Did more people really wait until marriage to have s*x 50 and 60 years ago or is that just a front?

Question

it seems that back in the day chastity was the norm, but i also keep hearing how teen pregnancy was just as common then as it is now, it was just better hidden back then. so were the good old days really the "good old days" or is that just a ruse that older people use to make that era seem more virginal?

i'm not asking anyone to give their personal experiences (but feel free if you like) i'm asking about the social climate all around.

i guess what i'm asking is did young people have s*x as often back then (while not talking about it as much) or was there really a movement for social and sexual purity the way that many people from that time claim?

Answer 1

Well lets put it this way ,50 years ago 75 percent of my friends got married because they were expecting a baby ,as was the norm in those days you couldnt have a baby out of Wedlock ,it was frowned on ,,Most people in my group including myself with my husband to be ,I might add  indulged ,, s*x as always been around ,it just wasent talked about in those days  

Answer 2

It was very Normal.  Something that just was.  Once you give someone your Virginity it is gone, and that went to your spouse

Answer 3

I only knew of one girl who got pregnant up to high school.--and she was sent away somewhere to an aunts etc.

   Once birth control pills came out...that all changed.    

Answer 4

They waited.

Answer 5

This was in my parents time and the reason was that there was no reliable birthcontrol except for condoms and even they werent the best. Also having a child out of wedlock was considered shameful. When I got married in the 60's things had changed but we still lie and tell our children that we never "did it" before we were married. I'm sure they dont believe us but what the heck we can always try to fool em.

Answer 6

who knows, i think it might have been just as bad(well not really)  but there wasnt the same pressure that there is today. i think chastity is really important.

not many ppl respect themselves anymore x/

gets me frustrated.

Answer 7

From the statistics I have read yes - more people did wait until marriage then as opposed to now. I believe only ( if I remember correctly ) about 8% or so now wait as compared to about 60-70% then. Not sure how accurate this survey really is - you never know if people are telling the truth.

Answer 8

That's a load of hooey!

Answer 9

I was 18 and out of high school the first time I had s*x and that was in 72 and unheard of but my parents put the fear of all fears in me and I wasn't about to greet my dad with "I'm preganant".  This may sound really wierd but since you asked...my second marriage I did not have s*x with my husband till our wedding night, not because I was a virgin but because the first marriage I lived with my hubby before marrying him and this time I wanted to do it right so that God might really bless us. We messed around but no intercourse. Maybe that is why it didn't work! : P  LOL!

Answer 10

actually it's true

Answer 11

I think premarital s*x has always been very common since time began.  What was different in my generation was that many of us eventually married that first lover.  Many, many couples got married because a baby was on the way.  That was true of my generation as well as my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  I didn't have any firsthand accounts of times before then.

Answer 12

I myself waited until I got married before I engaged in s*x, that was about 20 years ago. My parents and grandparents also waited until they got married before they engaged in s*x.

Back then most folks did in fact wait until they got married before engaging in s*x, at least in our family anyway. s*x was very much alive back then, it just was not made to be out in the open as it is today. Folks back then were very embarrassed if they found out that they were pregnant and not married. Today most don't care.

Answer 13

Shame on you, s*x before marriage, heavens no!!!   I'm referring to the 50's to mid '60.   Sure it was around , the forbidden fruit.  And for me, and my friends it remained forbidden.  It was a temptation, the unknown always is.   I felt it would have been disrespectful to my parents, I was petrified at the thought of becoming pregnant.  It was, in my opinion , a wonderful gift to whomever I married to be a virgin bride.  You were not suppose to get married in white unless you were a virgin.  I was popular w/the guys, dated a lot, I didn't want that bad girl reputation , a lot of my dates named me ""ice maiden"" .  

I cannot remember any girls in high school becoming pregnant.  

I walked to the altar in my white bridal gown and as a virgin.  

I wish more  girls today would wait, sometime these days , it appears you can get pregnant from the drinking water.   As many young girls do indulge in s*x out of pure curosity.

Thanx for reading.

Answer 14

It was my experience that pre marital s*x was much less prevalent when I was a teen and even in college. FEW of the girls and young women I knew had s*x until around 18 or 19 and some even much later [until they married - as was the case with me].

If young girls/women had behaved as they do today, back in my youth, they would have been labeled as 'fast' and my mother wouldn't have allowed me to associate with them...not to mention they would have been 'talked about' as 'bad girls'.

In some ways the lessening of labels has been a good thing...in others it seems to have given birth to 'anything goes' - even for preteens

  

Answer 15

I suspect that premarital s*x was somewhat less common 50 or 60 years ago, simply because there was less access to birth control.  However, one may note that even as far back as the 1650's and 1660's, in Puritan New England (The Massachusetts Bay Colony), records show clearly that a really significant number of first children born to a married couple were born 6 or 7 months after the wedding.  Since second children appeared to go to full 9 months terms, this suggests that even the strict religious culture of the Puritans saw a great deal of premarital s*x between those who were courting or engaged to be married.

Answer 16

Say it isn't so!! Young girls back in the day, OK, the 60's liked s*x too. After all it was the era of the flower child, Aquarius and the sexual revolution. Back in ma's time they liked s*x too except they had to be more careful not to get pregnant because of the 'shame' it brought on the family. Look at Adam and Eve, when they left the garden of Eden they started having kids right away! And they were not even married! So, as you can see, s*x has been around since the beginning of time. Poppy

Answer 17

Some did & some didn't.  One thing was for certain....no one wanted to raise a child "out of wedlock"...that meant the child would be labeled as a b*****d by society.  It was a very different time.  

My own Mother remarried my Father when she found out she was pregnant after getting a divorce!  She never told me,,,,I figured it out by the dates & when I brought up the subject, she flatly refused to discuss it.  She died with her "secrets", as did my Father.  They lived with so many secrets.  I also have a twin & no one seems to have a record of an adoption.  I only have photos to prove this.  I suspect I have a twin brother or sister out there somewhere...if they're still living.  55 years is a long time to try to track things like this down for a definite answer to a lifelong questions of why people did the things they did 50 or 60 years ago!

Answer 18

Well I am not quite that old but in the "free love" days, it wasn't free. It also wasn't likely in a small northern Illinois rural town. I usually dated " good" girls and generally their parents ended up liking me better than the girl. As a matter of fact, most of the girls I dated were related like cousins and such.

They were " good " Lutheran girls. I was a typical hormone driven male dog. I don't believe I waited but my wife did. As a matter of fact, we didn't have any kids for over 3 years since I didn't think she was "that kind of girl".

If you want to know how it was in my town around 1940, Read the book called " Elmstown Youth" by Hollingshead. That book was written about my town and was required reading in a lot of schools for sociology class. It is still in print. The other book of my town was in reference to business and it was called " The Politics Of Jugtown"

My aunt,uncle, dad and future mom were all interviewed for that book as many people in our town were. My mom was a new high school teacher here and my relatives were students at the time. The town is very thinly disguised as far as family and street names. Give it a read.

Answer 19

s*x has been around for a long, long, long time and teens with hyperactive hormones have been around every bit as long.  (Get the picture??)

Answer 20

s*x was just as good in the olden   days        as it is today. The only thing different daddy had a shot gun, And the first baby always came early, And there were a lot  of orphanages,

Answer 21

Back in the 1960's I did volunteer work at a nursing home.  The age range was 70 to 100+.  This was at the height of the free love movement and the men were outraged at how immoral young women(but not the men) had become.  But the women would laugh at them behind their backs and say how things were always that way.  The women said the only thing different was that  women no longer had to lie about it and they all thought it was a good thing.

Answer 22

Lack of birth control was a really strong deterent to premarital s*x.

Public pregnancy was not fashionable until around 1970.

Answer 23

I do genealogy and several years ago when I was looking for some family members, I went through a number of birth records that were put together by the WPA in one of the world wars.

These records went back into the 1700's and a very few before that, mainly because those kinds of records were rarely kept back then. They were in the Census records.  Anyway, I was totally amazed to find the number of girls that had babies out of wedlock back then.  And, it continued as I came forward in the books.

Oh, for sure there was a movement for purity, and it came off as a kind of caste system.  However, the more prosperous of the families usually sent their daughters off to homes for unwed mothers, or kept them from public view until after the child was born and usually passed off as the daughters sister or brother.  

It certainly was an eye opening experience going through these things and gave history a different sort of look.

What was claimed at the time, was not the way it was. The parents did not want to be shamed by daughters that were in the "Motherly Way".

Answer 24

When I was young All the guys new the bad girls who went all the way The good girls you HAD to marry And most OF THEM were good girls IT IS TRUE