'We were Green as Grass':: Learning about Sex and Reproduction in Three Working-class Lancashire Communities, 1900-1970

Abstract

The history of sexual knowledge and behaviour often focuses on broad population or policy issues and covers large geographical areas. This article takes an alternative approach. Based on oral history evidence provided by 250 working-class residents of Barrow, Lancaster, and Preston, it explores the ways children learned about sex and reproduction during the first seventy years of the twentieth century. It argues that, during the first half of the twentieth century, normative and intentional parental silence about sexual matters was intended to protect family reputations. Sexual knowledge and behaviour were closely related to respectability, which was the key to the mutual aid networks so important to residents of pre-Second World War working-class neighbourhoods-particularly women and children. Attitudes and communication about sex changed dramatically between the generations born before about 1930 and those born afterwards. These changes related to broader social and economic changes in English society and helped make acceptable the medicalization of sex and reproduction. This article documents these changes.