Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction lays out the rationale behind a study of the Brook Advisory Centre. It situates the book’s arguments within the main scholarship on the history of youth, sexuality, expertise, race, and reproductive politics and makes the case for the need to study the history of young people’s sexuality from an intersectional perspective while taking their experiences and subjectivities into account. It highlights the key contributions this book makes to the history of postwar Britain, and in particular to the debate about the extent of the ‘permissive society’ and to the narrative of the liberalization of sexual behaviours. It then describes the methodology used and presents the sources. Finally, it provides an overview of the content of the book.