so pretty much by how things on the ground shook out locally.
The whole "Madonna vs. *****" thing really hit an apex in the 1950's with the whole post-war focus on
returning women to their "proper" place as wives and mothers.
Of course people still had sex and all the ways of doing so existed as they have for centuries. There were ways of *ahem* release on both sides that still would leave a girl intact as God made her if that was a concern.
In some communities premarital sex wasn't a big deal; people did what came naturally...
with the advent of birth control in the late sixties even the average guy was getting laid. Sigh.
I was stripped of my senior High School Awards because I was the students "condom" connection.
Of course, TODAY I'd receive an ADDITIONAL Award for preventing teenage pregnancies.!!!!
Not to mention being hired as an HIV prevention worker with skills in "alternative distribution methods...."
I'd say the 50s and early 60s were more prudish than today, but the late 60s to late 80s was less prudish than today, based on my knowledge of history. At least in America.
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Sigh; .....in the sixties
