We have this cultural image of a pre-1960's couple remaining virgins until their wedding night with chaperoned dates and shotgun-wielding fathers. I'm curious how accurate that picture really is.
How would an average young heterosexual couple, perhaps aged about 20, in pre-World War II America (maybe late 19th/early 20th centuries) have approached sexual intimacy? What would their expectations surrounding intimacy be with each other? Especially as their relationship grew more serious. Let's say they were in a loving relationship and on trajectory for an engagement and then marriage. Would they both have the expectation that there would be absolutely no physical intimacy between them until their wedding night? Or would they expect a gradual increase in physical intimacy as their relationship progressed. Perhaps they would see sexual intercourse as off-limits until marriage because the lack of reliable contraception, but would they expect other things such as cuddling, "feeling up", manual sex, or oral sex before their marriage? If so, at what point along their timeline of courting, engagement, and marriage would they expect those things? Is there a point where they would expect to progress to intercourse, perhaps after their engagement? Would they talk about this with each other, as couples often do today?
What would their families think? Would parents try to prevent them from having time alone? Or would the parents have the opinion (as most parents do today), of "Oh, they're engaged, it's all right if they engage in sexual intimacy as long as they don't risk an unplanned pregnancy." Or even, "it's all right if they're having intercourse because they're already engaged and going to be married next month anyways".
And how might this differ between social classes, by region, by religion, etc.?
I realize this was such a taboo at that time, that there might not even be good reliable sources about it. Perhaps only people's personal journals or letters detailing their thoughts and personal experiences.
Hi! So talking about sex and being intimate was a lot LESS taboo in the past than you think.
Unmarried and even single people absolutely had intimate physical contact with each other. Birth control was available in much of the US from at least 1920 thanks to Margaret Sanger and other women’s rights advocates.
Before this point, there could have been serious repercussions for middle class white women socially if they became pregnant. Middle class white women were supposed to be paragons of virtue and purity. Working class women did not face the same moral constraints: the middle class belief was that they couldn’t live up to such standards, and in their own minds, working class women had more important things like survival to worry about. Upper class white women could afford to be “sent away” for the term of a pregnancy or find a doctor willing to do an abortion.
Southern and rural/small community where women often faced more serious repercussions as the power of reputation and the gossip/rumor mill reached the majority of the community. Southern white women in particular were figured as pure paragons of absolute virtue standing tall against (and vulnerable to) the rowdiness of white men and especially the perceived aggressiveness of Black men. Any behavior by whites women that threatened to transgress or prove the fallacy of those depictions were subject to swift reprisal. A significant number of the madams in southern cities were actually “fallen” middle class whites women who had been disowned by their families and found ways to survive and even thrive on their own.
In general, men across the board were immune from consequences because they didn’t get pregnant. In the period you’re talking about, there are competing visions of manhood. One is a reserved, emotionless Victorian gentleman, whereas the other is a sort of rough and tumble Teddy Roosevelt figure. Both were allowed to take what they wanted, but how they did so was quite different. A manly man would approach you at a bar and pull you around back to make out in the alley. A gentleman would take you out into the garden or another quiet room to make out. Both would absolutely have been open to sex, and neither would have faced negative consequences for doing so. Ted Ownsby’s Subduing Satan focuses on southern masculinity, but offers some insight into these competing visions of manhood and what that meant for young people growing up in this period.
In cities, a treating culture developed at the turn of the twentieth century whereby young women could trade intimate favors for other experiences without being considered a prostitute. So a young working class woman could doll herself up and be taken to a fancy dinner, movies, or other entertainment by a man who was frequently (but not always!) a little older or of higher social standing. His expectation would be some kind of reciprocal intimacy such as a make out session, groping, etc. Full on penetrative sex was not usually on the table, but could be, unfortunately with or without the woman’s consent. In cities, communities were paradoxically smaller - the number of people who would be scandalized by your behavior was limited, and the ability to punish transgressions was much more limited because there were so many other places to go. Most of the least restricted and judgmental access to birth control was in northern cities, so here people did play faster and more loose. Kathy Peiss’s Cheap Amusement is a good source for treating culture.
The advent of cars also changed things for young people who could afford them in the middle and upper classes. By the pre World War II period you mentioned, cars were becoming more accepted and widespread across the country. Young people with access to cars could go farther away from any oversight faster. They could actually find private spaces away from other people. But that doesn’t mean that pre-cars they didn’t do these things! Sneaking out and about is not a modern invention :)