During the 1940's and 50's were ppl really more chaste than now?

Question:You always hear that the decades before the 1960's were known for ppl repressing their sexuality but did ppl really avoid premarital sex more than now?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: You always hear that the decades before the 1960's were known for ppl repressing their sexuality but did ppl really avoid premarital sex more than now?

There were more risks involved in having sex in those days, especially for girls, because of the social stigam involved, girls were afraid of getting a reputation for being 'fast' and of course there was the very real fear of pregnancy, which was not regarded in the indulgent way it is nowadays. Young people would indulge in 'heavy petting' without 'going all the way' as it was known. Florence King, who has written about her experience as a college student in the 1950s, refers to the girls of her generation as the 'everything but' generation. she writes:

'the erotic contortionism we called "everything but" made us the Keystone Cops of heavy petting, stripping gears and kicking holes in dashboards with high heels, but our dates not only put up with it, they respected us for being virgins because we had them convinced that nice girls never got in the back seat."

there was a certain amount of doubt among girls of the ear as to whether you could get pregnant if you got any sperm on you at all. In 'He: an Irreverent look at the American male' florence King writes:

'Satisfying the boys was something we did with the utmost reluctance because we were all scared to death of semen. if it got on you, anywhere near you, you could get pregnant. It had happened. A sheaf of horror stories mad eht rounds of the sorority, all about girls who had gotten pregnant in swimming pools because a boy had ejaculated nearby, and one chilling tale about the New york water shortage and the girl who, in a spirit of civil responsibility, had used her brother's bath water after him. Somebody was always cutting out one of those first-person confessions about girls who "fooled around" which we called Playing On But NOt In. We cranked ourselves up into such a state of terror that we visualised each individual sperm cell as a grinning demon armed with pontoons, ladders, scaling hooks, wire cutters, and an ability to incubate indefinitely in everything from wool to nylon to Ship n' Shore blouses.'

however, the greater fear of pregnancy meant that when people did 'go all the way' they were more careful to use protection. Boys would expect to use a condom. Girls could not get contracetive devices very easily as most doctors would not perscribe them to unmarried girls. Florence King finally managed to find a female doctor who didn't enquire into her marital state, and got herself fitted with a diaphragm.

They were more careful but it happened. The young women were watched carefully so they had less occasion for it, and the lack of protection made them more wary. The belief that it should not happen before marriage was another barrier.
However the lack of knowledge about the sexual act itself meant also that when they were convinced by their lover to do it the risk to become pregnant was a hundred time higher than now.