John C. Spurlock - Youth and Sexuality in the Twentieth-Century United States

When did the sexual revolution happen? Most Americans would probably say the 1960s. In reality, young couples were changing the rules of public and private life for decades before. By the early years of the twentieth century, teenagers were increasingly free of adult supervision, and taking control of their sexuality in many ways. Dating, going steady, necking, petting, and cohabiting all provoked adult hand-wringing and advice, most of it ignored. By the time the media began announcing the arrival of a sexual revolution, it had been going on for half a century.

Youth and Sexuality in the Twentieth-Century United States tells this story with fascinating revelations from both personal writings and scientific sex research. John C. Spurlock follows the major changes in the sex lives of American youth across the entire century, considering how dramatic revolutions in the culture of sex affected not only heterosexual relationships but also gay and lesbian youth, and same-sex friendships. The dark side of sex is also covered, with discussion of the painful realities of sexual violence and coercion in the lives of many young people. Full of details from first-person accounts, this lively and accessible history is essential for anyone interested in American youth and sexuality.

John C. Spurlock is Professor of History at Seton Hill University in Greens-burg, Pennsylvania. He is the author of New and Improved: The Transformation of American Womens Emotional Culture, and Free Love: Marriage and Middle-Class Radicalism in America, 18251860.

First published 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spurlock, John C., 1954

Youth and sexuality in the twentieth-century United States / John C.

Spurlock. 1 Edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. YouthUnited StatesSexual behavior. 2. Sex customsUnited

StatesHistory21st century. 3. YouthPsychology. I. Title.

HQ796.S685 2015
306.70835dc23
2015003908

ISBN: 978-1-138-81748-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-81749-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74559-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Over the many years that this book has taken shape I have benefited from the encouragement of friends and colleagues. Some of my earliest discussions took place with James W. Reed and Susan Ferentinos. Many colleagues read portions of this work and returned valuable insights, including David del Mar, Lizzie Reis, Robert Johnston, Lia Paradis, Adrian Perez Melgosa, Jennifer Halpern, Judith Garcia Quismondo, Lara Kelland, and Rebecca Davis. Tracey Laszloffy and Rebecca Harvey offered insights from their work in family therapy. I had the privilege of writing several articles for an encyclopedia edited by James T. Sears. His steady engagement with me helped move me toward a broader understanding of adolescent sexualities.

Seton Hill University (SHU) supported my work with a sabbatical leave and funding for travel. That support came along with encouragement from the academic dean and provost, Mary Ann Gawelek, and the chair of the Humanities Division, Michael Arnzen. Seton Hill University library provided a steady stream of interlibrary loan items thanks to Judith Koveleskie and Eileen Moffa, among others. Bill Black helped me find my way around the SHU archives.

The Schlesinger Library and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study supported my work with travel and research grants in 2002 and 2010, and the Smith College archives supported my work with a travel and research grant in 2010.

Many of the ideas for this book took shape during my semester teaching at the University of Montenegro, Filozofksi Fakultet. During that time, and consistently since then, Janko Andrijasevi, has taken a supportive interest in my work. I have also benefited from my return trips to Montenegro, where I have presented some of the concepts in this work at the Anglo-American Studies Conference, chaired by Marija Krivokapi. At Routledge I was fortunate to have a supportive editor and editorial assistant in Kimberly Guinta and Genevieve Aoki, respectively. The anonymous reviewers for Routledge gave thorough and highly useful assessments of the entire manuscript.

Michael Sims has taken time to read portions of this work and has also given me a forum for my ideas and my reflections on the process of writing. Students who have taken courses with me on Sex in America and Modern Love have added to the stream of discussion. Michael Ballew and Paul Spurlock helped make available photos for the book from the family archive.

Other help and encouragement is harder to classify but still vital. In this regard I want to especially mention Zhiping Mi. My daughters, Ruth and Esther, have been my most enthusiastic supporters, although they also probably worried that this book would be finished while they were still adolescents.

Adults in the 1920s who worried about the exploits of flaming youth would have felt reassured by acquaintance with Yvonne Blue and Lucille Lowder, born in 1911 and 1912, respectively. Yvonne grew up in middle-class Chicago. Lucille lived a few hundred miles away but in another world, on a homestead in Colorado. For both girls, however, school, church, and girlfriends (and, in Lucilles case, farm chores) took up most of their time. Yvonne had only girls as guests at her 13th birthday party. She and her two best girlfriends planned to form a literary club (which they later changed to a pirate club). For Lucille, girlfriends also mattered. As the youngest rider on her school bus, she sat in the small seat next to the driver. Margaret Sears and her brothers and sisters, and Gilbert Downing started going to our school, Lucille recalled in a reflection written late in life. Margaret and Gilbert had a daily fight over who was going to sit next to me. She usually won. In fact, Margaret and Lucille would become lifelong friends, remaining in touch into old age even though usually separated by huge distances. For both Lucille and Yvonne, their early teenage years seemed to be shaped more by an older tradition of romantic friendships among girls and young women than by the contemporary revolt of modern youth.

Yvonne and Lucille lived during a time of rapid change in American social life and a still more rapid change in the sexuality of young Americans. Both girls sensed these shifts. Yvonne wrote about friends of hers who were loud and boy-crazy or even so consumed with the topic of boys as to be perverted. She recounted that when walking to school one day along with one of her boy-crazy friends, millions of boys yelled Hi Teddy! while they ignored Yvonne. Lucille, for her part, recalled a fifteen-year-old who was madly in love with a cowboy, and got pregnant. She went away to a pregnancy home to have