THE POSTWAR YOUTH CULTURE

Reemergence of the Youth Culture

An American youth culture based on adolescent leisure activities had emerged in the prosperous 1920s, but it was sharply curtailed by the financial stringency of the Depression. During the prosperous years that followed World War II it blossomed once again. Middle-class and many working-class teenagers had money to spend on recreation and dating, and they did so with exuberance. The practice of adolescent dating, which also began in the 1920s, grew after the war. Teenagers in this postwar generation were given more autonomy by their parents than adolescents of earlier generations, but the extent of their newfound freedom, especially in regard to experimentation with sex, varied with social and economic class. In general, poor black teenagers growing up in the South had more freedom to engage in premarital sex than black adolescents with wealthier parents. Young, urban workingclass men and women who dropped out of high school met in dance halls, bowling alleys, and skating rinks and were less restricted in their sexual activity than high-school students.

High-School Dating

High-school attendance rose dramatically after the war, and student culture defined dating rituals for the great majority of teenagers. High-school cliques regulated dating by defining the proper choice of partners and proper behavior on dates. The high-school social order differed by gender: boys who were star athletes were most admired, while a girl's prestige was measured by her popularity with boys. With adolescents heading eagerly toward marriage at younger ages, dating was a delicate dance orchestrated by the girl. A girl tried to attract boys subtly. Her cardinal rule was never to let a boy know she was chasing him, but to let him think he had "caught" her. Membership in a clique of popular teenagers enhanced a girl's value on the dating market, since nothing impressed boys more than a girl who was known as part of a "leading crowd" of students who were well dressed and self-confident. High-school dating provided opportunities for intimacy and sexual exploration, but it usually stopped at petting.

Sources:

Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988);

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988);

John Modell, Into One's Own: From Youth to Adulthood in the United States, 1920-1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).