It's the Shame

David Brooks writes about how relationships used to be hedged within larger societal 'guardrails':

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era —
courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met
within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools,
workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose
of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young
people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They
didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened
courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate
scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all
about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting
technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an
instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and
commitments.

His blaming of cellphone and texting is a little weird, since even in my day 'kids' could always talk on the phone in private, to make plans for the evening.

Obviously, the young people he's referring to are not teenagers, being guided somehow by their parents, but younger adults in their 20s and 30s. So their 'hooking up' is not technology-driven, but more a function of other factors, such as mass media, lack of religious values which provide moral inhibition against sexual promiscuity, availability of abortion, and of course the pervasiveness of birth control. You might also add in here apocalyptic fear of the future--the feeling that this world is just not going to make very long.

Sexual promiscuity was actually quite common back in my days in college and after--the late 60s and early 70s. And I'm not so sure that it was all that much less common before that.

One of the revelations I uncovered when I was doing research on my genealogy was that my great grandparents, who had both immigrated to the U.S. in the 1870s, were already pregnant when they got married, as evidenced by the birth of my grandfather six months later! (No wonder I couldn't find out what their anniversary date was until I found their marriage license in the county courthouse--it was the big, forbidden secret.)

Now there's an interesting fact of life that has changed--that pregnancy before marriage would be kept a secret because of the moral 'shame' involved. The 'shame' and 'guilt' is pretty well gone. It's not the technology, it's the shame.