Sex as a taboo subject outside of marriage
Jones explains how people her age knew very little about sex before marriage. Earlier in the interview, she had talked about how people were unaware of birth control and here she notes that sex, in general, was essentially a taboo subject. Her comments reveal the ways in which people addressed issues of sex, sexuality, and reproduction during the early twentieth century in a small southern community.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Louise Riggsbee Jones, October 13, 1976. Interview H-0085-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I don't mean to dwell on sex and marriage
[laughter]
too much, but I was wondering if it was accepted or if it was
real unusual or if it ever happened that women would have children
before they married.
- LOUISE JONES:
-
I guess they did, but I don't remember much about it. But I'll tell you,
we didn't know sex. They didn't teach it to us like they do now. And it
was more of a sacred thing with us when we were growing up, and
something that we shouldn't talk out. Now young people don't think too
much about talking sex to one another; you know how they are now. And I
sometimes think that they know just a little bit too much, that they
don't have the respect for it that they ought to, like we always
did.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
So when you were growing up, you were sort of taught, or not even taught,
that sex was something that was a part of marriage.
- LOUISE JONES:
-
Yes. Not too young. Just as I got a little older, I would learn such as
that.