How did patterns of courtship and getting married differ for young women in the 1950's compared to the 1930's?

Résumé du document

The twentieth century has witnessed several changes in social structures and notably with the birth of youth culture, which allowed people between the state of childhood and the one of adulthood to be recognized as a full-fledged category of the society. This change in status has led to several other changes as well for girls as for boys, and the question that will be dealt with in this essay is the one concerning the differences in young girls' life between the patterns of courtship and marriage before and after the birth of youth culture, that is to say between the pre-war and the post-war periods. To answer this question, the essay will be divided in two main parts dealing with the two different statuses a girl usually goes through in her life, namely, the pre-marital situation and the marital one. Each part will tackle the several aspects of these statuses and point out the differences between the period of time that preceded the birth of youth culture and the one that followed it.

Extraits

[...] Lewis, Women in England, p.9. [...]

[...] For this reason, promenading, another hobby shared by youngsters to meet the opposite sex, was also tolerated because once more it was a public activity. Going to the cinema in the 1940's and, later, the reunions of several youngsters in houses were the only occasions for them to meet in private and to escape their parents' surveillance. As soon as a young man started courting a girl, he had to be introduced to her parents and the couple could only meet in their parents' house, that is to say, once more, under the adults' control and they had to obey their rules. [...]

[...] Later in the century, the choice of job was still not made consciously as the priority remained to earn money. Nevertheless, girls seemed more likely to change job if they were not satisfied with the one they had[1] and, although they did not show defiance toward their parents' decision when they started working, they were more likely to resent, even years later, the choice they had made for them[2]. Criteria for a good job were usually the social contact it allowed and the pride they could get out of it and they used to consider a job unsatisfying if the wages were too low or if they did not have good relationships with their supervisors. [...]

[...] The fact remains that at this time, women lives were completely devoted to children and family life, and consequently to their pregnancies. Despite surveys and figures on birth rates and use of contraceptive methods, it is obvious that the mental state of worry in which women constantly were will remain quite hard to imagine. Indeed, each new pregnancy meant not only new expenses for the household, but also nine moths of physical pain, psychological embarrassment, added to confinement and discomfort. [...]

[...] This emphasize on the role of mothers probably made to the detriment of fathers who a bit more of the few importance they had in the children's education in the late 1940's can somehow be held responsible for the slowing down of progress in the movement that led women to a greater independency in the end of the twentieth century. To conclude this question, it is necessary to underline that, even if several changes and sometimes quite important ones occurred in young women's lives with the birth of youth culture, they nevertheless remained limited and only applied to certain aspects of their lives as grown-ups. [...]