‘How far should we go?’: Adolescent sexual activity and understandings of the sexual life-course in post-war Britain

Abstract

Drawing on a range of ‘facts of life’ literature, in addition to over 300 personal testimonies, this article examines understandings of adolescent sexuality in mid-twentieth-century Britain. The article uses the category of age to interrogate post-war heterosexuality in two distinct ways. Most fundamentally, it takes teenage sexuality as its subject and explores how Britons experienced, spoke about, and understood the sexual feelings and behaviours of young people. Rather than treating discourses regarding teenage sexuality as universal, however, the article also compares adult discourse on youth sexuality with how young people themselves navigated sexual practice. In so doing, the article shows how adolescent sexual feelings, identities and activities were understood by both adults and young people to represent a specific form of sexuality that was related to but distinct from the sexualities of adults. Paying particular attention to forms of sexual activity associated with teenagers (‘petting’), this research shows that while adults and young people shared this developmental understanding of adolescent sexuality, the meanings attributed to sexual feelings and behaviours were very different. An individual’s place in the life-cycle not only informed the nature of their sexual activity but also shaped their understanding of what that sexual activity meant.