Age differences....1970s attitudes....2021 attitudes

[fuckyeahpercywigwam]

I recently became friends with someone my age (64) who I met through volunteering. We went for coffee yesterday and talked about first boyfriends etc. My first boyfriend (when I was 14) was 17, and my parents were very, very concerned about this, especially as he was in the process of buying a car, so therefore, he could drive me off somewhere secluded in his car to Do Things. As it happened, we never had sex..I always successfully fought him off and the relationship just fizzled out after a couple of months.

However, my friend related her experience. A few months shy of her 15th birthday, she went out with a boy/man who was 21. Full blown sex and all. The relationship continued for at least six months until she moved away.

This seems a bit icky to me and I know that this would not be acceptable these days, but would it have been acceptable in the 70s?

i think in the 70s you would have found more people who would have tolerated this, but that doesnt mean everyone would. I definitely see that with the internet and people more easily able to discuss issues and educate themselves on certain things, things like the damage of exploitative relationships is more known about and frowned upon.

Sadly from what I remember of those times I think the girl would have been blamed and considered "easy" whilst the man would have have been "just being a man". In this respect attitudes have certainly changed for the better.

My parents married in the 1970's and certainly didn't live together or have sexual relations before marriage

Anyone doing that was considered a bit rough 🤣

I think in the 1970s there was more of an idea that when you were fysically grown up, you were mentally too thus relationships between young girls and adult men were more accepted. Thankfully these days there is more concern for the power imbalance in this type of ‘relationships’ and that teenagers need to grow up mentally too.

I don't know if it was ever considered acceptable but the perspective has shifted towards concern for the traumatic experience of an underage girl, whereas once upon a time it was just ''don't bring shame on yourself''

I don’t think it would have been considered socially unacceptable, exactly, but I also don’t think it would have been roundly condemned. The school leaving age was 15 until 1973, so a lot of 15-year-olds would be in full time work and essentially considered adults by many people. And I suppose some 15-year-olds would also have considered themselves adults and not feel as though they’d been exploited or groomed - I used to have an older colleague friend who was up to all sorts in her mid-late teens and early twenties in London with older men including some relatively famous musicians, and whilst she accepted some girls may have been groomed, was very firm that she didn’t view herself in that way and had had full agency.

My parents met and married in the late sixties. When they met my mum was 14 and my dad was 22. They married when she was 16 and he was 24. It wasn't seen as odd or inappropriate amongst their friends as families, many of who had similar age gaps

I had a 26 year old BF when I was 15 in the 80s. My parents fully approved as he had a good job and was 'sensible' compared to boys my age. No judgement from anywhere and my friends were all dating similar age men. In those days we also went clubbing every weekend from age about 13, or as soon as we looked vaguely old enough to get away with it ( no ID required then) so were inappropriately grown up in lots if ways. Interstingly it was a very different when I got a 26 year old BF again in 2018. Which I guess illistrates double if not changed standards.

@omgthepain

My parents married in the 1970's and certainly didn't live together or have sexual relations before marriage

Anyone doing that was considered a bit rough 🤣

Seriously? I don't recall that attitude at all.

@LaBellina

I think in the 1970s there was more of an idea that when you were fysically grown up, you were mentally too thus relationships between young girls and adult men were more accepted. Thankfully these days there is more concern for the power imbalance in this type of ‘relationships’ and that teenagers need to grow up mentally too.

The amount of underage 'groupies' is staggering to look back on. In my friendship group, 16 to 18 was the norm for 'the first time'.

What do you mean by the first time @OrchestraOfWankery? Do you mean actual groupies following older artists and actually having sex with them at that age?
That is pretty disgusting indeed if you mean that esspecially because the power imbalance in these situations is even bigger.

@LaBellina

What do you mean by the first time *@OrchestraOfWankery*? Do you mean actual groupies following older artists and actually having sex with them at that age? That is pretty disgusting indeed if you mean that esspecially because the power imbalance in these situations is even bigger.

None of my mates were groupies. I meant the first time they had sex with boyfriends.

I think 17 or 18 is quite a normal age to lose your virginity…as long as you’re in a healthy relationship with someone of a similar age.

I knew two girls at school who got pregnant at 17. It wasn’t considered the done thing to have sex with your boyfriend when I was at school . Those who did tended to be those whose didn’t have any aspirations and were considered a bit rough. My sister several years below me had a friend who had an abortion.

It was frowned on by most adults but it certainly wasn’t uncommon. I am a similar age and sex before marriage was looked down on by our parents. Boys aspired to marry a virgin, though it was considered OK for boys to ‘sow their wild oats’,
I think there was less emphasis on power imbalances in those days because there was almost always a slew in favour of the man in any relationship.

*skew - I’m old and myopic and I need an edit button

Just a reminder that 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 each year

www.girlsnotbrides.org/about-child-marriage/

That is 23 girls
every minute

I reckon it was more acceptable back then.

My mum left school at 15 as was the norm in the late 60s / 70s for working class girls. She worked full time, earned a good wage, by all accounts and lived an adult lifestyle. Being married and having babies was next on the list.

My mum was 14 when she met my dad who was 26. My nan opposed the marriage, so they waited until my mum was 18 and 1 week and did it behind my nan's back. No one was particularly happy in my mum's family about it but when I asked my nan about it a few years ago, she was said "I knew he was a wrong 'un but what was I to do?". I think today, there would have been channels that my nan could have gone down to stop the relationship progressing.

It is only in recent years that my sister and I have come to realise that my mum was blatantly groomed by my dad. Text book case. My mum to this day, will not hear any of it. To her it was the norm. She had cousins who married older (violent) men and even a school friend who was groomed by a teacher and eventually got married to him No one came knocking on anyone's doors. It was just how it was.