Teenage Intimacies

Teenage intimacies offers an essential new perspective on the so-called 'Sexual Revolution'. It reveals the important role that young women of the post-war generation played in changing sexual values, cultures and practices in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The book argues that the purpose and meaning of sex for young women changed significantly in the post-war period. Based upon over 300 personal testimonies collected through an original oral history project and submissions to the Mass Observation project, Teenage intimacies explores the place of teenage girls and their sexual activity in this transformation. The book shows how ideas about 'growing up' increasingly structured experiences of adolescent sexuality. Teenagers came to understand their sexuality not simply as a feature of relationships and marriage but as an essential part of their own development and progress towards adulthood. The volume also argues, however, that individual sexuality needs to be placed in its social context. As the book explores, the process of 'becoming sexual' was profoundly shaped by teenagers' relationships with their romantic partners, friends and peers, and their families.

Beyond putting young women's experiences on the record, the testimonies transform views of how and why sexual values changed in the mid-century. The book shows that far beyond 'Swinging London', a quieter, more mundane transformation in sexual culture was taking place in school playgrounds, church youth clubs, local cinemas, and suburban bedrooms - and teenage girls were in its vanguard.