Senior Washed Up Girls at Yale

Parents Forum
201

<p>I just started re-reading some old Robert Heinlein SF novels in ebook format, and was surprised at how frequently “friends with benefits” appears in his stories. That reminded me of some of the posts on this thread which talked about the lusty environment in grandpa’s and grandma’s day. Heinlein would have come of age in the latter 1920s and would have fit right in during the latter 1960s. </p>

<p>So what happened in the ultra-conservative 1940’s and 1950’s? Was that period the historic abnormality?</p>

202

<p>My D, a PhD student in history, suggests this refrain: “The Fifties were an anomaly.” I think it probably had to do with the pressures of getting all those Rosies into the kitchen after being pink slipped from factories so “our boys” could have jobs.</p>

203

<p>

Oh boy, do I remember transitioning from his “juvenile” SF novels to his more adult stories–they were pretty adult!</p>

<p>I do wonder how much of our uncertainty is caused by a disconnect between what was (and is) going on in real life, and what was (and is) being depicted in popular culture.</p>

204

<p>

</p>

<p>I think this can work in both directions. The idea that “in the good old days, kids did not act like this” is part of a disconnect between the espoused values and what was actually happening. </p>

<p>With both my parents being born in the 1910s, they sure did not report a conservative “real life” in America. WWI opened the eyes of the American troops most of whom had never left the immediate area where they were born before going overseas. Flappers after WWI represented a “loosening” in fashion and female conduct (smoking, hair and make-up, sex). Recall that Prohibition was from 1920-33 and the night club, speakeasy was part of the roaring 20s. </p>

<p>Unwed mothers.</p>

<p>In Dallas, the KKK opened a home for (white) unwed mothers in 1923–Hope Cottage. </p>

<p>There were an estimated 1.5 million women who were shunted into to homes for unwed mothers in the period from WWII to Roe v. Wade.
[The</a> children they gave away - Salon.com](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2006/05/11/fessler_qa/]The”>http://www.salon.com/2006/05/11/fessler_qa/)</p>

<p>Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, illegitimacy began to be defined in terms of psychological deficits on the part of the mother. At the same time, a liberalization of sexual mores combined with restrictions on access to birth control led to an increase in premarital pregnancies. </p>

<p>From approximately 1940 to 1970, it is estimated that up to 4 million mothers in the United States surrendered newborn babies to adoption; 2 million during the 1960s alone. Annual numbers for non-relative adoptions increased from an estimated 33,800 in 1951 to a peak of 89,200 in 1970. This does not include the number of infants adopted and raised by relatives. </p>

<p>Books and Magazines.</p>

<p>Playboy Magazine began publishing in 1953. *Lolita, Candy, Catcher in the Rye, Peyton Place, Cat on a Hot Ten Roof <a href=“T.%20William’s%20play”>/I</a> all were published in the 1950s.</p>

<p>Film.</p>

<p>In the early 1920s, Hollywood came under the gun due to offscreen sex scandals and some risque films. The movie industry attempted to self regulate starting in the late 1920s but did not put any teeth into the effort until it started enforcing a Production Code in 1934. Check out the films that were made in this pre-Production Code enforcement era. Tarzan had extended female (Jane) nudity. In the 1920s and 1930s (as now), sex sold because people were interested.</p>

<p>In 1952, in the case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled a 1915 decision and held that motion pictures were entitled to First Amendment protection, so that the New York State Board of Regents could not ban The Miracle. That reduced the threat of government regulation which had formerly been cited as justification for the Production Code, and the PCA’s powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced.</p>

<p>By the 1950s, American culture also began to change. A boycott by the National Legion of Decency no longer guaranteed a film’s commercial failure, and several aspects of the code had slowly lost their taboo. Areas of the code were rewritten in 1956 to accept subjects such as miscegenation, adultery, and prostitution.</p>

<p>Reefer Madness came out in 1936! You don’t need anti-pot propoganda if there is no existing pot useage.</p>

<p>Prohibition in 1920 came about because people were drinking. Making many drugs illegal (a movement begun in the 1920s) was in response to lots of people doing drugs. Movie censorship in the 1920-30s came about because the movies were giving the people what they wanted to see.</p>

<p>The 1950s started the movement away from the futile attempts to legislate morals.</p>

205

<p>“What does it mean to “not believe in” the “hook up culture”? College students hook up. It’s a fact, not a unicorn.”</p>

<p>Students who “don’t believe in the ‘hook up’ culture” believe that it is unwise and potentially harmful. They choose to not participate. It does not mean that they deny it exists.</p>

206

<p>

</p>

<p>I agree. In the 1950’s, the general media account was that every young woman was a virgin, at least until she got engaged if not married. By the latter 1960’s, the general media account led us to believe that almost no young woman was a virgin by the time she married. But how much really changed? A 15% swing in borderline decision-making perhaps? </p>

<p>The media was like a blind man just focusing on one aspect of the elephant. Those whose behavior was not currently in vogue tended to keep quiet about their activities or lack thereof. Based on the stats I posted above in #198, it looks like maybe 9% of the women today are actively and repeatedly involved in hook-up culture; the rest are doing what they always did – experimenting with a variety of relationships over time.</p>

207

<p>I think it is wise for a girl to attend a college that does not have an oversupply of women.</p>

<p>There was an article in The New York Times a couple years back about UNC, and how there were way more girls than boys, and how that allowed the boy to be very aggressive, such as </p>

<p>“What else do you want from me?. After all, I bought you a slice of pizza. Time for sex”</p>

<p>The article said that many UNC girls would date guys who already graduated college.</p>

208

<p>

</p>

<p>Has this approach ever worked with women in the history of mankind?</p>

209

<p>In thinking about books, don’t forget “the Harrod Experiment.” That one got shared a lot among gals in my dorm.
07Dad, yes, there’s a view among historians that all the prohibitions, dire warnings, commandments, et al, that run so far back, didn’t come out of thin air.</p>

210

<p>signing up. interesting read. :)</p>

211

<p>Using “agriculture” to explain gender differences in behavior sounds a bit like not seeing the forest for the trees. I would guess that it wasn’t smelling the wheat in the morning that accounted for the differences, but the creation of large, private property-based societies (which agriculture led to) as opposed to small, communal groups where everything is shared. It has always been a great challenge for humans with propensities for behavior developed through evolution in small communal groups over millions of years to adapt to a social situation involving very large groups.</p>

212

<p>

</p>

<p>No kidding. “Thou shall not ______” indicates that whatever filed the blank was prevelant enough to make the short list.</p>

<p>The syphilis outbreak in the late 15th century starting in Naples is estimated to have resulted in 5 million deaths.</p>

<p>And the idea that sex in casual relations now is some uniquely American experience is just not the case.
[China</a> sees sexual revolution - World news - Asia-Pacific - China | NBC News](<a href=“China discovers the sexually permissive society”>China discovers the sexually permissive society)</p>

213

<p>austinareadad: agriculture was the source of the private property that created the situation you discuss.</p>

<p>Agriculture created two conditions that led to the suppression of female sexuality and the control of women: 1) Women created farm labor; 2) The discovery of paternity coupled with property-legacies created anxiety over who fathered each child, hence emphasis on female chastity.</p>

<p>With DNA testing and other forms of material culture support us, these conditions are changing and prohibitions on female sexuality are loosening and have been for quite some time.</p>

214

<p>mythmom-hi. Help me understand more about what you are saying. Back in the 1980s, I did an appeal in Texas involving Lord Mansfield’s rule so I’m a little confused.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>By the late 1700s, English law was such that neither the husband nor the wife (the mother of the child) or a third party male (claiming to be the father) could raise the issue of whether a child born after the marriage of the husband and wife was a child of that marriage. In other words, under the law the husband was the father of the child no matter what the biological truth was. </p>

<p>US law had applied this in the inheritance context and many US states still do apparantly (I say this because in that appeal I mentioned the Texas Supreme Court expressly disavowed the continuing application in Texas).</p>

<p>Here is a treatise on this area of the law. <a href=“http://jjlp.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/vol-11-no-2/10%20Gunderson%2011.2.pdf[/url]”>http://jjlp.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/vol-11-no-2/10%20Gunderson%2011.2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here’s the case itself in which Lord Mansfield described the Rule.</p>

<p><a href=“http://uniset.ca/other/cs4/98ER1257.pdf[/url]”>http://uniset.ca/other/cs4/98ER1257.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It had always been my understanding that Lord Mansfield’s Rule reflects the practical reality that wives cheat, but to keep inheritance lines simple the Law would refuse to acknowledge the cheating wife. How does this square with repression of female sexuality and control of women, at least for married females?</p>

<p>Note that since the late 1500s in England the biological father had the duty to support his children conceived out of wedlock (between the father and the mother), at least if the child and mother were receiving public assistance. </p>

<p>The rules seem to NOT place an emphasis on female chastity or fidelity at least in the inheritance/support context. Seems the law did not attempt to provide a disincentive to the female being sexually active.</p>

<p>What have I missed?</p>

215

<p>One of the obvious things you have missed is that the rule does not preclude the child from asserting parentage against his biological father. I don’t know enough about the law of bastardy to know how efficient such a challenge might be, and under what circumstances. Could an out-of-wedlock child, legally the child of another, establish his right to inherit from an intestate father? If the father had acknowledged him? If there were no other known heirs with any significant degree of consanguinity? Beats me. But it’s clearly not precluded from the rule announced by Lord Mansfield.</p>

<p>The other thing you are probably missing is that English law from the 18th Century is not coextensive with post-Bronze Age human culture. It’s hardly out of the question that the discovery of paternity – which I believe was understood long before the Hanovers ascended to the English throne – and concomitant anxiety established a positive value for female fidelity considerably before English jurists adopted another solution. For instance, The Odyssey’s portrayal of Penelope looks like an artifact of anxiety over female fidelity, and that comes from roughly the 7th Century BC. The Old Testament, too, is a document of a society that did not want married women (or never-married women) sleeping around. (And, by the way, one might well suggest that the solution chosen by English jurists increased the anxiety of landowning fathers, and thus encouraged tighter restrictions on the sexual activity of married or marriageable women.)</p>

<p>Something we are all missing from this discussion, by the way, is the following: There is all kind of evidence that women – some of them – had sex with multiple partners for fun, not money, throughout much of recorded history. Two important things, however, changed in the modern period, the second quite recently. First, people decided that the same moral rules applied to all women, not different sets of rules for nobles, bourgeoises, and servants or slaves, and that those rules should most closely resemble the rules for noblewomen, the smallest, most rarified group. (Conduct, however, was a different matter.) Second, in large part because women have been delaying marriage, women started getting it on with multiple partners pre-marriage, rather than waiting until after they were married (which, after all, was occurring at 14-16).</p>

216

<p>O7Dad: will get back to you later when I am not on my phone, but it will be miles to go first. I have an evening class to teach. Expect a late PM.</p>

217

<p>

</p>

<p>The most important job of a dutiful wife was to provide an heir. If hubby was shooting blanks, the family lineage problem fell to the wife to resolve. But of course it simply would not do if the stable boy suddenly decided to step forward and make a claim on the estate. So, with a wink at reality, a legal rule had to be implemented to avoid such potential public scandals.</p>

218

<p>JHS: You did a masterful job, and yes, I was working with pre-historical eras.</p>

<p>However, I am not missing the fact that women often has multiple partners for fun in pre-agricultural settings. This was true as late as 1920 in Margaret MEAD’s Coming of Age in Samoa and other early twentieth century anthropological writings.</p>

<p>And my code in my initial post was Woodstock, :slight_smile: , a post -agricultural happening.</p>

<p>Whatever each of us thinks of hook-up culture, I think there has been a permanent sea change since my mother lectured me on the importance if remaining a virgin until my wedding night past the time these lectures were relevant. That is NOT what I told my daughter.</p>

219

<p>I was taught that the division of labor started with physical differences. Men able to hunt, lift and carry- and pee on the go. Women were hampered by lesser strength, menses, pregnancy and etc. In pre-agricultural groups, women foraged or were local gatherers, while men ranged further. Men could also defend the group. Not currently "pc’’ and I don’t know if anthropologists still hold that view. </p>

<p>Aren’t some of Mead’s observations now under scrutiny?</p>

220

<p>“Whatever each of us thinks of hook-up culture, I think there has been a permanent sea change since my mother lectured me on the importance if remaining a virgin until my wedding night past the time these lectures were relevant. That is NOT what I told my daughter.”</p>

<ul>
<li>of course, there remains the possibility that you mom was more wise than you.</li>
</ul>