This seems to have happened in the late 1930s or the early 1940s (he says "while I was working on the bomb".)
From what I've heard, the US was very conservative at that time; girls & women in general did not have sex before marriage. And additionally was contraception widely available at that time?
The sexual revolution happened in the 60s and 70s. So, this does not make any sense.
That's just good old day syndrome. I've had some very interesting talks with older folks about this very subject. They all agree that the prevalence of sex in the culture is certainly a bit more front and center today. However, men have always been men and women have always been women.
Teen birth rates where at their highest in 40's, 50's and 60's after all. Contraception certainly has played a role in reducing that, but it does demonstrate that conservative America has always been a myth propagated by a certain sect of older conservatives.
Interesting. My talks (at least with older people who went to college) have given me quite a different perspective - where people would typically marry very young (often out of college), and no one would even think of having sex without at least being engaged.
I don't doubt the truth of this story (though there is certainly hyperbole); rather I find it hard to believe that
'sleep with' in this context actually means 'sex'. The main flags are A) Feynman is discussing with other people about it (afaik not acceptable socially then) and B) a sexual one-night stand would be even less so.
Finally I wager that the teen birth rate drop is solely due to an increase in education and contraption (and even legalized abortions). Obviously, there were some teenagers having sex in the 1940s (with a much higher liklihood of becoming pregnant right now), but, due to the risks and less acceptance than now, the rate was lower.
anecdotally, I once asked my grandfather if people didn't really have sex that much back then, or if they just didn't talk about it, and he was quick to say that people just didn't talk about it, but maybe he was biased and just getting laid a lot :)
The Manhattan Project was 1942-1945, well into the war, when condoms were fairly widely available. They only became more available after that, of course.
This story by Freedman totally goes against what I've thought US/Western attitudes towards sex were in the 40s. (I thought the US was an uber-conservative sex-only-after-marriage & sex-only-for-producing children society.)
Does anyone have any links/references to articles/papers/studies that show that the US was already laissez-faire about sex as early as the late-30s/early-40s?
Don't ever assume that the US -- or any other country -- actually practices what it preaches, especially when said country spends a lot of time preaching.
The two Kinsey Reports (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 1948, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, 1953) are the groundbreaking sexual studies of their time. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports
sex-only-for-producing children is a bit of a stretch. The link to Ebert's blog post above describes pre-1960s society pretty well; couples were sexual, but if they weren't married (or at least engaged), they probably weren't having sex.
From what I've heard, the US was very conservative at that time; girls & women in general did not have sex before marriage. And additionally was contraception widely available at that time?
The sexual revolution happened in the 60s and 70s. So, this does not make any sense.
Can someone enlighten me?