"Our people went into the Depression with poor preparation. We had been taught to value material things and to respect material success. Marriages weren't made in heaven, women weren't pure vessels, money would buy anything. When this structure fell apart, we were lost children and the effect of this collapse on our sexual manners was pretty much what might be expected."
"Unemployment permitted a great deal more companionship between young men and young women, which ordinarily would have led to marriage. The only thing lacking was money. The arrangements called, simply, 'living together' became common. Often the man or woman was married, and couldn't get , couldn't afford, or didn't want a divorce. Sometimes the man simply refused to marry, and the woman took him into her home or moved into his as the next best thing."
You might also want to read this brief memoir by a 1930s prostitute.
How chaste were American girls in the Forties?
You Might Also Care to Know About:The Sex Manners of the Twenties,
or Men & Women During W.W. II
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