Vintage 1950s Marriage Manual by Hannah and Abraham Stone. 1950S Wedding Inspiration, 50S Weddings, Vintage 1930S, Authenticate. “When You Marry”: 1962 Textbook. I think it’s fascinating the way that it illustrates some of our stereotypes about the 1950s. sex outside of marriage. This listing is for a copy of Harmony in Marriage by Leland Foster Wood, Ph.D. (paperback, 1950). This vintage marriage manual has very minor. Marriage Manuals 1950s 2) Rare Pulp erotic fiction from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s to today. 3) Rare Zines from the 6) Early 20th Century “marriage manuals” (sexual. Women: Many of our ideas of marriage are a hangover from the 1950s. A comparison of marriage in the 50s and marriage now. Family Site Since 1997.
Love and marriage in the 1. London - Even in the swinging sixties, many couples made it all the way to their wedding night without ever glimpsing each other’s winceyette underwear, let alone what lay beneath. Sex wasn’t expected to be pleasurable for women — and was always a source of potential embarrassment.“Often a husband can make that first night easier for a wife if he finds an errand to perform while his bride is preparing to retire,” wrote psychologist and marriage counsellor Dr Clifford R.
Love and marriage in the 1950s. home from a hard day’s work,” advised the Rev A. H. Tyrer in his influential 1951 manual Sex Satisfaction And Happy Marriage.
Marriage Advice From The 1950s That's So Dated, It's Laughable (VIDEO) 08/20/2013 08:29 pm ET. 1.4 K. There's good marriage advice, and then there's. APA Reference Tartakovsky, M. (2012). A Glimpse into Marriage Advice from the 1950s. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 24, 2016, from http. Vintage 1930s Marriage Manual by Hannah and Abraham Stone. Chapter headings include romantic words like biology and maladjustments. I was going to.
Adams in Modern Bride magazine in 1. He may even suggest that he will be gone for 1. But new wives shouldn’t expect too much, Dr Adams warned.“Most young wives do not have an orgasm in the early days of marriage and so should not be distressed if they do not experience it on the wedding night.“In [psychologist, Lewis] Terman’s study of several hundred wives, less than 2. Other experts had words of caution on this subject for hubby, too.“Manywoman who might have been developed by a wise lover into a devoted and ardent wife has become frigid, and sex in all its manifestations has become repellent to her, because of psychological and perhaps physical shock due to the blundering of an inconsiderately aggressive and ignorant husband,” writes the Rev Alfred Henry Tyrer, in a relationships manual from 1. But most wives had little hope of escaping the “blundering” of a hapless husband — after all, the average double bed in the Sixties was just 4ft wide, a foot narrower than today.
Keep breathing. Psychologist Dr Clifford Adams talked his readers through the stages of love- making. After warming up for a moment or two, couples were ready for “phase two: the actual coitus”. Dr Adams explained: “In the early days of marriage this should be engaged in gently. Later both may be able to enjoy the tumultuous vigour of unrestrained love. Married couples should not forget the importance of climactic sexual relations as a means of reducing tension.”A wonderfully detailed sexual manual, The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Sex, which includes somewhat bizarre diagrams comparing a woman’s reproductive organs to that of a chicken, was relatively outspoken on the subject of bedroom antics. Published in 1. 95. Dr A. Willy, it warned: “Everyone possessing the least athletic training — i.
In other words, remember to keep breathing. What a teaser! How far is too far when — heavens! In the 1. 95. 3 textbook When You Marry, sociologists Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill try to steer youngsters through the perplexing world of female sexual desire. Take the following dilemma: “Boys are often baffled by the lack of understanding shown by girls. As they put it: ‘Why do really nice girls lead you on so far and then aren’t willing to do anything about it?’ “The experts’ answer lays the blame at one door: that of the female and her unpredictable lusts. After all: “A woman’s sexual response is so general and diffused that frequently she does not even know that she is being aroused, and even more frequently is quite unaware that her behaviour is arousing the boy beyond the boundaries which she herself would wish to maintain.”Have dinner ready. Want to keep your husband content?
Forget daring lingerie or sparkling conversation. Marriage experts from the Fifties agreed universally that no marriage could possibly survive a man having an empty stomach. And woe betide the wife who put an afternoon’s jollity before the evening meal. A social service meeting, an afternoon tea, a matinee, a whatnot, is no excuse for there being no dinner ready when a husband comes home from a hard day’s work,” advised the Rev A. H. Tyrer in his influential 1. Sex Satisfaction And Happy Marriage.
Note the fantastically dismissive “whatnot” as a description of women’s interests. Use your finest linen.
But it wasn’t just enough to have a meal prepared. There were certain standards to be maintained. For if you don’t have a perfect tablecloth, a husband’s eye will rapidly wander elsewhere. According to Tyrer, the ideal wife “remembered [her husband’s] choice of meat and was careful to get an extra fine cut her best cutlery and dishes and finest linen are all in evidence, and a little colourful decoration has been tastefully displayed”. By contrast, the sloppy wife: “Is constantly setting him down to indigestible meals, cold and unappetising, with nothing properly cooked, set out on a kitchen table with a dirty cloth.”In which case: “She need not be surprised if her husband frequently telephones from the office [to say] that business will prevent him from being home for dinner.”Ask the vicar. Sex before marriage was rarely even discussed in polite circles at this time — never mind acted upon.
Indeed, the rate of illegitimacy was low throughout these two decades. Just five percent of babies were born outside of marriage in the Fifties — the shame for unmarried mothers was acute and often lifelong.“The Family Planning Association offered advice to married women who were then mainly fitted with the internal device known as the diaphragm or Dutch cap,” writes Sheila Hardy in her history A 1.
Housewife.“However, right up to the end of the Forties, the services of the FPA were available only to married couples. Then, in 1. 95. 0, a concession was made for couples about to marry.“To receive help before the wedding day, the bride- to- be had to turn up at one of the FPA clinics armed with a letter from either her doctor or the officiating vicar to verify that she really was about to become a married woman.”It’s astonishing to imagine today that the say- so of a vicar could determine whether a woman was allowed access to contraception. Listen carefully. With divorce extremely difficult to obtain, advice was plentiful on how to make a marriage last. And the onus was on a wife to keep her man happy.“A man may stand nagging for a long time,” writes Tyrer back in 1. If he needs peace to make his life bearable he will have to look for it elsewhere than in his own house. And it is quite likely that he will look.”And it wasn’t just nagging.
A woman’s pitiful attention span could also aggravate her husband, as the redoubtable Reverend described: “If [the husband] is intellectually inclined, and from time to time seeks to explain little things to [his wife] so that she may have at least a bare knowledge of what it is that interests him, and, without the slightest comment, she takes up again the fashion magazine she laid down when he commenced to speak, we may be pretty sure there is going to be a ‘rift in the lute’ sooner or later in that house.”Padlock your tongue. Agony aunts were kept in business by the Fifties housewife.
One legendary advice column called Can This Marriage Be Saved? Take Alice, who sought advice in 1.
She had four children in the space of five years — and yet the agony aunt wrote that Alice needed to stop “nagging” her husband for affection. After all: “His way of pronouncing his love was not in extravagant speech but in coming home to her and the children, and displaying his willingness — indeed, his determination — to support them.”It was, then, up to her to make their home happy. It was only when Alice recognised this and acknowledged that the language of courtship and juvenile dreams is seldom the language of marriage, that matters would improve.“She needed to start keeping household accounts and padlocking her tongue.”Advice for Elsa, in 1. After her husband hit her when he came home late from an office party, Elsa asked for help: “When [my husband] abuses me in the presence of our children, when he humiliates me before the neighbours, I want to curl up and die.”The agony aunt’s response? Elsa was partly at fault. If she wanted a serene family life, she would have to learn to give [him] what he wanted from their marriage and thereby help him control his temper.”Slim those thighs.
Then, as now, women’s magazines devoted endless column inches to diets and beauty advice, often alongside advertisements for slimming products of highly dubious efficacy. You are young when you feel young. You feel young when you look young.“Zest, poise, vitality — all the gaiety of a happy full life — these make up the charm of the woman who preserves the girlish lines of youth,” ran one Fifties ad for something called Marmola anti- fat tablets, which contained — wait for it — dried thyroid extract.
Women also tried Stephanie Bowman’s “slimming garments” — which were, essentially, pink plastic bags with elasticated tops and bottoms that you wore all day over offending areas, thighs and upper arms, in a bid to reduce fat by sweating. How to eat cherrie. If a Fifties woman was lucky enough to be taken to a restaurant by her beau, she had two duties: watching her cutlery and knowing her place, as Woman’s Own magazine advised in their article How To Behave In A Restaurant.“The man always does the ordering, never ask the waiter yourself for anything,” they advised.“There are certain foods which are eaten in a manner entirely different from others. For instance, asparagus is one the few foods which can be eaten with fingers. Cherries should be put into the mouth whole and the stones carefully placed upon a spoon.”Nab a high flyer. In the sixties, there was nothing sexier than air travel, as Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown advised in 1.
Planes can be great providers of men. Remember, airline stewardesses marry young. Whether the man is date material or not, he can make the trip go faster; and if your four leaf clover is fresh, you may sit down next to a downright fascinator.“There’s something sexy about being sequestered 2.
Earth almost as close to a strange man as a banana to its skin, motors humming (yours and the plane’s).”A fifties bride had far lower expectations of her Big Day than modern women. Whereas today the average wedding costs £2. R4. 60 0. 00), back then you could do it for £1. And the bride’s father really did foot the whole bill.